Nature and Art

TWO MIDCENTURY DIMITRI TIOMKIN MOVIES

I call them Dimitri Tiomkin movies, because in both instances the movies are made by their impressionistic musical scores, as well as their natural settings.

The first of the two films is a 1958 version of Ernest Hemingway’s short novel The Old Man and the Sea, directed by John Sturges and starring Spencer Tracy. It’s a movie that sneaks up on you, in that at first you might be cynical about Spencer Tracy in the role, the voice-over narration and the film seeming to take the book too literally. Then the drama of the story kicks in, one man against a very large fish and against the elements, accompanied by wide-screen color cinematography. The story itself gives it depth and impact. But that evening so did something else. I watched it with NPL Contributing Editor Kathleen Crane amid a hostile early winter where we live. After being bombarded by the elements. After I’d been outside shoveling too-soon late-November snow. The images of weather on the screen had greater impact for me because of this. Funny how aesthetic elements and events outside the artwork impact one’s experience of it.

Impactful as well was the Dimitri Tiomkin score, which suggested the moving sea the movie’s character battled through. Impressionistic music has always been to me (think Debussey’s La Mer) the most naturalistic, in tune with nature, of all musical genres. Tiomkin won an Oscar for his score– which maybe that year should’ve gone to populist American composer Jerome Moross’s score for The Big Country. Tiomkin is my favorite all-time movie composer. I’ve long felt he deserves ranking with giants like Miklos Rozsa, Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and whoever else.

ANOTHER FLICK

Not long after, we watched The Guns of Navarone. Having seen the restored version of the 1961 adventure film on the big screen in Philadelphia in the 2000’s, I was well familiar with Tiomkin’s score for that movie. The Question: Would the viewing experience of this film also be enhanced by the tumultuous weather raging outside our creaky house?

The Guns of Navarone is a work immersed in nature and weather, with the feel of a contemporary Greek myth to it. Dimitri Tiomkin’s score serves, along with the film’s images, as a key into the subconscious. Watching it is like experiencing a dream. The narrative throws a series of elements at the viewer, a parade of obstacles, including a raging storm, a 400-foot cliff that needs to be climbed, and a pair of giant German cannons which have to be taken out by a commando team someway, somehow. It’s all heroic, and Homeric. At the end, remaining members of the team are thrown back into the sea from whence they came. And yes, the natural elements we’d been experiencing, of cold, wind and snow, enhanced our experience of the film.

Art interests me aesthetically far more than intellectually. It’s what happens beneath and beyond the conscious intellect that strikes the deepest chords within us, is most moving. A phenomenon which established critics, for whom all is intellect, never seem to get.

-K.W.

Christmas Reading!

LAST-MINUTE CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEAS

CREATIVITY IS EVERYWHERE!

Including in small communities downriver from Detroit. A resident of one of them, Martin Bertera, has penned an atmospheric Christmas tale– Mistletoe — set in the mid-19th Century, in the tradition of Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky. We don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but it’s about a general store, an urchin child, the homeless, train-and-boat journeys from New York City to the Great Lakes, a farm, Christmas Eve, and– well, you have to read it. Most of all, it’s a story with heart, antithesis to today’s AI-generated robotic age. It’d make a perfect little Christmas gift for brothers and sisters, cousins, grandparents, friends or acquaintances, co-workers or the boss, nieces and nephews, uncles and aunts: all those for whom you’d like to buy something but aren’t sure exactly what.

Or purchase it for yourself to read on Christmas Eve– a perfect read for a perfect Santa-filled night.

You can buy it NOW right here.

A Short Excerpt from “Quest of the Globules” by John Haymaker

NEW POP FICTION!

The Globules pinpointed the sound’s source as a jumble of radio signals emanating from planet Earth, and they thereupon commenced to traverse the broad expanse of space-time in microseconds toward the sound. On the way, they binge-watched Netflix, Prime, YouTube and learned our languages, even dead ones, consuming all knowledge thus far attained on earth.

They grew keen on pop culture and acculturated to Earth’s vibe well before landing. They devoured social media, discovered Twitter, enjoyed absolutely everything posted on Facebook – sucking it up, clicking virtual Likes with licks of their millions of tongues. 

On Earth, a din of radio static grew loud as an echo chamber. Scientists anticipated something colossal targeted earth. They theorized meteors or comets – and issued warnings. Then the tweets commenced from @intergalactic, Nimble’s Twitter handle: We’re coming from Globiliad @earth #peace #friendship – followed by an array of pics of their dazzling celestial procession. On Monday, Likes on Facebook grew exponentially. By Tuesday, sociologists gave up providing explanations. By Wednesday, theoretical physicists weighed in with a theory of a dark matter effect – maybe even an effect of dark energy, for all they knew.

(WHAT?!!) COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

Watching Aida

LESSONS FOR WRITERS?

RECENTLY, my co-editor Kathleen and I watched a DVD recording of the Verdi opera Aida. A performance at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera from 1988, starring Aprile Millo and Placido Domingo. We were reminded how great opera, especially grand opera, can be at its best.

We’d seen the opera before, live, twelve or so years ago when we both worked at the Detroit Opera House. We’d heard the amazing voices carrying through the building from the rehearsal hall in the days leading up to the start of the run. It was a wonderful production in its own right, care of artistic director David Dichiera, albeit scaled down from what audiences saw at the Met. But it was live!

Live opera is not only ten times better than any recorded version, it’s likely– when at its best– the greatest of all art forms, because it encompasses so many arts and crafts in a single production. Music, staging, singing, story, acting, costumes, lighting, sets and set design. Often, dancing.

The Met production we watched had all of this and more. Including giant statues. Including horses pulling chariots. (Alas, no elephants!) It also had drama, magnificent voices, and large amounts of emotion. The first two acts are the high points: the aria “Celeste Aida” then the invocation of the gods in Act One, transporting the viewer back to an ancient, mystical-spiritual world via some of the most beautiful music ever composed. Act Two is power and spectacle, the gathering of the Egyptian army accompanied by rousing gigantic voices meshing together in a way seldom, if ever, experienced. All while the plot’s traumatic, anguished triangle is on display for all to see. The curtain comes down.

The final two acts are quieter, more personal and emotional– or melodramatic– one taking place along the Nile, under the stars; the universe. The other, in a dungeon.

Then it’s over. A full, cathartic artistic experience.

This was as fine a production as could be mounted, absent real pyramids and actual elephants. The acting of course was stagey, at times drifting into WWE-style dramatics, especially in the performance of Dolora Zajick as bad-girl princess Amneris.

LESSONS

What are the lessons from Aida for writers, particularly novelists?

That literary works need far more scope than they have now, and more humanity. In response to AI-generated botbooks, human writers need to express more passion, more tangible emotion. Enough of vague, cautious subtleties! Instead: pure drama. Characters need to pour out their pain, love and grief– to explode out of today’s technocratic aesthetic box turning all of us into sociopathic robots. Literature needs to lead us out of that box. Out of all restrictive, constipated boxes. Then it will become once again relevant. Once again vital to the culture. To all of us.

-KW

“Super Bowl, 2025” by James Croal Jackson

NEW POETRY

we wore our best hunter-green waited patiently

as men took a different kind of field we craved

sustenance a resurrection a flight a waiting

by window in the purple light under wrong

tin roof what we tossed into sky we threw

away our wing-missiles pigskins of self

talons landing burrowing deep out of view

what craft drunk disturbance in the flapping

february frigidity that beat against our jackets

yours the bird slick knit on surface mine

a thready childhood blanket to keep no one

and nothing not the least of heat my heart 

drinks beside you as it waits for the game

to be good but it never does and always was.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. His latest chapbook is A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023). Recent poems are in ITERANT, Stirring, and The Indianapolis Review. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville, Tennessee. (jamescroaljackson.com)

They’re Going Down with the Ship!

AN ANALYSIS

(engraving by Willy Stower)

THE MOST TELLING aspect of today’s literary scene is even the most loyal servants to the status quo system are barely making it. Having to edit, and struggle to promote, their generic Substacks while paying outrageous rents in the Imperial City of New York.

Yet they refuse to leave the ship’s bridge! Rigidly adhering to their obsolete “high modern” standards though the ship of Literature lists at an ever sharper angle, waiting to slide beneath the waves, into the depths.

(image c/o matskodotcom)

“Oh Captain My Captain,” they recite. But who is the captain? Has he already left?

Is it establishment attack dog Gerald Howard, who recently proclaimed in the New York Times that literary fiction is not dead? Or has snarky Gerry already hopped into a lifeboat, wearing a dress?

Some remaining crew still believe they can make it in academia care of doctoral certificates and question-nothing mindsets. Yet Humanities positions dwindle, staffs shrink, lofty Ivy-covered towers themselves begin to sink. Who’ll be added to the growing casualty list? Do we add now the Ryan Ruby Fifty– those “golden age” critics who by following the rules were supposed to rescue the art? Will any escape?

What course to follow for other writers?

The smart ones are already in lifeboats labelled “New Ideas” and “New Styles,” rowing through raging waters toward smaller but safer ships. NOT top-heavy unwieldy overloaded vessels, but of a kind able to maneuver toward more stable-but-enticing shores: the new literary world ahead.

-K.W.

“Would You Rather” by Anne Marie DiStefano

NEW FICTION

(c/o hiltondotcom)

My career as a Seattle restaurateur has really taken off. A food magazine recently referred to me as “the grande dame of the Northwest dining scene.”

On a dark gray day, in the pouring rain, you pull up outside my flagship restaurant in a brand-new black Corvette. When you roll down the window, my employees recognize your distinguished profile and say, “It’s him! He’s back!” 

I take off my apron and hand it to my manager. I get in on the passenger side. You tell the car’s voice-activated navigation system to find the freeway on ramp, and we speed south down I-5.

We spend the first night at the Benson Hotel in Portland. The pillars in the lobby are made of Circassian oak, and the floors are marble. We reserve one of the suites, and have dinner in the steakhouse. People turn their heads when they see us together, because they know who we are.

The next morning, we find that the car has turned into a Mercedes. It’s still raining, but the sky is brighter, colors are more vivid, and everything seems less blurry. We spend the second night at the historic Ashland Springs Hotel. We taste the lithia water and eat dinner in a restaurant with a Midsummer Night’s Dream theme.

By the time we leave the Travelodge in San Francisco, our car has become a Honda hatchback, and we listen to classic rock on the radio. On the steep rise of the Grapevine, the car gradually loses speed, and it shivers every time we’re passed by the hulking, honking semi trucks. We have a friend who’s going to UCLA and she lets us crash on her dorm room floor for the night.

We cross the border into Mexico in our VW Bug. We have to stop to top off the oil, but the engine doesn’t overheat. After asking for directions several times, we finally find our way to a place at the end of a dirt road where they rent hammocks and you can sleep on the beach. That night, we hear whales breathing in the warm shallow water of the Sea of Cortez. In the morning our car is gone. We have no way to get back. We’re two sunburned kids sitting on the hot sand, playing “would you rather” and trying to figure out how we are going to pay for breakfast.

(photo c/o daltonjohnsondotcom)

Anne Marie DiStefano was, until recently, the owner of the Lucky Horseshoe Lounge in Portland, Oregon. She has owned a historic movie theater and worked as a freelance journalist and as a columnist for The Portland Tribune. She studied English literature at Reed College and Oxford University.

New Pop Lit’s Editor Appears in Frighty #3!

BIG LITERARY NEWS

IN THE BIG PUSH back to humanity and reality, Wred Fright‘s new zine Frighty is at the forefront.

IN THE AFTERMATH of the Halloween season, with smashed pumpkins and out-of-control squirrels everyplace, it’s appropriate that another issue of Frighty— #3-– appears on the scene.

Does the pumpkin on the cover foretell the fate of the established literary realm?

One thing for certain is the zine is filled with terrific writing nowhere else to be seen: new work from Markell R. West, Pat King, The Midnight Rider; articles about Morrissey and ducks in jeeps, and other cool stuff.

HERE’S Wred’s own write-up of the issue’s debut, which explains how it can be easily obtained, for free!

(In the 19th century, what were in effect zines of the day were “Beneath the American Renaissance,” in David S. Reynold’s famous phrase. Today, are they beneath American decline? Or an escape– or rescue– from it? Is another renaissance coming?)

“Trump’s New Ballroom”

NEW FICTION

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes, I know, editors aren’t supposed to run their own work on their litmags, but I do it anyway. You might say I’m the Donald Trump of this modest little literary site.)

He dreamt of a ballroom.

A big ballroom. BIG. In capitals.

An actual dream.

He’d first had the dream at age twelve. Or maybe seventeen, when he was a cadet at a military academy, sleeping in a dorm. A lonely time.

A vivid dream. The dream said, “Build the ballroom.”

But he’d had the first dream when he was twelve and his father took him to a big, beautiful hotel in Manhattan, or maybe Paris, or Zurich, and the hotel had a large ballroom. He’d seen ballrooms before, but not like this ballroom.

He’d said to himself, age twelve, looking at it, “That is one big beautiful ballroom.”

That night in the hotel he had a dream about a ballroom, not just any ballroom. HIS. Which meant it was the biggest most beautiful ballroom anyone had ever seen.

Now he was building his dream ballroom. Finally at last. The Big One. At the White House, which he now owned. Because he was the President.

Oh, he knew, everyone told him– aides he could fire with a move of his little finger– “But you don’t own it. You live in it but you don’t own it.”

But he owned it. He was the President and he owned it. And so he was changing it, to make it the most beautiful White House with the biggest most beautiful ballroom ever seen. It was why he’d become President, he realized. The motivation. To build the ballroom.

“Don’t put that pillar over there!” he yelled at a foreman in a white hard hat.

You knew who the foremen were because they wore white hard hats, not blue ones. Or yellow ones.

“Read the blueprints! Doesn’t anyone read blueprints? And don’t connect the copper wiring to the glass wiring. Do not do that. They don’t connect. You do not connect them!”

Sheesh! he said to himself.

Aides scurried around him and moved him in different directions, but they didn’t know. Only he knew. KNEW.

Which is why he was President.

Tractors roared, earth moved, wings of the White House crumbled before his eyes, concussions and visions of noise and chaos, and he loved it because he knew when it was over, the project complete– tiles gleaming and gold statues positioned everywhere and the richest, wealthiest most famous guests, trillionaires and kings– he knew, KNEW, all the effort would result and had resulted in the world’s biggest and most beautiful ballroom.

-Karl Wenclas

An Excerpt from “Of Music and Men” by Jeff Nazzaro

NEW FICTION

Crowded. I move across the car and stand in the doorway. It’s the rear of the front end of a double car. Just before the train leaves the station, a tall, thin man hurries on and thumps down into the empty aisle seat by the door across from me. He looks up at me. Then he looks again. He keeps doing it. I take my book, an Alice Munro collection, out of my bag, open it to the next story, “Free Radicals.” Then I realize I’m standing in the doorway on the side of the train on which at each stop the doors will open, so I gather up my bag and slide across the aisle to stand in the opposite doorway. Two seconds later, the man who had repeatedly looked at me jumps up out of his seat and stands right beside me. 

He stands very close to me, looking straight ahead. But whatever. It’s a free train. I take my book out, open it back up. “Free Radicals,” here we go. As I read the opening lines, the man standing next to me takes out his phone and with it plays some hip-hop at top volume. I stand there. I’ll admit I had wanted to move when the man first jumped up and stood next to me, because there seemed to be no good reason for him to have done it, but I thought it wouldn’t be polite to move. I still have those thoughts sometimes, even after years of this commute. Now I know he’s fucking with me and has been ever since he hopped on the train just before the doors closed. Is it the jacket? The tie? I don’t know. My face?

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!