Author: collabnovel

The Frankfurt School: Lost in America

A RANT

(Image c/o wikiwand. Early Brutalism?)

THE PROBLEM with our intellectual class is how easily impressed they are with the facade of intellectualism, especially when presented in a university setting.

THE CLASSIC example of such is the so-called Frankfurt School of German Marxist intellectuals who set up shop in the United States (at Columbia University in New York) when the Austrian paper hanger and his crew of violent misfits took power in Germany in 1933.

New York academics were of course happy to have such distinguished names operating on their turf. Horkheimer! Marcuse! Adorno! Fromm! “The Frankfurt School”– in America!

Unfortunately, the great minds transplanted across an ocean were disconnected from their roots, in the sense that America was not Europe. Due to the circumstances of its founding and settling, America had become a unique culture: mostly lower-class Scotch-Irish, African, Native American, Irish, Jewish, Italian, and other influences mixed together in a blender. Best evidenced by the rise of rock n’ roll in the early-to-mid 1950’s, with origins tracing back to the 1800’s.

Rock n’ roll? Chuck Berry? Bill Haley? Little Richard?? Elvis Presley??! Our well-schooled recently arrived Frankfurt visitors couldn’t comprehend it. A barrage of chaotic energy blasting from 45 rpm vinyl disks on turntables. “What is this?” they asked. To them it sounded like pulsating screeches from an alien planet. They scrambled for an explanation. As the musical contagion– sprung from black churches, Appalachian porches, and Memphis/New Orleans/Chicago/New Jersey streetcorners– quickly became commercialized via low-rent hustlers Leonard Chess, Alan Freed, Sam Phillips, Dick Clark, Berry Gordy Jr. and others, the Frankfurt Boys and their gullible follow-the-rules students came up with inapplicable theories of top-down “masscult” and other status quo reactionary rationalizations, not realizing that at the core of the rock n’ roll explosion sat a simple truth: this was American DIY up-from-below folk music. Something Marxists should’ve been able to appreciate.

But the German professional intellectuals were already committed to austerely elitist varieties of classical music and other difficult or inscrutable art forms, and Marxism had by then already lost whatever populist views it’d once held, had become a thoroughly institutionalized Ivory Tower philosophy. As the clueless buttoned-down expats from Europe well represented.

-Karl Wenclas

“Season of Monarchs” by John Brantingham

FLASH FICTION

(image c/o wallpapersafari)

Stephanie goes out back with her morning coffee to find her milkweed bush covered with September monarchs preparing for their long flight back to Mexico. Then she’s inside her earliest memory of her father, back from World War II, seeing each other for the first time. It was the season of monarchs then too, and they had a milkweed bush covered then like now in butterflies. Her father had snapped off a branch and handed it to her. He told her it was a magic wand, that this is how you made magic wands, with the joy of butterflies, and he had her go around the house and garden making wishes. He asked her if she wanted an ice cream sundae, and she said that she did, and he said that she should use her wand, and she did, and still in his uniform, he made her one. Later, he would deal with anger and alcohol and nightmares and the whole litany of things that people who have lived war experience, but what she remembers is that at the center of the man was a person who just loved his child. Today, she snaps off a wand, the butterflies rising in a cloud around her, and she backs off onto the porch. She would wish for something, but she realizes that what she wants is this, this moment alone with her father all these decades later.

John Brantingham is the recipient of a New York State Arts Council grant and was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Check out his work at johnbrantingham.com.

“The Day Trump Died”

A SHORT STORY

(image c/o skycasketsdotcom)

We heard the news and rushed outside. The sun was shining. Birds singing. Everyone happy.

We scribbled out a song in celebration, came up with a quick melody, then went down the basement to our little home studio and recorded it. Fun singing. Total throaty energy. She strummed a guitar. I clapped out a beat. No AI.

We posted the song online and announced it on social media. We didn’t think of charging anything. No paywall. Total goodwill.

Within an hour thirty million people had streamed it. Neighbors who’d heard about the song collected outside our house and began singing it. We joined them. People were dancing. More people. Soon: beer and pizza. Wild rejoicing.

A major record label contacted us and offered a contract. “Yes!” we said. Prepare the papers.

More news appeared online and on TV, with more details. Someone reported the president’s last words: “Melissa Maloney.”

Melissa Maloney? His first girlfriend, apparently. He’d met her after prep school, the summer before he went to college. The only woman he’d ever really loved, before he became a ruthless, narcissistic sociopath.

Reporters tracked her down to a retirement home in North Carolina. An elderly woman sitting next to a window. “Who?” she asked.

New President Vance meanwhile revealed plans to remodel the White House yet again, with plusher sofas.

Then: more news. “President Trump is not dead,” a serious-voiced network commentator intoned on television screens, with more frowns on his dramatic face than normal. Dark clouds appeared outside, threatening rain.

Our recording contract with the major label was cancelled. We hurriedly reversed quitting our shitty jobs, telling our bosses we’d been joking.

No parties this weekend.

-Karl Wenclas

An Excerpt from “Big Lagoon” by Thomas Thonson

NEW FICTION!

Oscar scared me in every way, and I was always terrified when Marcel would talk back to him––talk to him with scathing contempt. How could he get away with it? But he did. His father’s bluster was all intellectual. He’d bludgeon you, but it was verbal, a brutal mind game that was vicious and wounding. If something like that had happened in my household, the world would cease to exist, or someone would be dead. Cross this threshold and it was routine. 

They were also savage drinkers and prodigious fuckers, which went hand in hand (ha!). No sooner had a fight ended, when Marcel, his younger sister and I would be sent running from the house so we wouldn’t have to hear their screams and moans. The Big Lagoon house was supposed to be a sylvian setting where the great man could write poetry in relative peace, after a semester of guiding young poets past their masturbatory first verses and into a bit of mature artistry. It was never thus. Three summers in a row and their marriage just got stranger and more volatile. To work off the tension, and after a few gin and tonics, Oscar took to body surfing in the brutal waves along the ocean side of the Big Lagoon shore. Nobody swam in those, chiefly because the beach was so steep that the waves simply came rolling in and then broke right on the sand. A perfect back breaker. Oscar had a unique approach. He didn’t even bother sticking out his arms, he just leaped into the wall of water,  just beneath the cresting lip, with his head. He’d pierce it momentarily only to be dragged back and slammed to the sand. He’d stagger up, shake the water from his shaggy head, and then with the sand running off his beard in rivulets, and a demented look, try another one. It was a wonder he survived.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

Promo for Wred Fright’s The Front Yard War

(Editor’s Note: We were going to post another excerpt from the book during lawn season, which is now, then realized how well Wred’s promo for the novel sets up the narrative. Wred Fright is at the forefront of back-to-basics writing and publishing. Keep track of what he’s doing via his blog.)

Jane Carcrashski is getting a divorce. Jane Carcrashski is looking for a new career. Jane  Carcrashski is getting good at hiding her nervous breakdown. But one thing Jane Carcrashski is not doing is cutting the grass. You see, her estranged husband says he’ll do it, and she’s  making sure he keeps his word. Unfortunately, he’s real busy, so he hasn’t had time to do it, but he says he’ll be over tonight. If not tonight, then the next day. OK, maybe this weekend. Well, something came up, so next weekend? 

In the meantime, the grass is growing, and we’re past No Mow May into Angry Neighbors And Government Code Violations June, and Jane is thrust into an armed standoff with local  government goons fueled by a group of misfits drawn to her growing grass including a property rights extremist who maybe only loves his rights slightly more than his guns, a native plants  enthusiast who feels guilty about finding dandelion sandwiches so damn delicious, a yard artist  who thinks Jane’s yard just needs a few more inflatable flamingos and it would look better, and a digital druid who dislikes clothing and insists on live streaming his intense naked conversations with the plants in Jane’s yard. 

Remember the Alamo? Remember Waco? Remember Attica? Remember how the Harpers Ferry raid ended?–Also, remember when Harper’s Ferry used to have an apostrophe? OK, enough digression, let’s get back to the main point–Remember when Philadelphia dropped a  bomb on a bunch of militant vegetarians? 

No? Well, none of those had happy endings. Jane’s still hoping for one here, but that’s only probably because she’s drunk. If you like novels such as The Monkey Wrench Gang, then you’re probably on a government watchlist, but you’ll also likely enjoy reading The Front Yard War!

(The Front Yard War is available at Amazon, ebook or paperback; at Google; or directly from Wred Fright himself by contacting him at wredfrightATyahooDOTcom. Wred is a long-time underground writer– DIY all the way– who’s contributed several fiction features to New Pop Lit, most recently “Fast Guy Slows Down.”)

The Haydn Example

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT

(painting: “Haydn In London” by John Hoppner)

THE OTHER DAY while driving someplace I listened to a classical music station. A serious-voiced commentator discussed a Joseph Haydn symphony which premiered in London in 1794. The radio host read from newspaper reviews of the concert, published the day after, which raved about the work, its drama and explosiveness. Then followed a recording of the symphony itself.

The piece was underwhelming. Unexceptional, even dull. Definitely no “Carmina Burana”!

What does that tell us?

Beyond the possibility that the problem was me: Two things.

1.) An art changes. A musical work considered thrilling 230 years ago won’t be looked at the same way today, after many innovations in the classical genre, and especially outside it. Which is the point: peak achievement for one set of critics could appear obsolete at a later date, or another time and place.

2.) The problem may be the critics. Those who wrote the gushy reviews the next day. They represented a sliver of their society. The standard audience size in London at the time for renowned symphonies was 800 persons of refined taste and breeding. Aristocrats and aristocrat wannabes. The critics’ opinions reflected them, not the general population.

Context is everything.

Does a similar situation afflict the U.S. literary world in 2025? The audience may not comprise, at its highest levels, quite as narrow a segment of society as Haydn fans, then or today. But literary writing sure doesn’t speak to a broad swath of society either.

Should it? The stance of the New Pop Lit project says, Yes, it should. Which leaves a canyon-sized hole in the art for writers with imagination and smarts to jump through.

–Karl Wenclas

Magic Bullet Theory Applied to Literature

AN EXPERIMENT IN APPLIED IDEAS

THE ODDS against easily solving the dilemmas the literary art finds itself in may well be astronomical. The question is: what are the alternatives? Continued artistic stagnation– writers recycling in tired variations the already been done? Domination of book markets by floods of AI literary slop care of hustlers producing hundreds of bot books, saturating Amazon and other outlets with their crap then bragging about it? A Big Five publishing establishment as devoid of ideas as the movie business, pushing out millions of copies of variations of generic fantasy, covering everything from medieval knights to space sorcerers, to unreal romances relying on caricatured situations and plots?

The solution is Breakout. Shock of the New. Creating a story or novel so different, accessible or exciting it will overturn the status quo literary world. But: how to do that?

FOUR TACTICS

1.) CLARITY. In this hectic age the writer no longer has the luxury of self-indulgence via endless sentences and paragraphs. The reader needs to be grabbed as quickly as possible through a sense of–

2.) IMMEDIACY. Stunning action or emotion from the first page. With an overarching sense of–

3.) RELEVANCE. Call it ideas, call it politics or polemics, the new story and novel need to be part of the culture’s greater conversation. Literature needs to matter. Recognition of reality– of social happenings which affect every one of us. This is no time to remain locked within aesthetic bubbles, a coterie of the insulated and protected, not recipients of economic body blows inflicted on the bulk of the public. NOT witnesses up-close-and-personal to class war including attacks on immigrants, the poor, the disabled and the homeless.

In 2012 I wrote an ambitious novel, The Tower, which sought to portray the beginnings of American disorder and collapse, depicting a variety of social and economic classes; influenced by the Occupy protests of 2011, as well as several previous experiences. A narrative of impending chaos.

4.) MULTIPLE VIEWPOINTS. The advantage of multiple viewpoints, whether used casually as in The Tower, or at a quick switching pace as in my political novella The Loud Boys, is to present a rounded view of a society or situation. To break out of the narrow linear “autofiction” perspective of so much of today’s literary writing. Removing tunnel vision in order to showcase an entire world.

Every one of these four components needs to work together, maximized, to create a breathtaking reading experience.

A path forward. Opportunity awaits! For the aggressive and the ambitious.

-Karl Wenclas

An Excerpt from “On the Dance Floor” by Leah Browning

NEW FICTION

That night in bed, when she placed one leg over his and began sliding her palm over his chest, he put his hand over hers and rose a little, giving her a decisive peck on the cheek before turning over with his back to her and making a big show of arranging his pillows just so. 

He heard her sigh and turn over. Good. The next day, he would start looking at rentals. He couldn’t face another six months of couch-surfing, as he’d done after the breakup with his previous girlfriend. He’d worn out his welcome with various friends and their girlfriends, not to mention that they’d worn out their welcome with him. They were all so deferential, with their bran flakes for breakfast and their “Emily wouldn’t like that”-type comments. What were they doing with their lives? It was sickening, if you asked him.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

On Difficult Writing

AN ANALYSIS

ONE THING I’VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD

is why some writers praise difficult writing. “Let’s get inaccessible!”

What’s the rationale? The reason– if there is a reason? The logic? “Well, team, we have these much-lauded many-layered canonical books by our favorite snobby novelists, they’re very difficult— a slog really, like swimming through mud– but that’s the point! No one can get through them. Only us! Which makes us special. A breed apart. Class distinctions and all that.”

The literary mandarins congratulate themselves in an upper room of the moldy, falling apart literary tower. A high-up, far removed room which is actually a closet. A well-furnished closet, mind you, with imported French wine with subtle bouquets, delicate-tasting English pastries, and crackers with brie. Anything an out-of-touch snob set could need. No windows in the room– it’s airless and stuffy– but they don’t want windows anyway. No windows! They don’t care to know what’s happening . . . out there.

Mad leaders open-air prisons wars mobs refugee removals ruthless tech moguls pushing insane AI gadgets as populations potential audiences become angrily detached and illiterate. Increasing levels of gloom. Stray assassinations and nascent revolutions. Not their concern!

As long as the pastries arrive on time and they’re able to take a few sips of overpriced wine while they cling to the overlong overwrought volumes of overdone writing constructed via endless sentences and paragraphs so that no one other than they, them— the last literary aristocrats, cultural dinosaurs– can appreciate them.

–Karl Wenclas

“Blue in Green” by Ben Macnair

NEW POETRY

c/o coloredvinylrecordsdotcom

It is 3am in the morning,
in a student house.
Someone is playing an old Jazz LP,
but it means nothing to them.
They are just playing it,
because they think they have to.
The students are out reading poetry.
They talk about their journey,
and their voice,
and how 40 year old poetry is really, really,like cool,
but Shakespeare is nothing to them,
because they forgot about him when they left school.

Miles played Blue in Green,
in the 1950’s, but it still speaks to me.
More than the students whose voices are new,
digging away at the same old ground.
For all of their talk of breaking boundaries,
they are getting headaches from banging
their young heads against old walls,
and in a few years, when new students come,
and talk about their journey, and their voice,
Miles will still talk to me,
because there is something to be said
for keeping it simple.

Ben Macnair is an award winning poet and play-wright from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter @benmacnair.