Author: collabnovel

About Graphic Novels

–and their potential influence on literature.

Graphic novels and comic books aren’t taken seriously by literary people, even though they’re an offshoot of the novel (19th century melodrama; early 20th century pulp fiction), and are a gateway for many readers to the novel.

The basic building block for the narrative comic book is the panel. Mini-paintings or portraits, usually with words added. When they’re not, the stand-alone illustration is meant to make a point– to emphasize a key plot moment, even depict the story’s climax. The result: interconnected micro-chapters. Dialogue is used sparingly but well. The graphic novel embodies the principle of “less is more.” A single sentence or lone illustration carries meaning beyond itself. The technique works on not spelling everything out. On not having to spell everything out, a principle used first by impressionist painters, impressionist music composers like Debussy, and by 20th century modernist writers Georges Simenon and Ernest Hemingway.

“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg Address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.” -Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was heavily influenced by Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne. Like Stephen Crane, Hemingway saw literature as a visual art.

USING THE TECHNIQUE

JUST AS the comic book/graphic novel was an outgrowth of popular novels, there’s no reason why serious fiction writers can’t in turn be influenced by the graphic novel. “The graphic novel without graphics.”

Ways to do this:

1.) More striking, over-the-top characters.

2.) More dramatic plots.

3.) Short mini-or-micro chapters, to emphasize each plot moment– and to keep the narrative moving at a faster pace than traditional literature. All part of what I call multidimensional writing.

ADVANTAGES OVER GRAPHICS

What graphic novels can’t do is get inside the heads of their characters. This can be used in multidimensional writing, as in traditional fiction, without going full Henry James-Virginia Woolf “stream of consciousness.” One of the failings of contemporary writing is the trend toward alt-lit/autofiction-style solipsism, which often as not cuts out the actual world: the tragedies and happenings of now. Which is a shame, given today’s contentious chaotic happenings begging to be intelligently addressed with understanding, compassion and outrage.

One of the strengths of multidimensional fiction is the ability to present a variety of viewpoints, quickly switching between them for a rounded, three-dimensional effect.

As we’ve begun doing with some (not all) of our writing. Including the just-released novella, The Loud Boys— now available in ebook form at Amazon. Print version coming soon.

-Karl Wenclas

Open Territory

AN ANALYSIS

THE PART of the literary game up for grabs should be obvious, but it’s not: non-readers. Many millions of people who can read, could be reading, should be reading, but aren’t. The outfit which figures out first how to reach that crowd, that demographic, will own the future of the literary business.

A model to follow exists: the rock n’ roll music explosion which began in 1955 with the success of the 45 rpm single “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets– which dropped like a thunderbolt into an era of bland pop music sung by the likes of Patti Page and Perry Como.

At the forefront of the early rock movement were a handful of low-rent hustlers: Alan Freed in Cleveland; the Chess brothers and Chess Records in Chicago; Sam Phillips and Sun Records in Memphis; and soon enough, Berry Gordy Jr. and Motown Records in Detroit. Within a few years, they and other indie labels took half the record industry’s market share away from the monopolistic “Big Four”– and sent the cultural world into shock.

Over the next fifteen years the record industry multiplied several times over– due largely to new listeners. Popular music became the indispensable art, a part of most people’s everyday life– even part of their being, instead of existing as a distant icon on a pedestal, to be observed from afar and admired.

A key stat: in the mid-1950’s the jazz and classical music genres, sustained by the “close-listening” crowd, each held about 20% of the record market. By the time the musical revolution was over, their shares hovered closer to 1% each. They held their fan bases– but played no role in grabbing new audiences. The difference between a static and dynamic art.

THE LESSON?

The lesson is that cultural opportunity is always out there, but you need to be willing to grab it. To open the door to the new and exciting– or bust open a door if one isn’t there. Opportunity is greater with an art that’s long remained static, as in the literary field.

At New Pop Lit we’ve worked intensively at developing new models which potentially can wake up the non-reading public. That enormous untapped market. Our latest experiment is a novella which combines pop, noir, adventure, satire, topical politics and a comic book vibe: The Loud Boys. Ebook soon available at Amazon, with a print version to follow.

TWO QUESTIONS

1.) Are our literary experiments worth the attempt?

Absolutely. The upside is enormous.

2.) Am I pandering to the audience by writing “pop” style fiction?

I’m not pandering. I am that audience. I was an enthusiastic reader long before I thought about being a writer.

-Karl Wenclas

“Expectation” by Corey Mesler

NEW CHRISTMAS POETRY

The Christmas I got Abbey Road
I also got my first typewriter.
I knew then only that something
was supposed to happen. I sat
near the fire all day.

COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Lunch Ticket, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 45 books of fiction and poetry.  With his wife he owns Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis. 

“Free Pie” by Eli S. Evans

FLASH FICTION

(image c/o dixiecrystalsdotcom)

The red painted sign staked into the grass beside the stoplight just off the highway exit said “PIE SALE,” and the rich man followed it in the direction indicated until he came upon a long table stacked with pies set up in front of a modest little slab ranch. Behind it, a woman wearing a house dress sat holding a small metal cash box.

“I’d like to buy a pie,” the rich man said, approaching the table, “but I don’t have any money.”

“Sorry,” said the woman. “No free pie.”

“Funny,” replied the rich man. “That’s the same thing your mom said to me last night when I picked her up under the Ninth Street bridge.”

“My mother’s dead, you pig!” gasped the woman, and without further ado clobbered the man right in the face with a pie.

“Yum, yum,” he said. “Free pie.”

And now we know how that man got so rich.

***

Eli S. Evans publishes his absurdist bits and bobs all about the internet. In addition, two books of small stories, Obscure & Irregular and Various Stories About Specific Individuals in Particular Situations, have been published by Moon Rabbit Books & Ephemera. Buy one! Buy both!

An Excerpt from “The Meteorologist” by Olaf Kroneman

NEW FICTION

One of the pleasures of being a family physician was watching people grow and develop. I tried to help them along the way from cradle to adulthood and the grave. They have given much back to me. I have learned from them. I got meaning.

I learned that people with autism sometimes are blessed with special gifts. They used uncharted areas of the brain to amaze and fascinate.

Sarah taught me about the weather. She focused on the highs and lows of the day. She could predict it. I was not sure how she did it. I suspect it had something to do with her innate sensitivity to circadian rhythms, bariatric pressure, or the phases of the moon or something, but her predictions were so accurate that the local weatherperson would call her to confirm and compare notes before going on TV with a forecast.

Her reputation spread until all three local networks consulted with Sarah before going on air.

Sarah would put her hands on the window and, through touch, would divine temperature and humidity. She was correct. I tried to do it. I was always wrong. I functioned poorly in her world.

COMING SOON TO NEW POP LIT!

The Prisoners of Dwight MacDonald

A RANT

(photo of chateau d’if prison c/o travelfrance)

We’re imprisoned by our own attitudes.

We’re held back by the preconceptions, prejudices, and stereotypes with which we address the world. They become invisible jail bars around our minds. We construct a fortress around our accepted ideas– stone walls that an army couldn’t break through.

One sees this in every aspect of life– including in the literary realm. Writers and critics cling to rules laid down sixty-four years ago by a handful of intellectual pundits, most notably Dwight MacDonald in his 1960 Partisan Review essay, “Masscult and Midcult.”(An earlier essay by Clement Greenberg in the same publication, edited by Dwight MacDonald, set the tone.)

UNBREAKABLE RULES:

No Kitsch! Whatever kitsch is. Anything which might entertain the public.

Beware the Public! No masscult, midcult, on the edges or in-between.

Allowed: Completely inscrutable, alienating, pretentious and goofy examples of upper-class overeducated posturing known as the avant-garde.

Whither the fate of the prisoners of Dwight MacDonald?

They sit cautiously in their antiseptic modernist-designed offices and rooms. No art adorns the walls– only a single beige baize stripe (the walls themselves are gray) in the style of Barnett Newman, and a distorted portrait of a sparrow, meant to symbolize one of their captured-behind-glass idols, Proust.

The prisoners wait for: something. Not commutation of their sentences. They love their sentences– both kinds. They sit carefully at cold metal tables writing sentences on laptops, well-written one-direction sentences– always very well written, carefully screened: they rigidly police this– more and more sentences, always more of them, long ones, jammed impressively together in ever-longer paragraphs on more and more pages– Infinite Graphomania– and the sentences are acceptable if they’re intellectual, not passionate or emotional; not too much plot or excitement; no outbursts or melodrama– that would be kitsch– the sentences are permissible, approved, allowable, laudable just as long as they don’t engage the stray incautious reader in any way.

-Karl Wenclas

(These thoughts to appear someday in a planned book on the technocracy.)

Gamblers In Life and Art

THE ELON MUSK SYSTEM

CASINO CAPITALISM

I’ve followed Elon Musk‘s career for more than six years, have read at least five books about him and his companies. I’ve also known a few big-time gamblers and investors, have done some gambling and investing myself, some time ago. The mindset– the strategy– behind Musk’s success is easy to spot: an extreme example of the tech bros mantra, “Move fast and break things.” The idea being to jump ahead of the crowd by thinking farther out, whether hyping rocket ships to Mars, electric vehicles, or cars that drive themselves.

An example of this is Elon’s approach to competition in the AI realm: move faster, build bigger, as outlined in this article.

Elon Musk is the consummate gambler, engaging in huge bet after huge bet– and to date, getting away with it, because of the hype and risk involved; his companies valued in the markets far higher than they’re actually worth, based solely on their future prospects. He has millions of true believers, and keeps adding more of them.

(Donald Trump, by contrast is following a different strategy: Chaos Theory, as exemplified in the January 6th, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Encourage or spark a chaotic situation then sit back and hope to profit by it.)

For Elon Musk, his approach is a reflection of his personality and whatever substances he’s using or abusing. Others throughout history have had similar personalities. For instance, George Armstrong Custer, who built a reputation during the Civil War due to his fearless cavalry charges; his eagerness to attack. It was the only way he knew how to fight: ride fast and hard and watch your opponents fall before you. He used the same tactic at the Little Big Horn in Montana in 1876. On this occasion the “Move fast and break things” plan didn’t work.

There’ve been others. Napoleon, for the most part, who eventually met his, er, Waterloo. Or that particular German dictator over a hundred years later, who like Custer took on more opponents than he could possibly handle.

Will the same thing happen to Musk?

It seems to me that even the luckiest, loudest gambler, winning gamble after gamble, bet after bet, accumulating an enormous pile of poker chips– in Elon’s case, becoming the richest man on the planet– eventually runs out of luck.

VISIONS

INITIATING CHANGE is what we’re attempting to do with the New Pop Lit project, with new ideas of multidimensional thinking and writing. Or: like the tech guys, we have a vision, but it encompasses more than Mars colonies or electronic brain implants.

Our vision consists of a more grounded world, smaller scale and less stressful, less sinister, more humane, led by an explosion of better literature and art– of new human creativity.

-Karl Wenclas

An Excerpt from “What Does It Cost to Be Civil?” by Tom Ray

NEW FICTION

As they started out of the driveway for their regular morning walk Albert said, “That looks like the car that followed us yesterday.” It was parked up the street in the direction they headed. Elaine slowed her pace.

“Come on, keep going,” he said, taking his phone from his pocket.

As they got closer Albert could make out a man behind the wheel, although the tinted windshield kept him from getting a good look. When he raised his phone to take a picture the car drove off. 

Elaine said, “What does he want?”

“I don’t know. Don’t worry about it. If we need to, we can run him down from his license plate number.”

A few days later as they lunched on the patio of a restaurant, Albert saw the blue Malibu circling the parking lot. 

“There’s that son of a bitch who’s been following us.”

COMING SOON TO NEW POP LIT!

An Excerpt from “An Overcoat” by Tony Covatta

NEW FICTION ALERT

The dinner went well enough. The jokes were good. The wines delicious. Gino sprang for the check, to the gracious thanks of Bentley and Wayne. They had outstayed the rest of the clientele. Most of the waitstaff had disappeared. The party rose unsteadily from their table and searched for the alcove where their overcoats were hung hours earlier. Gino quickly counted five dark-grey and black coats but saw nothing butterscotch brown. Bentley’s coat was missing. The sole remaining waiter, young and inexperienced, offered only feeble excuses. Bentley’s satisfied air disappeared, his brow darkened. Gino, doing his best to lighten the mood and save the situation, told him he would look into the matter. “I’ll take care of it.”

Next morning, his car parked in the firm’s lot, seated at his shiny wood and steel firm desk, drinking firm coffee, munching a firm bagel, Gino’s calls to the Firehouse’s floor captain, manager and owner yielded no trace of camelhair or overcoat. Determined Gino was discouraged but not defeated, when Trey Headley stuck his bald pate in his office door: “Gino, we’ve got an angry architect on our hands. He says you and your friends encouraged him to leave his overcoat in an unlocked closet at that ginmill you went to, and it was stolen. He’s not happy.”

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!