What Is Populist Art?

THE MISEDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN MIND

THE STATE of education in this country has become so poor or willfully misleading that even approved literary critics don’t seem to know what’s meant by populist art.

NOTE: It’s not best-selling genre novels cranked out by giant conglomerates. Neither is it paint-by-numbers superhero movies appearing in cinema chains: mindless products also distributed by gigantic conglomerates. Real populism recognizes that authentic culture is a grass roots phenomenon. From the people upward, not imposed by some bureaucracy or other from the top down.

Twentieth Century populism was a left-of-center aesthetic, without being doctrinaire about it. Many populists were in effect liberal centrists, including John Steinbeck, Frank Capra, Carl Sandburg, William Grant Still, Aaron Copland, and many others.

An example of a populist painter who definitely was on the left– populism, in taking a big-picture view, often references politics– was Mexican artist Diego Rivera, best known for murals depicting broad swaths of society. Such as the one at the Detroit Institute of Arts. (See above image.)

What of New Pop Lit?

Our roots are in the underground writing scene. Both NPL editors are from the tough industrial town of Detroit. Populism is part of our aesthetic and our ethos– though not exclusively. However much our vibe now is more retro modern, we’re never going to abandon the “pop” part of the New Pop Lit equation. Just saying.

-KW

What’s the Face of Big Money Publishing?

FIRST IN A SERIES EXAMINING THE INSIDER LITERARY SCENE

photo c/o Bustle.com

One has gotta love this photo of high-powered literary agent Felicity Blunt, because it captures so well the remove and cluelessness of today’s Manhattan publishing scene. With the world in the process of change from every direction, it’s time to offer alternatives to established literature’s stale offerings and business-as-usual ways of doing things.

OR: Is a new counterculture possible?

Stay tuned for more images of how New York publishing has lost its edge– if it ever had any!

Another Reaction to Jon Fosse’s Nobel

A RESPONSE TO THE 2023 NOBEL LITERATURE PRIZE, FROM A NOTED AUTHOR?


Do I have a response or reaction to someone named Jon Fosse winning this year’s Nobel Prize? (Do I have a reaction of course I have a “reaction.” Public? Private?– known only to myself: “self.” But after all what is the “self.”)

Of course! I have a reaction very public not squeamish or disappointed to news of this person, nobody, obscurity– this man having won the most prestigious of literary prizes and after all I’ve won my share, garnered accolades, but does any woman ever properly obtain her “share” in this world where male privilege has been constant– constant!– has been overbearing, residue of the father figure, patriarch of the tribe (“tribe”), designated enforcer of tokens, benefits, awards including that most hungered-after of all awards. A prize. For which her mouth watered. For which no alternate compensation Princeton dons with hypocritical smiles is ever enough (“enough!”) compensation for the neglect of too-many years spent waiting for the just-due award– speech at ready– an award which never arrives. No ringing doorbell, no cable of congratulations, no telegram– do people any longer send telegrams? I must ask my students– “students”– those too-hungry animals with avaricious eyes waiting not for “A’s,” for grades, but for something deeper, more dangerous and violent, like cannibals; waiting for word from me to send them to the Big Time– fame! fortune!?– as if I could send anyone to the “big time” (well, there was Mr. Foer, callow and eager, pliable, but he had other connections), as I who await word by my phone in the morning, the important call– how many years has it been? “years”– more like decades, each passing year of months waiting, producing more words, more works, more volumes– volumes!– volumes upon volumes, entire forests hacked away to create, as evidence– does the Nobel panel need more evidence? As I sigh and think, onto the next one! The next novel, the next book of stories, the next volume. The next Nobel, next year. Maybe then.

Have I exceeded my limit? Oh dear. I commend Mr. Foster– Fosse?– for his win. Sincerely,

-Joyce Carol Oops

The Nobel Prize by Jorge Fernandez

ANOTHER RESPONSE TO JON FOSSE’S NOBEL PRIZE WIN

(c/o nobelprize.org)

What is the point of life?

To be remembered. To be recognized. Accepted. The Nobel Prize is an attempt to answer that question. Legend says that Alfred Nobel funded the prize after reading an untimely published obituary about his life. Dynamite tycoon. He didn’t want to be remembered that way.  He didn’t like that that was how others viewed him.

Today, no one knows about Alfred Nobel and where his wealth originated from. They know about the Nobel Prize, and they think good things. Nobel used to mean dynamite, now it means excellence. The pinnacle of prestige.

Jon Fosse is a great writer. A bright seal of approval has been stamped onto his name. Nobel Laureate. Lauded by his peers and just the right amount of fame to go along with it. His writing will be immortalized in books crowded into shelves. Under each title will be his name and that seal. Winner of the Nobel Prize.

If that will suffice to be remembered, God only knows. 

-Jorge E. Fernandez De Mar

“Jon Fosse’s Work”: A Poem

by Lars U. Ice Bedew

photo c/o Henrik Montgomery, TT News Agency

Influenced by the Irish playwright Beckett, in his scope,

his plays are bleak, impersonal, and minimal in hope.

From “Raut, svart” to the doppelgängers in “…Septology…”

his novel on Lars Herterveg explores psychology,

where he observes two crossing lines, one purple and one brown,

slow painted, thick, they mix and drip—not how art should be done?

Yet of the things that are most striking of Jon Fosse’s work

is that the prose and poetry are written in Nynorsk;

in short terse sentences he gave “voice to th’ unsayable”,

like a Norse Hemingway’s words, earnest and conveyable.

***

(“Lars U. Ice Bedew” is an anagram pseudonym for poet Bruce Dale Wise.)

Jon Fosse: Response by Ellsworth B. Smith

MORE REACTION TO JON FOSSE WINNING THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

I’m asked to write a response to the Nobel Prize.

To news of Jon Fosse of Norway winning the Prize. An 11 million Swedish krona-not-dollars cash prize, awarded in Sweden. Includes a speech. The prize named after someone who invented dynamite.

Should we care about a prize using funds from the man who invented dynamite? To help him ease his conscience? To save his soul from the terrors of night, though it might already be too late? That he waited too long to see the light, to set aside funds in his name for a prize? When the damage had been done?

What next: the Oppenheimer Prize?

I await the opportunity to provide comment for that one.

-Ellsworth B. Smith

Jon Fosse: Reaction by Michael Maiello

FAST RESPONSE TO JON FOSSE NAMED 2023 NOBEL PRIZE WINNER FOR LITERATURE

Jon Fosse Foto: Tom A. Kolstad

Strandebarm, Norway is home to the Fosse Foundation, a mysterious collective of fjord-dwelling scholars dedicated to the study of the novels, essays and plays of Jon Fosse, your 2023 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Fosse Foundation exists online in English only in Merve Emre’s 2022 New Yorker profile, published as Fosse’s 7-volume “novel in a single sentence” was published in English. Artists need support from readers, admirers, patrons and proselytizers. Whether the Fosse Foundation is a book club or a literati illuminati, Fosse found an audience that cares, and assembled. That’s an accomplishment. Fosse’s work is widely celebrated in Europe, so he is not as obscure as he might seem to American audiences. Still, American writers remain a mystery to the Nobellers, who have not recognized a U.S. writer since Bob Dylan in 2016 and who missed Philip Roth despite more than half a century of opportunities. There is joy, at least, in little Strandebarm, and aquavit toasts to the literary champion of the Fosse Foundation.

-Michael Maiello

ANNOUNCEMENT!

FAST POP LIT will be holding fast tryouts for writers on Thursday and Friday, October 5th and 6th.

THE TEST:  Commentary, pro or con, on the new 2023 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, or on the Prize itself.

200 words MAX. (Ten word minimum.)

Try to be provocative or striking without being obscene. (We prefer you use wit or a stiletto, not a sledgehammer.)

Any and all entries which are semi-reasonable, semi-plausible, semi-acceptable, will be posted at the Fast Pop site.

SEND TO:  newpoplit@gmail.com

Thanks!