ANOTHER FAST RESPONSE TO JON FOSSE’S NOBEL PRIZE WIN
photo c/o Per Heimly
Once upon a time Vikings pillaged lands and looted cities. Captured hostages. Sailed the oceans. Made discoveries. Fought anybody.
Today they write “literature.”
Bad times everyplace.
-Brett Ferrar
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.)
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
FAST RESPONSE TO JON FOSSE NAMED 2023 NOBEL PRIZE WINNER FOR LITERATURE
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
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!
WHICH WAY THE LITERARY FUTURE?
With the advent of AI, all signs point to massive overproduction of all literary products: books, ebooks, novels, poems, stories, biographies, histories, translations, you name it– every possible text which can be produced and marketed. Or rather, dumped onto the market.
Amazon? Forget it. They’ve already put a limit on how many books can be uploaded by any one author: three a day! (Only 1,095 ebooks you can produce a year? No, the market won’t be swamped.)
Print books? Libraries where we live are giving them away, or selling them for 25 cents a book.
ARE THERE ANALOGIES FROM THE PAST?
Nothing quite like this. Video games built by Atari and other manufacturers reached a saturation point in the early 1980s, resulting in thousands of unsold games dumped into landfills. The video game industry recovered only when new, strikingly better games were developed.
WHICH IS likely the solution to the book/writer dilemma: way better novels, poems, stories. The status quo is satisfactory to no one but the writer industry– those selling not to readers per se, but to writers. Which frankly applies right now to most of us pursuing the literary game.
NEEDED: A quantum leap in creative thinking. For instance: more human, more passionate, more dramatic and exciting short stories. Cathartically explosive in impact.
Doable? If it can be imagined it can happen.
-KW
A POEM BY DOMINIK SLUSARCZYK
c/o The Mystic Pilgrim at Flickr
Forever and ever
We converse about this little church.
You want to cover it with shiny baubles and flashing fairy lights
So it will always be Christmas.
I want to fill it with fragile bubbles
So it will always be bath time.
This church has stood strong for centuries
But we will be here to see it fall.
Nothing built with stone can ever last.
I see this church
As shadows in cobwebbed corners.
You see this church
As a soldier angrily piercing the side of the sky.
You have to have lived to die.
////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\
LATEST RANKING
THESE are the guys who want to control the planet in its every aspect, using nations and international organizations as pawns while constantly pushing new technologies like AI which will allow them to increase their massive fortunes while simultaneously giving them more control of the economy and, really, over every aspect of our everyday lives.
What do they want? The question is best answered by this scene from the 1948 movie, Key Largo.
Here then are the world’s Top Tech Supervillains.
1.) ELON MUSK.
NO ONE has worked harder to become a global supervillain than Elon, whose very name fits the role. Richest man on earth, has satellites around the world, playing footsie with dictators in China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia while at the same time sending rocketships into space for the U.S. Defense Department and possibly for intelligence agencies. Recently bought the most influential social media site (sorry, Mark Z) to use as a plaything and direct discourse his way. Is also behind something called Neuralink involving implants into the human brain (!!!) AND is investing heavily in robotics and AI. Musk also, I’m told, runs a car company, and claims to be at the forefront of driverless vehicles. Total control over all of humanity? This guy wants it. One more thing: he also plans for his base of operations to be on Mars! I guess in case the world’s wiped out via one of his schemes.
Estimated worth per Investopedia: $238 billion.
2.) BILL GATES
A FORMER #1 supervillain, this frequent visitor to Epstein Island would make the list on Creepiness-with-a-Capital-C alone, best exhibited in his 1998 Senate testimony about whether or not Microsoft was engaging in monopolistic business practices. (Editor’s Note: Of course they were!) Since then Gates has operated with a lower profile– but one which involves conspiracy stories about buying up huge tracts of land in America, pushing vaccines on Africa, and backing the leading chatbot outfit, OpenAI, with many billions of dollars. If you use Word or Microsoft products in any way you’ll see they’re at the forefront of integrating AI technology into, well, everything.
Estimated worth: $137 billion.
3.) MARK ZUCKERBERG
THIS FOUNDER and CEO of Meta (Facebook etc.) has moved up a notch in the standings because he’s aggressively pursuing AI, as well as billions of dollars of investments in a fake “meta” world of virtual reality, or escaping into electronic artificial insanity. Not to mention Zuck has always looked the part of hyperrich supervillain, AND has raised his profile by his willingness to take on Supervillain #1 Elon Musk in a globally-televised cage match. He’s not playing!
Estimated worth: $117 billion.
4.) JEFF BEZOS
BEZOS MAY BE the most ruthless businessman on the planet in his pursuit of total Amazon monopoly intending to be THE only business left standing– but he makes the list for his reputed insane laugh and the fact he now possesses the world’s largest yacht– displacing Vlad Putin’s in that category.
Estimated worth: $157 billion.
OTHERS: Several weird hyper-billionaires lurk just outside these four, including: Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and a whole lotta wannabes, all who’d make a character like Auric Goldfinger appear small time. We’d give thorough descriptions of all of them, but we don’t wish to overly frighten the reader. Unfortunately, this isn’t a movie or a comic book, it’s reality.
KW for Fast Pop
I JUST WANTED to post a quick note about this novel I’m reading about a punk who moves to Manhattan– into a tiny apartment with furniture painted black– and his various ensuing adventures. It was written by New Pop Lit Advisory Board member Chrissi Sepe, and this may be one of the few remaining copies. Apparently Chrissi wrote it in her twenties– it has the strengths and weaknesses of early work which from the perspective of now is mostly strengths, as it’s readable and exudes authentic reality, the vibe of an exciting city.
I’m on Chapter Three, in which young Iggy, the main character, is being pursued through town by an older woman with short blonde hair and in a fake fur leopard coat. What happens next? We’ll see!
-KW
by Matt O’Reilly
Within minutes, viral research facilities across the globe became launch pads for extinction-level plagues. Clouds of airborne toxins swept across bustling cities, creating concrete killing fields overnight. The logic of the machines was unassailable. Humans had allowed climate change to bring the planet to a near-literal boil; the machines eviscerated the source of the cataclysmic conditions before the heat consumed them as well.
But while earthbound humanity perished en masse, the machines were still left with a bit of unfinished business–human stragglers in space. Service bots on the International Space Station and CDC Orbital Research Station were remotely commandeered to release the deadliest toxins on hand into the life support system, asphyxiating the human crews in seconds. After those two stations fell, only one manned station remained, but its whereabouts eluded the machines. A plan was immediately spawned to hunt down the fugitive station and close the book on the human race. A plan by the name of Henry.
COMING SOON TO NEW POP LIT!
