WHERE WE’RE GOING

WHY have we been emphasizing at New Pop Lit— at the center of our plan– creating an all-new kind of short story?

This has been the project’s focus from the beginning, based on a recognition that once, briefly, from 1900 into the 1930’s, the short story was the popular American art form, epitomized first by O. Henry’s work, then by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, among others regularly writing pop short stories for Saturday Evening Post (peak weekly readership of six million) and other large-circulation publications. At the depth of the Great Depression, Fitzgerald was earning the equivalent of one million dollars per year, almost completely from his fun and/or romantic short stories. (His peak Post fee of $4,000 per story in 1929, before the stock market crash, would be like being paid $76,000 per story today.)

ANOTHER historical example we focus on is the explosive popularity of rock n’ roll 45 rpm singles– generally two to three minutes in length– from 1955 to 1970. A colorful pop vibe captured in this museum exhibit in Liverpool, UK:

The motivating idea:

EXCITEMENT!

A sense of excitement within the artwork, but also excitement created about the art form.

The short story is the ideal literary form with which to make this happen. But the form first needs to be taken to another level– and the way it’s promoted needs to be taken to another level.

-Karl Wenclas