new litmags

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “May Day”

RELEVANT FICTION

“A day late and a dollar short” as the old expression– possibly dating to Fitzgerald’s time– says.

TWO occurrences motivated this post, both involving New Pop Lit‘s Contributing Editor Kathleen M. Crane.

First was her inability to find F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Night at any local library. A few libraries, we discovered, don’t carry any of Fitzgerald’s books. Second, Kathleen recently was at a physical therapist’s for a lingering knee injury. In talking to a young employee, Kathleen mentioned that we hoped to soon make an excursion up to northern Michigan’s Hemingway Country, staying at a hotel where he once lived and frequenting his hangouts. The therapist looked perplexed, had never heard of him.

Hemingway and Fitzgerald: the one-time glamor boys of American literature. Literary rock stars. Throughout our time growing up and discovering ourselves as writers in the latter decades of the Twentieth Century, for Kathleen and I, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were the two larger-than-life figures of the art, combining charismatic personalities and compelling biographies with sparkling literary talent and an involvement in the greater world. Models for what American writers should be doing now.

An example of Fitzgerald’s involvement in the world was his 1920 novella, May Day— a multiple-viewpoint depiction of long-forgotten events on May 1, 1919, when anarchist demonstrations and riots, spear-headed by World War I army veterans, took place in cities across America. Fitzgerald ably weaves glimpses of the New York City riots with more personal stories– in his uniquely romantic literary prose style. The result? A multi-dimensional reading experience combining the “literary” with pop sensibility and a topical, here-and-now story. History-come-alive. Innovation, relevance, and style.

WHY can’t we produce this kind of work in 2025?

Karl Wenclas for New Pop Lit

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

“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 “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!

“There Where the Weather” by Christopher Landrum

NEW POETRY

(photo c/o ancientpages.com)

The pages of sages

Down through the ages

Are plucked ripe with luck and Logos by mages

Who then hand unfair fistfuls of gifts to readers most unusually unsquare,

Containing uncanny answers for listening listeners who dare:

Answers dressed in pinstriped ribbons and gild-paper wrapping

That (once ripped open) tap into a kind of magical (but muddled) time travel

Full of hap, riddles, and knots to unravel

By those lost in the love of farming

Fresh vines grown from wild languages

Amid all uncertainties, tangles, and anguishes,

Farmed there where the weather marks the least of all changes.

Christopher Landrum’s story “The Age of Insomnia” was featured at our main site. He lives in Austin, Texas and writes about what he reads at Bookbread.com.

“unprocessed thoughts” by Bach Le

NEW POETRY

photo c/o dogsaddict

why is that dog biting its owner is it the chains and ropes that pull the shepherd to a suicidal thought or is it the man that harasses his friend to test if he can manipulate the docility of an animal but look the blood is pouring out like droplets of watercolor paints that used to impregnate my xs-sized tee and now it’s there but only darker and sadder i would laugh my stomach out when red pours out because it’s a dumb mistake but now why is the dog so unhesitant and merciless towards its owner the old man that walks it everyday cares for it baths it in the pouring rain despite his asthma and gives it a little bow in its chest is it tamed is it a disguised wolf why is it now lying on the floor growling rolling screaming and the man is running with crimson traces in his route and something in his hand like a folded story he wants no one to know about?

Bach Le is currently living and studying in Hanoi, Vietnam. His poems have previously been in Synchronized Chaos, Haikuniverse, and more. Through poetry, Bach hopes to give voice to different issues in society, as well as showing his attitudes towards life with its various dimensions.



An Excerpt from “The Memorial” by Brent King

NEW FICTION ALERT

He came because he had a “lump” at the injection site. I finally got him to pull his pants down, after I offered the usual bribe, turkey sandwich and a fruit cup, and I saw it immediately, an arterial pseudoaneurysm as big and red as a fresh plum. He missed the vein and damaged the wall of the artery. I touched it as gently as I could, and felt the blood pulsing through my gloves before he shoved my hand away.

“That fuckin’ hurts, man.”

“Look, Tim,” I said, hoping to scare him just enough to make him take it seriously, “you’ve got a weak spot in the wall of your femoral artery. It could rupture at any moment. If it does you’ll bleed out in a few minutes. I need to get an ultrasound of it and get the vascular surgeons to see you. I think you’re going to need an operation.”

“Just give me something for the fuckin’ pain,” he said, “and I want another san-which.”

I knew I couldn’t give Tim a sandwich. The surgeons were going to be mad enough about the first one, but I knew him well enough to know it wasn’t the time to explain or argue. That could wait until we figured out what to do. But Tim had a new nurse that day, and she didn’t know him, hadn’t learned how to redirect him when he started making demands. So, when he asked for ginger ale and she told him, in a matter-of-fact way, that we didn’t have any, he said “Fuck you, bitch.” He tore off his hospital gown and threw it at her. Then he stormed out of the ER, cursing us all the way to the door.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

An Excerpt from “Millennia After Millennia After Millennia” by Zach Smith

April 6, 8744 BC

Dhakk and his tribe had been tracking a herd of woolly mammoths across the frozen plains and onto a thin muddy strip of land with vast cold ocean on either side. 

It was Dhakk’s first hunt. His father had spoken of frozen oceans before, vast snow-covered, just a little too perfectly flat, that you could feel the rise and fall of the water beneath the ice as though it were breathing land. 

Those stories never mentioned how muddy the land was.

The hunt was a success until they tried to return west to the Far East.

As the first loaves of bread were being broken with friends, and the virginal soil of other new farms was being broken by farmers in the fertile crescent, and the Jomon were breaking the wilds of Honshu, Dhakk watched as the land bridge from Russia to Alaska was broken into a hundred islands by the warm rising waters.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

“Indescribable” by Daniel Suter

NEW POETRY

If ink flowed through my veins
and I had quills for fingers
if I had all the words
that were ever said or written
still,
I could not describe you

If colors burst from my heart
the universe my canvas
if I had seen the whole world
imagined everything there is
still,
I could not paint you

If I sang like an angel
and played every instrument
if I heard heaven’s melody
and felt the rhythm of the earth
still,
I could not sing of you.

Daniel Suter lives and writes in Beirut, Lebanon. He teaches English through a local NGO and has been involved in starting and growing several poetry initiatives aimed at bridging sectarian divides and creating community that inspires change. He loves collecting personal narratives at storiesthatmatter.online, brainwashing his kids to enjoy great literature and occasionally overdosing on Espresso. You can connect with him at @suterstories.