Shopping

A MAY-NOT-BE-USED EXCERPT FROM A STORY IN PROGRESS

BY Karl Wenclas

The exclusive mall waited in an obscure landscape of woods and trees, at the end of a single road after three or four turns. The two young women arrived in Annabel’s Rimac Nevera– most expensive electric automobile on the planet.

“This is the mall,” Annabel said. “It never advertises. It doesn’t need to.”

She massaged the door handle. The Nevera produced 1900 horsepower, went 0 to 60 in under two seconds, had a top speed of 258 miles per hour and sold for $2.5 million. Annabel’s divorce present to herself. 

The two women stepped from the emerald green car like electric goddesses, appearing tall and sleek, Annabel color-coordinated in magenta and gold, her dark-haired sidekick Tasha Stasi– an inch shorter and a few ounces heavier– in silver and black. Carrying small Louis Vuitton handbags matching their outfits, in their persons the women proclaimed conspicuous consumption. Walking billboards for extreme wealth. Jumpsuits, shoes, hair, earrings, eyebrows, makeup, perfume– each woman presented an entire aesthetic package. No need to enter a museum to gaze upon art. You could admire them. 

Confident? Yes! Bordering on arrogance. Two women who’d made their way by perfect exploitation of contemporary social media and the Third Industrial Revolution. So well did they use the tools of electronic hype and hucksterism (not as well as the mogul himself of course) that not a sliver of doubt could enter their well-groomed heads. 

CONFIDENCE: The belief you can achieve anything– the first necessary component in so doing.

The sidekick, Tasha, was a popular podcaster whose ideas bounced from post-left to post-right and back again, depending on mood and the perceived winds of popularity and opportunity. Tasha embodied Total Flexibility. Adaptable– able to adjust constantly like Orwell’s depiction of switching sides: “Are we at war with Eurasia or Eastasia today?” Against right or left?– and within a week, often a day, her legions of podcast viewers would fully know she’d always held her current beliefs. 

Tasha’s tactical pliability extended to her friendship with Annabel, whom Tasha admired for many sterling attributes, but mainly for her bank account. (If actual revolution ever hit– they’d heard rumors it might– Tasha would be at the front of the throng, carrying a red flag.)

A doorman greeted them obsequiously as they entered the elegant mall. Sun glistened down from skylights, adding a sheen of dazzling clarity and glamor. Arrays of boutique goods awaited: clothes, jewels, shoes, scarves, sandals, furnishings, desserts. Caterings to the good life. A remaining sliver of lavish comfort atop a civilization showing cracks. 

Yesterday, holds had been removed from Annabel’s bank accounts and credit cards. Freddy had decided to be generous. (Half-a-billion was a sliver of his total wealth. He made that in interest in a week.) Annabel immediately texted Tasha: “Let’s go shopping!”

Shop they did. Store after store. Though they envisioned walking back to the car afterward with arms loaded with fashionable thick-plastic green bags carrying the names of elite brands, in reality they arranged for their purchases to be delivered– save for one small gold-colored purse which matched Annabel’s outfit. She ditched the Louis Vuitton bag. 

“Here,” she told the clerk. “Give it to a needy person.”

(Editor’s Note: The underpaid clerk kept the handbag for herself.)

One of Annabel’s credit cards was uniquely new, of a kind Tasha had never seen before.

“I love the glow of plastic in a mall!” Annabel exclaimed, her eyes filled with enthusiasm.

“Can you imagine a more glamorous time?” Annabel asked when they stood outside again in California sunshine, and a valet brought the gleaming emerald Rimac Nevera around.

Tasha smirked, looked, turned her head, puckered her mouth, but didn’t respond.

Most Charismatic #11: Ayn Rand

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

Ayn Rand? How did Ayn Rand make the Most Charismatic list?

First, her novels spark with energy and charisma, with larger-than-life characters and dramatic happenings.

Ms. Rand herself– a rather short and squat Russian emigre with a thick accent– could never live up to creations like Dominque Francon and Dagny Taggart. Though she tried.

Her ideas and persona, however, were so strong a cult of acolytes grew up around her. Ayn Rand created her own intellectual scene, herself at the center of it, complete with cigarette holder, cape, and piercing eyes.

Not enough for the top-ten all-time Most Charismatic American Writers— but enough to be listed right outside, at #11.

NEXT: Most Charismatic Writer #10!
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Hemingway and Trauma

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

Editor’s note: We’ll return to “live” coverage of the Tournament as soon as possible. Until then we’ll be making occasional posts regarding possible or likely participants in the tournament.
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INTERESTING to me is the way Ernest Hemingway so aggressively pushed himself to partake of experience, of the world and life– part of his process of self-creation as a writer.

Instinctively Hemingway knew that to be a great writer he had to put himself out there– beyond safety. As Jack London did before ever considering becoming a writer.

(NO writer worked harder at turning himself into a great writer, with all that goes into it, than Ernest Hemingway.)

Examine the most striking most emotional most vulnerable or compassionate artists– those more in tune with the universe than the run-of-the-mill rest of us– Van Gogh, Beethoven, Dickens, Dostoevsky, even Kurt Cobain– and you’ll see they experienced, at some point of their lives, extreme trauma and emotional pain.

Trauma is at the center of Hemingway’s best work, from the early short stories to his first two masterful novels, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms.

Does this apply in any way to writers today? Is it an argument for putting oneself out there?

It’s not an argument for playing it safe. The standard route of schooling, certifications, workshops, seminars; of following the herd; has produced a great amount of competence, even talent. But no literary greatness.

It’s why we at New Pop Lit have looked for writers outside the established system, knowing they may have a deeper take on reality. Those who’ve had the toughest lives, faced the most hardship, bounced around the most– whose writing might appear offbeat or hyper-emotional or bizarre– might have a greater store of what some call talent or even have some of what others call genius.

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News at NPL Combine!

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

WE’RE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE that we’ve signed a distinguished author to run our official New Pop Lit Tournament Writers Combine. An eminently big name with every qualification– Count Leo Tolstoy himself! He’s vowed to put all “decadent” American writers through their paces to discover which of them are, in his estimation, the genuine article.

The Count has told us he desires that every possible candidate for the Tournament be required to go through his battery of tests– including those already selected. In our discussions with him he said something to the effect that “They need it!” Then later the Count muttered to himself, “Can’t wait to get that fat braggart with the short sentences in there!” As the Count has a thick Russian accent, we may have heard some of that wrong. We have no idea to whom he was referring.

We’re busy setting up the camp and practice facility which will be used for the Combine. Stay tuned for more news– only here, as our exclusive Tournament coverage continues.

Writers Tournament Combine!

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT 

WE NOTE the National Football League will soon commence their “Combine” used to evaluate new talent.

We at New Pop Lit have decided to conduct our own writing combine, examining renowned American writers past and present to ask the question: “Who’s good enough?” Who’s good enough to be included in the tournament’s remaining brackets?

Our crack commentators, @MelDiper, Norman Mailer, and Emily Dickinson will be back with us, covering this event AT the tournament venue as we winnow the field. Might be fun.

(We might announce the #8 seeds bracket first.)

Stay tuned.
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(Dartmouth photo.)

Appreciation #7

“Gene Wolfe” by Robin Wyatt Dunn

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

“Cry Wolfe”

Gene Wolfe, the old fat man, we’ll sing for him—though it be wrong.

How many men will write the etymology of their own name and admit what it makes them? (Wolfe did in his story “Wolfer”).

Gene Wolfe fought in the Korean War, helping the pedophiles who run the United States Government get little children to eat, and all it taught him was “you need to keep shooting.”

Still, he is one of our best writers. Like the Russian writers, who all come out of the Caucasus, feasting on human flesh, and ready to spill blood onto the page.

Though he is a conservative, honored by some of the most conservative bodies here in North America, the golden fascists of the Science Fiction Writers of America—shouldn’t he be honored more greatly, and given the same laurels as Barry Obama?

I love Gene Wolfe; I’ve written about my love for him before, in a piece for Black Heart Magazine, which they later deleted, without comment. I only said I wanted to kiss him on the mouth.

Our Wolfe is howling, and we cannot know why.

Though he began on territory similar to the alt-right “Sad Puppies,” his first novel (he admits himself) prenticework attacking liberals in government, he matured in his work to be one of the few American writers, as David Lynch is one of the few American filmmakers, to use surrealism in his mainstream narrative work, without a second thought, without irony, without compunction, to find the truth.

In his search for the truth, like Kurosawa, he was forced to use dreams. Unlike Kurosawa, there is a bloody spirit in Wolfe, always hunting fresh meat, wherever he may find it.

Today it strikes me that honoring writers is a very tedious business, but this is only because I am a writer longing for honor. Perhaps I should have been killing more children in Asia.

What does it mean that we have Wolfe? Grand Master of Science Fiction: ensconced! Ennobled! Beloved. And we do love him. So much.

Wolfe is not prepared for the end of America; he is sentimental. He shoveled the corpses into its maw, and in his fiction, like all great American writers, he examined the psyche of the psychopath, in Severian from The Urth of the New Sun, in Patera Silk (another child eater) of The Book of the Long Sun, and he also sought and found the little psychopath lurking inside all of us, only awaiting the right circumstances to bring it out.

Like Asimov, Wolfe is a humanist. Unlike Asimov, Wolfe understands how monstrous a thing that is.
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Robin Dunn’s last story for us was “Travelogue.” Find his books here.

Battle of the Divas

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

WE PLAN to include at least one “public intellectual” (emphasis on the public) in the Tournament. In one of the next two (7th or 8th) brackets. That is, a writer known primarily for opinions about literature and culture. A critic– but more.

The two leading candidates for the spot are both women– Susan Sontag and Camille Paglia. Which one belongs?

Or should someone else take that slot?

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#6 Seeds!

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

 

 

 

 

 
(Kurt Vonnegut.)

THESE SELECTIONS are a mixed bag of qualities and achievements. Perhaps all they have in common is that each attained, at some point– while alive or afterward– an enormous critical or popular reputation. Are the reputations larger than the actual work?
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A.)  Harriet Beecher Stowe

(Etching by Francis Holl.)

Author of the most influential novel in American history. (Abe Lincoln himself half-in-jest credited Uncle Tom’s Cabin with starting the Civil War.) No American novel so keyed into its moment of time– the zeitgeist of the day. Or so provoked the emotions of its readers.
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B.)  James Baldwin

 

Like other writers of his era– Gore Vidal; Mary McCarthy– Baldwin was a better essayist than novelist. An excellent essayist, during a golden age of American essays. But he was also a superb short story writer, penning several which retain their power and relevance; “Sonny’s Blues” and “Going to Meet the Man” among them.

(Photo by Allan Warren.)

 

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C.)  Kurt Vonnegut

One cannot ignore the Cult of Vonnegut! He took the serious American novel out of strictly realistic bounds into new worlds. The novels Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions were imaginative and wildly popular– especially among college students. (Would that a novelist could be so now!) In his later works Vonnegut was trying too hard to be original while simultaneously repeating himself. His best novel might be his first, Player Piano.
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D.)  Henry James

A critical darling, reputation courtesy of Harvard and Oxford. Producer of a collection of plodding, word-clotted novels, James makes the Tournament based on three of his shorter works. The pop story “Daisy Miller.” The creepy gothic pop tale Turn of the Screw. And the weirdly effective novella, Altar of the Dead.

(Portrait of Henry James by Jacques Emile Blanche.)

 

The Mary Gaitskill Problem

THE ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

(Photo by David Shankbone.)

IT’S A PROBLEM many esteemed contemporary writers seem to have– the lack of a philosophical foundation, a metaphysical perspective on life and the universe, which for all their talent prevents their work from having greater depth and meaning.

FOR a literary writer Mary Gaitskill is supremely talented. At her best, with a story such as “Girl on a Plane,” she reaches a level of strong emotion. Like a punch to the gut. After reading more of her fiction one realizes they’re all of a piece– the characters intelligent but superficial animals whose primary motivation is sex.

An accurate depiction of today’s society. There are no happy endings. Men and women exist in dysfunctional hate-love relationships with scarcely the possibility of getting along. Captives of their drives. The sexually liberated society; which comes across as an unending sadomasochistic nightmare. No escape. No hope of redemption or salvation. At the end of the tale one of the characters is humiliated. Or both of them. Destroyed. Shattered. Lost animals without souls to tarnish. No heroes or even anti-heroes. It’s a problem not of the writer so much as society– particularly, their urban New York City or San Francisco milieu. A typical tale is “Kiss and Tell,” in which a struggling male screenwriter is in love with a struggling actress. The sex is briefly very good, but friendship is the only way they can ultimately connect– then even that collapses. The friendship ends in betrayal and bitterness.

The writing, like the sex, is very good. But is it enough?

Has Mary Gaitskill done enough to enter the Tournament?

Specialists

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITERS TOURNAMENT

(Pictured: O. Henry.)
The Tournament is open to specialists of any variety. One-book authors have a chance– if the book is a great one.

We won’t exclude anyone for being just a short story writer. We value the short story. We love it. We see the short story as literature’s future. Its way to break out of its snobby neighborhood. Its exclusive ghetto.

It’d be like excluding rock n’ roll singers with strings of hit singles but no important album from the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame. It’d be an outrage. (See Chubby Checker and Tommy James.)

Neither should poets be excluded for being just poets. Or playwrights excluded for being merely playwrights.

Novelists are valued by critics highest of all writers of the past 150 years– but the novel is overrated. Few novels can truly be said to be gems of art. Truly accomplished works of art. Most are time fillers.

(The Great Gatsby is a gem of a novel, but it’s not the greatest American novel.)

Some few novels are time-filling compelling reads– but more.

Katherine Anne Porter was a talented short story writer who wrote a novel because she felt she had to.

The novel, Ship of Fools, isn’t a bad novel. Neither is it enough of an achievement to place her into the Tournament. If Katherine Anne Porter makes the Tournament it will be because of her short stories. And her novellas.

Raymond Carver never wrote a novel, but this isn’t enough of a factor to keep him out of the Tournament.

Other factors will likely keep him out of the Tournament.
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TRIVIA QUESTION: What do writers O. Henry and Katherine Anne Porter have in common aside from fact both were American and both specialized in the short story form?

(First correct answer wins a free batch of New Pop Lit postcards.)