CURRENT AMERICAN LITERATURE exists in a Bizarro universe where sense is absent. At one pole, the Postmodernists, who disdain the world in order to escape into the empty solipsism of their own heads. At the other pole are the Nonsense Commericalists who write solely to make money and who seem to live in a world inhabited by wizards, zombies, vampires, and hobbits.
The way is open for other writers to grab the real universe-- the world of reality, humanity, authentic emotion: the Here and Now.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
Blitz Review Is Better!
A GREAT NEW BOOK REVIEW BLOG
Stay in touch with the freshest opinion anywhere in the literary game.
If you're brave, take the Blitz Challenge and submit your masterpiece for a Blitz Rating.
More info at
http://www.blitzreview.blogspot.com/
Stay in touch with the freshest opinion anywhere in the literary game.
If you're brave, take the Blitz Challenge and submit your masterpiece for a Blitz Rating.
More info at
http://www.blitzreview.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Ultra-Realism
The Impressionists reinvigorated art in the late 19th century from outside, by creating works which seemed to vibrate, to come alive. The paintings weren't realistic. They were hyper-realistic.
This is what I'm trying to accomplish with my version of pop literature, especially with the ebook Mood Detroit, and a new one, Crime City USA. I've made both hyper-affordable to encourage feedback.
Art is an expression of life but also of ideas.
This is what I'm trying to accomplish with my version of pop literature, especially with the ebook Mood Detroit, and a new one, Crime City USA. I've made both hyper-affordable to encourage feedback.
Art is an expression of life but also of ideas.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
The Pop Formula
A POSTMODERN WRITER has accused me of pushing formula writing with my new pop story ideas. (See my ebook, Ten Pop Stories.) There's truth in what he says.
Of course, the sonnet is a formula. Berry Gordy's Motown was a formula. Generic literary stories have their own formula. The trick is what can be done within a formula. Once put into place, a formula becomes a jumping off point for new creativity.
My theories of pop fiction are based on a few key points.
1.) The Opening.
2.) The Close.
3.) Readability.
4.) Pace.
5.) The Kick.
("Kick" meaning that the tale have a kick to it; a moral or idea or revelation or punch or point.)
A simple formula, right? Yet most short stories being written today fail it.
Of course, the sonnet is a formula. Berry Gordy's Motown was a formula. Generic literary stories have their own formula. The trick is what can be done within a formula. Once put into place, a formula becomes a jumping off point for new creativity.
My theories of pop fiction are based on a few key points.
1.) The Opening.
2.) The Close.
3.) Readability.
4.) Pace.
5.) The Kick.
("Kick" meaning that the tale have a kick to it; a moral or idea or revelation or punch or point.)
A simple formula, right? Yet most short stories being written today fail it.
Friday, November 11, 2011
New Fiction, New Literature, New Art
With American Pop Lit ebooks I'm offering a positive model of a new direction for this nation's literature.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Faster Fiction
DO YOU HAVE TIME?
Do you really have time to wade through Chad Harbach's enormous 500-page 25-dollar novel only to discover it's not very good? Harbach presents standard overwrought baby-mentality literary puffery.
Try instead fiction with a punch.
(The ebook Crime City USA is now on sale.)
Do you really have time to wade through Chad Harbach's enormous 500-page 25-dollar novel only to discover it's not very good? Harbach presents standard overwrought baby-mentality literary puffery.
Try instead fiction with a punch.
(The ebook Crime City USA is now on sale.)
Friday, November 4, 2011
The Collapsing Publishing Model
CHANGE IN PUBLISHING
Writer/cartoonist Brady Russell strongly urged me last year and this to start producing ebooks. The final motivator for me was the realization of where publishing is headed. The Borders store closings; new inexpensive ereaders; new ebook stars like Amanda Hocking and John Locke: the trend is unmistakeable.
One thing I learned, and learned well, during my life in Detroit is that change is constant. When I sought to hang on to the past—melancholy bartender in a Detroit riverfront dive full of nostalgia for Detroit's golden era—I was told by a business-type customer, "Change. Change! Change or die."
Change is nature's only constant.
In 2000 I reinvented myself as King Wenclas, crazy radical literary promoter. I formed the Underground Literary Alliance and shook up the clubby halls of literature. We were the most exciting writers group on the planet.
I've learned through the course of my life to adapt, on a moment's notice. Physically and mentally I live out of a duffle bag.
THE INESCAPABLE FACT
The inescapable fact is that the $25.99 Harbach/Franzen novel, lit's standard, is an economic and artistic dinosaur. Unexciting; lethargically paced; solipsistically self-focused to the max same-old same-old. Overpriced and supported by a top-heavy structure of writing programs, agents, editors, chain stores, and high-lease Manhattan skyscrapers.
What's my infrastructure? An el cheapo netbook and a two-dollar coffeeshop purchase.
I don't need a bureaucracy. I can outwrite, outedit, and maybe outmarket the publishing dinosaurs. The pop prose in my newest ebook Crime City USA is sleek and explosive. Tighter than any MFA editor, or phlegmatic Harvard-educated intellectual, could make it. Against the industry's slow-moving 4,000 pound Buicks I offer fast and fun race cars at 1/25 the price.
Stop by the King Wenclas showrooms at Kindle or Nook and pick one up.
Writer/cartoonist Brady Russell strongly urged me last year and this to start producing ebooks. The final motivator for me was the realization of where publishing is headed. The Borders store closings; new inexpensive ereaders; new ebook stars like Amanda Hocking and John Locke: the trend is unmistakeable.
One thing I learned, and learned well, during my life in Detroit is that change is constant. When I sought to hang on to the past—melancholy bartender in a Detroit riverfront dive full of nostalgia for Detroit's golden era—I was told by a business-type customer, "Change. Change! Change or die."
Change is nature's only constant.
In 2000 I reinvented myself as King Wenclas, crazy radical literary promoter. I formed the Underground Literary Alliance and shook up the clubby halls of literature. We were the most exciting writers group on the planet.
I've learned through the course of my life to adapt, on a moment's notice. Physically and mentally I live out of a duffle bag.
THE INESCAPABLE FACT
The inescapable fact is that the $25.99 Harbach/Franzen novel, lit's standard, is an economic and artistic dinosaur. Unexciting; lethargically paced; solipsistically self-focused to the max same-old same-old. Overpriced and supported by a top-heavy structure of writing programs, agents, editors, chain stores, and high-lease Manhattan skyscrapers.
What's my infrastructure? An el cheapo netbook and a two-dollar coffeeshop purchase.
I don't need a bureaucracy. I can outwrite, outedit, and maybe outmarket the publishing dinosaurs. The pop prose in my newest ebook Crime City USA is sleek and explosive. Tighter than any MFA editor, or phlegmatic Harvard-educated intellectual, could make it. Against the industry's slow-moving 4,000 pound Buicks I offer fast and fun race cars at 1/25 the price.
Stop by the King Wenclas showrooms at Kindle or Nook and pick one up.
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