The Pre-Moment

 A COMING CATACLYSM?

THE NEWS of late has been giving off a vibe of impending doom. As if the house of cards we call the global economy will receive one shock too many and collapse.

I'm reminded of movies which portray what I call "the pre-moment." The days right before a life-changing historical event. To name three of them:

1.)  San Francisco (1936). Starring Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald. We become absorbed in the personal dramas of the two lead characters, then suddenly-- bang!-- comes the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Featuring amazing-for-its-day special effects and stunning editing.

2.)  From Here to Eternity (1953). Starring Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr and Montgomery Clift. Set at the U.S. Army base in Hawaii during the final moments of peace before America's entry into a giant tumultuous war. Lurking offscreen. We know the attack is coming. . .

3.)  Splendor in the Grass (1961). Starring Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood. In this film the approaching calamity is the 1929 stock market crash. A warning for our own moment in time?
***

What's coming now? Financial crash, ground war, or natural disaster? Or all three? Signs aren't promising. (Though my forebodings could be misplaced.) 

A QUESTION: How will our literature respond? Will it?

A Short Detroit Story

 (NOTES FOUND IN AN OLD NOTEBOOK)

Jim was dozing standing up against a sign at a bus stop on a street corner early morning sun sneaking into a blue-gray sky, Jim wondering if the bus would ever arrive, buses were notoriously late in this city. Two hours late sometimes. An old Victorian house sat across the street from him, in shambles, looking like how he felt. Decay spread in all directions. Jim closed his eyes.

Two men chatted next to him.

"You need a shave," one told him in a mocking gentle African-toned voice.

The blade of a knife rested comfortably against Jim's throat.

"That's okay, I have my own razor," Jim mumbled comfortably in his dream.

"What?" the voice asked, moving the knife up and placing it against Jim's face. "I'm takin' his jacket," the man said to his companion. "You can have his cap." The leather jacket had cost Jim eighty dollars at a resale shop and was in almost-new condition.

"Don't fuck with me!" Jim shouted as he snapped awake and pulled away.

His own green-handled knife always carried in his jacket pocket was in his hand, snapped open. Everyone in the vicinity was suddenly very awake.

"Whoa!" said the man with the knife; he'd jumped back with an expression of surprise at Jim's angry voice as much as by the fact of his blade. The man instinctively jabbed in Jim's direction as Jim stabbed at the character's own torso, at the same time watching the friend standing back shouting encouragement-- "stab the motherfucker"-- while not further involving himself, in fact stepping back as Jim's antagonist moved slowly backward also watching Jim with careful eyes. Jim stabbed toward the man again and the man replied likewise, coming close, as Jim realized with detachment and analytical relief the man was his own size, his arms the same length. 

Jim's stance was not that of a boxer, with left foot forward, which would've been foolish in this kind of fight. His feet instead were aligned, two feet apart, and he moved in a mild crouch, so that his torso was set back, his arms forward, the green knife moving, held firmly, seeking a target. A fistfight without knives certainly would've been more interesting. Jim wondered if most knife fights were like this-- to get close enough to seriously stab someone you risked getting seriously punctured yourself. His foe's arms worked furiously as if throwing punches which seemed to come up short. Each time, Jim countered with a lunging thrust and the man jumped back a pace. 

Out of nowhere a large metal-shaking clanking green bus pulled up. Jim slipped his opened knife into his pocket and stepped onto the bus, his morning's ride. His two friends outside the bus danced and laughed at him, talking and gesticulating wildly as the bus door creaked closed, the heavy-set stoic black driver staring blankly ahead, the passengers purposefully absorbed in their own routines, just another day in this city. As Jim pushed through the crowd and found a seat near the back he noticed knife slashes across the front of his jacket-- his best possession-- also on the sleeves, the nice jacket ruined. He leaned his head back as the bus clattered along, closed his eyes and resumed his daydream. 

ICE Agents and "The Blue Caps"

 AN OLD TACTIC used by authoritarian governments is to recruit poorly educated, or just plain poor, young men who'd otherwise be adrift in life, give them authority and a badge, usually also a gun, and send them out as enforcers of regime rule. They're almost guaranteed to be obedient, loyal, and ruthless.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn describes this in a chapter in Volume I of his massive work about Soviet prison camps, Gulag Archipelago, "The Blue Caps." Here's an excerpt:

Their branch of service does not require them to be educated people of broad culture and broad views-- and they are not. Their branch of service does not require them to think logically-- and they do not. Their branch of service requires only that they carry out orders exactly and be impervious to suffering-- and that is what they do and what they are. We who have passed through their hands feel suffocated when we think of that legion, which is stripped bare of universal human ideals.

Is this a parallel to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in the United States now?

The Big Zohran Mamdani Question

 THE BIG QUESTION right now regarding Zohran Mamdani is when he'll sign a big book contract with a "Big Five" conglomerate publishing outfit, following the lead of so many other prominent "leftist" figures, from Malcolm Harris to Bhaskar Sunkara to the gang at n +1 who cashed in with big advances as quickly as possible.

HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED

These characters are anti-capitalist-- sure they are-- but take no chances the capitalist system won't vanish anytime soon, so are taking their slice of the pie now, up front. After all, it might take time for "late stage capitalism" to play out. Could be twenty years. Or 100. Or longer.

Needless to say, they're closer to being Kerenskys than Lenins. The irony is Curtis Sliwa is way more a Lenin type, forming his own tough-minded vanguard group from the ground up while working outside the system.

The jury of course is still out on Zohran Mamdani. It remains to be seen what path he will take. This blog will keep you informed!

What Does It Cost to Support Indy Art?

 Please see the New Pop Lit News post about a film project based on a short story by Tom Ray originally run at New Pop Lit.

A "Fictional" Short Story About Elon Musk

 WHICH would be my only real short story written in 2025 (disregarding flash pieces and a novella):

"THE ADVISOR."

This is what relevant fiction looks like. An honest look at today's hyper-insane world.

Latest Movie Review

 HERE'S my latest movie review at IMDB-- more a rant than a review-- this one about the 2024 film "A Complete Unknown." You can read the review here.

This Blog's Reach. . .

NOT EVERYONE KNOWS that twenty years ago this blog was at the center of a plagiarism scandal in Somaliland. Which is not the same as Somalia. (Somalians in America have been in the news of late, c/o our ever-distracting man in the gilded Oval Office.) Anyway, the link is here. 

Consumers, Critics and Context

 EVEN literary critics are mere consumers, in that they seldom question the context of a product. Like buying a music cd back in the day and never wondering about the company that made it, who produced it, or how it was made. Or the system or systems within which those persons and entities existed. The economic and technological superstructure. 

The same today with streaming. YOUR job is simply to consume the content.

Who owns the content? Who allows it? Who profits?

We're not supposed to glance at context.

To be fair, today a lot of us glance at context. You can't help it. The "stars" of our current era are the owners themselves. Personalities like Elon Musk. The only way he can keep the investment bubbles that are his companies inflated is by selling himself as engineering genius. People buy that. Same way so many buy the notion of our current President as political genius. Another confidence-based inflated bubble.

It's all salesmanship.

American Myth

WHAT'S FUNNY TO ME is how most New Yorkers don't realize what they have in Curtis Sliwa. A legitimate American folk hero, like Davy Crockett, Buffalo Bill, and Woody Guthrie. Someone from the people and of the people, about whom myriad tales have been told, some true, others maybe not. The Kris Kristofferson quote: "part fact, part fiction, a walking contradiction." He even survived a "hit" from the mob!

Missing from conversation about this year's New York City mayoral election is any appreciation for, or acknowledgement of, those who operate outside accepted channels. DIYers who color outside the lines. Uncredentialed, uncertified, unregulated. Yet this is where the authentic voice of America is always to be found, via those who've seen this society from every possible angle; upside down and sideways.

***

In the literary realm, the authors who've interested me are those who wrote beneath or outside official channels, because that's where you'll find the raw unpolished reality of this madly chaotic country. Expat Robert McAlmon for instance, escaping from cowboy country into the Lost Generation of the 1920's. Aben Kandel, writing about the flood of immigrants into New York City in the early decades of the 20th century-- or writing about gamblers in early 1960's Las Vegas-- in-between crafting screenplays for low-budget direct-to-drive-ins monster movies. Or perhaps the rawest voice of them all, Erskine Caldwell, whose rough, often brutal, sometimes hilarious stories from the underclasses of the Deep South during the Great Depression were banned far and wide. Not just from libraries! These three men are definitely not in today's literary canon-- which is why people should read them. 

***

In a true democracy, the nation's underclasses must get a voice of their own once in a while. Shouldn't they?

How Do We Know Thomas Pynchon Exists?

 A PYNCHON AUTHORSHIP CONTROVERSY

That's the problem with a reclusive novelist like Thomas Pynchon. He might be non-existent.

The writings may well be the product of an 1963-era IBM System 360 mainframe computer, or a Univac, supplemented today, for the most recent novel, by AI. How would we know to the contrary? 

Or more likely, produced by a committee at CIA Headquarters in Langley.

For "Thomas Pynchon," unlike for all other public figures, there've been no questions, no interviews, no author photos. For sixty years! No accountability. Insular elite literary people, our official intelligentsia-- the most gullible individuals on earth-- are accepting of everything. Change the history of American literature to wipe out or marginalize naturalists and populists? Sure, they'll buy it. A pretend author? Simplicity itself in comparison.

There's long been a Shakespeare Authorship Controversy, with contrarians questioning the evidence and insisting someone other than the man from Stratford wrote the poems and plays.

There are far more grounds for a Pynchon Authorship Controversy.

THE CHIEF CULPRIT

This book review appearing in the New York Times on April 21, 1963, put unknown writer Thomas Pynchon on the cultural map. The review was written by upper-class literary mandarin George Plimpton, known for his gags and practical jokes. A recent essay by Andrew Szanton calls Plimpton a "world-class mischief maker"-- but there was much more to old George than first met the eye. Plimpton's influential literary journal The Paris Review was founded with CIA monies and intended to alter the direction of American culture away from its populist roots. The publication wanted "non-drum beaters and non-axe-grinders," or so proclaimed the first issue. This, in 1953 at the peak of the Cold War, when Ivy League liberal intellectuals sought a middle path between populist radicalism and John Birch Society-style reaction. For those in the upper levels of American society, scions of privilege, much was at stake.

CONTEXT

The real hoax, the actual gag, was wiping out the possibility of truly political, radical, "from the people" writing, of a kind which could connect to the vast American public, and promoting instead a jokey substitute, whose difficult books, published under the name of a WASP blueblood, would appeal to the literary cognoscenti in New England and New York, addressing politics in a satirical fashion, unthreatening, with distinctive style. The ultimate in 1960's hip. Hilarity for one and all. The masses excluded of course.

THE FIRST NOVEL

The first "Thomas Pynchon" novel, curiously enough, V, is about the mystery of identity. The search for an identity. A review of the novel on May 15, 1963 in Time magazine, in the aftermath of Plimpton's, asked: "Who, finally, is V? . . . Who indeed?"

NOTE

I'm sure there's an actual legal Thomas Pynchon somewhere, paid a yearly stipend for the use of his name, though he's clearly not up to playing the role of great writer in public. Oh well. Never easy to pull off.

Meanwhile George Plimpton, wherever he is, enjoys eternal amusement.

A Review of the 1973 film "The Sting"

 I posted a review of the movie at IMDB, here.

Another Recent Comment of Mine at Lit Mag News

 This one was posted July 5th, in response to an article titled "How Do We Spot Scammy Lit Mags and Presses?"

Hi. For what it's worth, Paris Review does receive money from venture capital. Per this source-- https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/paris-review-foundation,134081729/-- Paris Review has assets over $11,000,000. Recent donors include the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which was founded in 2006 with donations by multi-billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Reed Hastings, among others. (Let's not forget also that the same publication notoriously was founded in 1953 with monies from the CIA, a fact which came out decades later.) What would a Mark Zuckerberg gain from indirectly funding a literary magazine? Like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and a couple others, he's worth $200 billion-with-a-b. Money to burn. These guys are out to control every aspect of society-- see Peter Thiel, patron of J.D. Vance, and HIS involvement with the cultural world c/o Dimes Square and other trendy happenings. Yeah, there are a lot of scamsters in every aspect of America at the moment. But some are small-time grifters, while others are very, very big players.

Why Curtis Sliwa Can't Win: A Rant

 LIVING IN CLASS-BASED AMERICA

I SHOULDN'T CARE about the New York City mayoral contest, but observing it from a distance has set off my alarm bells about why America never fulfilled its potential and why the American Dream today is a fraud. 

What do I know of New York? I never lived there-- tried to once-- but when I was promoting the Underground Literary Alliance in the 2000's I went up there from Philadelphia via the Chinatown Bus nearly every week. Before and after 9-11. I promoted a number of events (crashed more) there-- one at historic CBGB's-- and attended countless readings, open mics, parties, you name it. I knew a lot of writers who lived in NYC, from varied backgrounds, and I caught at least part of the New York vibe.

What triggered this rant is noise from the usual suspects about the various other candidates, with Curtis Sliwa usually dismissed as "kind of a loon." As any ambitious person not from the elite class, or inside an approved institution, is viewed.

Liberal-left intellectuals, of whom there are many in New York City, are backing Zohran Mamdani, whose parents are themselves intellectuals: his father a Columbia University professor; his mother an award-winning filmmaker. Likely they see themselves, or elite versions of themselves, in him. Curtis Sliwa is an actual working class guy, but leftist intellectuals, who claim to speak for the working class, don't trust him to know his city and its people. Who has traveled New York City's streets more than Curtis Sliwa? There was even once a mob hit put on him! He should be, and for many is, a folk hero.

But no, Sliwa doesn't fit the standard pre-packaged ideological solution which has never worked any time, any place. They'll keep trying to pound the square peg into a round hole because it's what they've been institutionally taught: the most conditioned persons on the planet from the time their yuppie parents dropped them into their first pre-pre-pre-school at age two.

Differences between the candidates are huge. Only one is not from a conforming institution, but from the streets, the grass roots.

A Recent Comment By Me at Lit Mag News

(A response posted July 1, 2025, as a comment to a recent article.)

Re Simian Smith and AI. Like the lit mag mentioned, at New Pop Lit we're firmly against AI, but we try to spell it out: "No AI!! Generated, structured, edited or designed." There are reasons not to use the technology in any way (including the huge amounts of water and electricity consumed in the training of LLM's, and from their use). Another reason: the push for AI by the largest companies on the planet, run by the world's richest individuals-- obscenely wealthy individuals (see the Jeff Bezos wedding)-- is an enormous gamble/money grab. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested in the technology, on the prospect that it will be used by everybody. Once everyone's using it, they'll proceed to monetize it. RIGHT NOW they're not making profits off it. Continuing investment in AI (and AI stocks) by venture capitalists is fueled by one thing: use by individuals, including writers. Chatbot use is strictly monitored, including by investment analysts. Since the damage done to humanity, including to writers and artists, will be substantial, there can be only one stance toward the technology. One mantra: DON'T USE AI!! When you do, in any way, you're enabling the entire enterprise and the forthcoming consequences. Just saying.

Recently Published in Frighty #2!

 (The blogger finally gets around to announcing on his blog his latest credit, publication in the newest release from one of the most exciting human-centered happenings on today's literary scene.)

Tired of AI slop?! Of the overregulated robotic by-the-rules mindset which comes with it?

One solution is Wred Fright's new Frighty zine. The kind of off-the-wall from-the-people writing that won't be done by robots.

The issue includes a short rant by myself.

Read about the second issue here.

Humanity is back!

Reading Lists

 IN RESPONSE to reading lists appearing in some corners of the literary world-- invariably containing the names of currently approved authors-- I offered my own "Literary Unorthodoxy" list.

In response to my list, New Pop Lit Assistant Editor Kathleen M. Crane then came up with her own, titled "Another Reading List."

(She offered twelve names. Mine only had ten.)

Insightful Review of The Loud Boys

 A new review of the novella The Loud Boys is now up at Amazon. Check it out!

New Mention

 For what it's worth, I received a mention in a recent column at Compact magazine, grouped in with promoters of "rebellion lit": those writers and literary projects out to renew the art. (Long-time followers of this blog know I've been at it for awhile.)

Here's the column: https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-american-novel-will-not-be-substacked/

How to Be Topical

 MAKING LITERATURE RELEVANT

Now up as featured story at New Pop Lit is my short story, "The Advisor," about a mega-billionaire advisor to the U.S. President. "Yanked from news headlines," as long-ago promotions used to say.

The Question is whether other writers will begin penning tales about broader society during the here and now-- or remain stuck creating ever more examples of Selfie Fiction??

For myself, too much is happening in this country to ignore. Writers have voices. Time to use them!