Empires of the Mind

 THE END OF AMERICAN EMPIRE IS A GOOD THING

I DON'T KNOW if the Afghanistan fiasco will discredit the U.S. foreign policy establishment enough to out an end to the notion of America as the world's policeman. But it should.

Ending the Imperial mindset would allow a refocus on things at home-- including cultural matters. Ideally it would enable a flowering of American art and artists of all varieties. (The precedent which comes to mind off the top of my head is the British rock music explosion after they liquidated their empire.)

POLITICS-- OR ART?

Everyone's focus the past five years-- or twenty, really-- has been on politics, as evidenced by insane levels of hysteria on social media and elsewhere, with nothing actually resolved. The machine bumps right and bumps left and sputters along. Wouldn't the immense amount of energy expended on political battles be better spent elsewhere-- on creating stuff, to everyone's benefit?

America has always been the most creative of nations-- in its short history, a mass of inventions, innovations, devices, entertainments, spectacles, movies, music: noise. If the USA didn't invent the notion of having fun, it perfected it. A great many cultural forms-- literature, to name one-- have been stagnant the past twenty years, with no typically American hyper-energy to be found. The end of the occupation of Afghanistan should be looked at as an opportunity to begin things anew. All it takes is the right mindset to make it happen. (Which is what the New Pop Lit project for one is about.)

Let's do it!

Cooperatives and Unionization in Publishing

 IS CONFLICT AT CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE AN ANOMALY?

Recently I covered here the Nathan J. Robinson fiasco, when he fired his entire staff at Current Affairs magazine, a "leftist" publication, when said staff pushed to turn the project into a co-op.

ARE THERE historical precedents for this?

Yes. Prominent among them was the situation in 1981 with the UK's Time Out magazine, when employees went on strike, due to publisher Tony Elliott changing the previous equal-pay-for-everyone policy of the magazine, in order to pay more to talented outside writers. 

The publication had been started by Elliott in 1968 as a modest alternative pamphlet, apparently with a collective decision-making process, which Elliott abruptly voided, in much the same way Nathan Robinson behaved a few weeks ago in this country.

WHAT HAPPENED?

What resulted in the 1981 situation, after Time Out shut down for a few months, was most of the former staff at the magazine forming their own similar listings publication called City Limits. Simultaneous with this, opportunistic mogul Richard Branson geared up his own listings magazine, Event, and Tony Elliott restarted Time Out with a new staff.

THE QUESTION OF VALUE: A TEST CASE?

What we saw with the Time Out mess was a possible answer to the question: from where does economic value actually come? The visionary? The workers?

The wikipedia entry on Time Out credits the initial success of the magazine not to Tony Elliott, but its designer, Pearce Marchbank: 

The flavour of the magazine was almost wholly the responsibility of its designer, Pearce Marchbank. . . .

During the strike, Branson poached Marchbank and made him co-editor of Event, surrounding him with the best literary and journalistic talents money could buy, and backed the project with ample funds-- more than a million pounds by some reports. Despite this, Event soon folded.

City Limits started out well but quickly plateaued, while Time Out eventually surged ahead. Time Out of course had the advantage of being in London an already-established name. A "brand." One has to also consider the extent to which Tony Elliott was by then himself an established brand.

City Limits lasted until 1993. 

DISCLAIMER

I was myself part of a literary cooperative, from 2000 to roughly 2009, and have many thoughts on the experience, which I may express sometime in a different post.

Get Out of the War Business!

 America continues to prove it's just not very good at war. Brave soldiers? Yes. Elite units-- as good as any on the planet? Sure. But for America as a whole, it's just not our thing.

America wasn't founded by soldiers, but by opportunists. No thousand-year military culture bred into us like, say, Germans. Nope. People came here for one primary reason: to make a buck. From P.T. Barnum to Edison to Ford to the moguls of Hollywood, through Jay Z and Dr. Dre, American culture has been devoted to hype and sales.

The way for the nation to get back on track after divisive politics and the disaster of Afghanistan is to focus on what the USA does best: being brash, ambitious, loud and eternally creative.

It's what I plan on doing at New Pop Lit's POP SHOP, which, yes, is open for business. Stop in and buy a zeen. You'll feel better doing so.

The DIY Actor

OFFICIAL HISTORIES have a way of ignoring Do-It-Yourself activities, when individuals and their friends, unsatisfied with things-as-they-are, have taken matters into their own hands by starting their own businesses.

Case in point is the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, founded by African-American actor Noble Johnson and his brother George in 1916. According to wikipedia,  their studio was "the first to produce movies portraying African-Americans as real people instead of as racist caricatures." 

To finance the project, Johnson appeared as a character actor in scores of movies produced by other studios (he appeared in 144 films total). This included several early classics, from "Thief of Baghdad" to "King Kong." As an actor, Noble Johnson was kind of a jack-of-all-trades, in that he played every possible ethnicity, including Latino, Arab, Native American, Egyptian, and even as a Russian in "The Most Dangerous Game." (See below photo.)

Though the project ultimately dissolved in 1923, its brief success producing movies served as inspiration for budding movie makers of every stripe.

The Big Mistake All Conspiracy Theorists Make

The Big Mistake conspiracy theorists make is misunderstanding the world-- the universe.
Our minds trick us into believing the world is less complex than it is, which allows us to cope with the mass of sensations out there, which would otherwise overwhelm us. (Some scientists believe LSD takes this phenomenon away, and gives us things as they actually are.)
Take the variables in planning any event-- things that could go wrong-- and multiply by a hundred. Or a thousand. (Donald Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns-- which destroyed his own plan.)
For example, a team in the National Football League constructs a precise strategy to be implemented in a carefully controlled game on a strictly limited space, with referees and a time clock-- yet coaches know the game remains unpredictable. Things will go wrong-- the coaches have to always be ready to adjust the plan.
Yet the conspiracy crowd believe large government agencies not known for their competence can control events from on high, with perfect plans, and nothing will go wrong. They're never caught.
Conspiracy theorists never allow for the unpredictable and the irrational.

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(A second mistake they make is in never taking a contrary view of their own theories-- looking for mistakes in the elaborate house of cards constructed by conspiracy authors. The books which are their sources are invariably slanted-- they sift the available evidence to bolster their premise, instead of looking at all the evidence from all angles-- like an LSD trip-- and then drawing conclusions. But of course they can't do this-- they have books to sell and they need sensationalism and hooks.)

Who Was Against the Afghanistan War?

 THE PROBLEM with Afghanistan from a United States perspective was getting heavily involved there to start with. War apologists claim that 90% of the American public in 2001 supported the action and no voices spoke out in protest.

This isn't true. One segment-- maybe the only segment-- of the intellectual community opposed the action: the DIY print underground, which at that moment in time centered around a review publication, Zine World: A Reader's Guide to the Underground Press, and through multiple activist groups, one of them being the Underground Literary Alliance.

My contribution to the noise we tried to make was a zine novella I put out within a few weeks of 9-11 called War Hysteria!.

Few copies of the zine remain anywhere-- but the text can be accessed in a terrific anthology via the Wred Fright blog, here. (Wred a long-time zine publisher and activist.) In the zine I tried to capture the headlong rush to war, no one in the government or mainstream media keeping their heads. All was panic. 

The repercussions of such panic are with us now.

The Rise and Fall of Nathan J. Robinson

 IS THIS THE END OF IVY LEAGUE ROLE PLAYING?

The surprise is that anyone's surprised by Current Affairs Editor Nathan J. Robinson firing his entire staff when they discussed running the pseudo-left magazine as a collective. I questioned his authenticity three years ago in this short essay at New Pop Lit News, "Contradictions of the Left."

Any "leftist" periodical founded at Harvard or Yale is guaranteed to be fraudulent, even if the editors and backers don't realize it themselves. This applies to a similar journal, Jacobin.

              Young Jacobin staffers at Detroit's Allied Media Conference.

Several years ago during New Pop Lit's first year of operation, we manned a table on one side of Jacobin's at Detroit's Allied Media Conference. I had the opportunity to talk with a few of the mag's staffers, and examine several of their back issues. I found the staffers to be well-educated but naive, lacking in knowledge of the actual world. The writing in the journal, as I remarked at the time, was boiler plate. NOT the kind of visceral prose likely to connect with any working class person. An idealistic but misguided project. Or maybe not misguided, if the mission isn't to connect with the public, but to con their virtue-signaling donors.

Those who start and run such publications, a Bhaskar Sunkara or a Nathan J. Robinson, are using them as stepping stones in their climb within the current system. The pose of leftism or radicalism is simply part of the game.

The tragedy is that a layer of elites posturing as opponents to the status quo hinders the appearance of authentic grass roots alternatives. Of the kind once represented by-- oh, I don't know-- maybe the Underground Literary Alliance.

BEFORE BUKOWSKI

WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH IN SCHOOLS

What they don't tell you in schools, including academia, is that gritty grass roots American writing created by those living at or near the bottom of society has been around long before Charles Bukowski. You can probably date it to Thomas Paine, and likely before that.

Crude popular publications were sold everywhere in the 1800s. In his book Beneath the American Renaissance David S. Reynolds credits such publications with hugely influencing the work of those 19th-century poets and novelists who today are taught in colleges-- Whitman, Melville, Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Dickinson.

How do we classify Stephen Crane's first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, which was self-published? As punk-style DIY far ahead of its time?

There's also the Lost Generation of the 1920s. At the center of that arts scene was writer and publisher Robert McAlmon. McAlmon edited and typed James Joyce's hand-written manuscript of Ulysses (which was then published in a small edition by bookstore owner Sylvia Beach); published Ernest Hemingway's first book, Three Stories & Ten Poems; and by all accounts led a hectic, alcohol-fueled life. McAlmon was the quintessential underground writer in that he's known today chiefly through other persons' memoirs-- his own work difficult to find, and even then available only in expurgated form. By all accounts it was raw, unaffected, authentic-- which is why it was criticized and dismissed by the literary mandarins of his time.

Personally, I've read only one story of McAlmon's-- "The Highly-Placed Pajamas"-- and that over twenty years ago. Not even sure in what book I found it-- I encountered it at a time I was browsing stacks in university libraries and distant corners of used-book stores. It's a tale about prostitutes. As I recall, the story was distinctly Bukowskiesque-- at the time it was written in the 1920s the established literary world wasn't ready for it.

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WHERE is underground publishing now?

One place to find it is at THE POP SHOP.

The Illusion of Stability

                                                               AP photo/Rahmat Gul
 

THOUGHTS ON THE TALIBAN TAKEOVER IN AFGHANISTAN

First, the fall of Kabul is not a failure of America or its people, or its soldiers, who are the best anywhere, but of our elites. Our supposed leaders, who got the country INto the Graveyard of Empires but couldn't get us out. 

One has to realize the situation we're in here in this world: existence on a spinning rock hurtling through space at fast speed. The tendency inevitably is toward chaos. That's the default.

In other words, there can be no permanence. No stability. Everything is in a state of change. Change is inevitable and constant. We erect, for our peace of mind-- our sanity-- edifices of substance and power, but put them under enough stress and they quickly collapse. 

All human institutions are temporary (secular ones anyway). They might last our lifetime or our parents lifetimes, or our children's, but this is no guarantee they can long survive an unstable, wholly unpredictable future. It's lunacy to believe they can.

ONE WONDERS, after the events this past week, and what happened January 6, when an enormous mob invaded the U.S. Capitol in a scene out of Carlyle's The French Revolution, just how flimsy esteemed institutions actually are. Are they all maintained through bluff? Is every one of them virtually made out of cardboard?

I wonder if this applies to today's literary realm, which I've long suspected operates through bluff. Via a profusion of blurbs, backslaps, and awards endlessly doled out to authors of whom no one in the greater culture has ever heard. There are today no literary giants, only enervated caretakers going through the motions of having a vital and relevant literature, while said authors in every genre regurgitate what's already been done.

What would happen to that world if it were to undergo stress-- if it faced the relentless pressure of dynamic alternatives? 

Do Animals Have Souls?

 I was thinking about that question after seeing this photo of Oliver, a cat who's gone missing in Peterborough, which I think is in the UK.

Have you ever seen a more soulful expression?

ARE BOOKS OBSOLETE?

CAN ZEENS SAVE PRINT?

The problem with books is they haven't changed in hundreds of years, they're completely predictable and in an ADHD world they excite no one.

Enter zeens-- a new creation whose colorful presentation is designed to attract the unwary back to reading. A zeen better emphasizes the aura of analog via visual and tactile effects which digital can't duplicate. 

The only way to adequately judge those effects is to order a copy. 

On sale at New Pop Lit's POP SHOP, and soon at other fine places.

Literary Fan Magazine-- Now Available!

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO DEPARTMENT

Yes, it's not too late to purchase your copy of the most unique literary publication on the planet-- Literary Fan Magazine. Filled with photos of literary celebrities, literary News, Opinion, and Gossip, and a striking action cover photo of up-and-coming lit talent C. A. Shoultz. This is one not to miss.

Purchase it today at New Pop Lit's POP SHOP while supplies last. They're going fast!

Who Killed John F. Kennedy?

THIS is a question I address in an article at Medium.com entitled,

"Dynamic Implausibilities and the JFK Assassination."

Feedback welcomed! 

Easy Last-Minute Christmas Shopping

 

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Further, your ordered copy will be sent to designated giftee within one business day, first class mail, in a special silver-colored holiday envelope.

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<<<<>>>>

Which Story Is Better?

GEORGE SAUNDERS VERSUS NICK GALLUP

 Currently New Pop Lit has a Reading Challenge! ongoing-- an opportunity to read two recent short stories and compare them in a brief (25 to 500 words) review that would be posted within days at the New Pop Lit NEWS blog.

Who's game? Anyone?

(So far we've had two comparisons offered, here and here.)

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For me, George Saunders has always been a puzzling writer-- though I suppose it's not puzzling why he's widely published and lauded.

Saunders turns standard populist writing practice on its head. At one time, authors (and more, moviemakers) would offer a romanticized depiction of actual life, as both incentive and escape for the intended audience: the masses, including those struggling.

George Saunders offers a wildly exaggerated version of reality-- exaggerated in the other direction, depicting lower class life as grotesque, deformed, and diseased. We can't be sure of the intended audience-- but we do know his actual audience, which isn't the masses, but instead, those who are well-educated and affluent. Those who read The New Yorker magazine, for instance.

Which I guess means Saunders' work isn't in any way populist.

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If you can, read and compare the two stories!

Comic Book Fiction Without the Pictures

 

THE LATEST zeen from New Pop Lit is written by myself--

CRIME CITY U.S.A.

The slim publication contains a ton of artistic ideas. A hyper-noir story enclosed within a somewhat punk design, with a 1920's melodrama vibe. Sound like a mixed-up clash of motifs? 

We're just trying to be unique.

Order the zeen here today!

Reinventing the Literary Journal

DEBUT OF EXTREME ZEEN

Yes, it's here. The first literary journal since the 1920's to leap into an entirely new aesthetic direction. The first of many such experiments which will redefine what the presentation of literary art looks like.

Strictly an analog product-- one which needs to be held in the hand and gently fondled for maximum impact.

Don't be left behind. Purchase Extreme Zeen NOW at the new Pop-Lit Shop.

Thank you in advance.

Are Bernie and Biden Too Old to Run for President?

A NEW GERONTOCRACY?

ARE Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden too old to run for President?

Bernie was born September 8, 1941, which makes him 78 years old as of this writing. He'll be 79 when he takes office, if he wins.

Joe Biden was born November 20, 1942. He's 77, will be 78 when/if he takes office. Either would be the oldest President ever-- and it wouldn't be close.

(Both men pre-date Baby Boomers.)

By point of comparison, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are five years younger now than Sanders, many years after they left office.

Bill Clinton first won election for President in 1992. Bush, in 2000. (A more recent former President, Barack Obama, who also served two terms, is a full twenty years younger than Bernie Sanders.)

The oldest President ever was Ronald Reagan, who was closing in on 78 years of age the day he left office, after a full two terms as President. Which was younger than Bernie Sanders is today.

If Bernie wins, he'll be 83 after one term; 87 after two. Unexplored territory for the most stressful job on the planet.

ANOTHER GERONTOCRACY

The most notorious recent gerontocracy was that during the latter days of the Soviet Union. Decrepit men running a decrepit empire.

How old were they?

Brezhnev died in office at age 75. Andropov died in office at age 69. Chernenko died in office at age 73. All younger than both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are now.

THE COUNTER ARGUMENT

Then again, maybe Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are the Tom Brady and Drew Brees of the political world. Have to give them credit for ignoring mere numbers and chronology.

Moses, after all, lived to 120.

ANALOGIES

Joe Biden, in this person's opinion, was pushed out there as an alternative to Bernie Sanders, whose Marxist beliefs scare many people. The support for Sanders, especially from young people-- particularly college-type young people; the lumpen intelligentsia-- seems genuine.

Which strikes me as one of history's hopeless causes, propelled by emotion, not facts or logic. (Which is ironic about self-designated hard-eyed materialists.)

One could call it "The Collective Dream." Movements that are beyond quixotic.

Examples from history include the later Crusades, or the several Polish rebellions in the 18th and 19th centuries, or the Sioux Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee in 1890. All fights against overwhelming odds. All doomed to failure.

Another example comes from sports, in the doomed comeback of former Heavyweight Boxing Champion James J. Jeffries out of soft retirement, as the "Great White Hope" pushed in the ring against Jack Johnson.

Even though Jeffries hadn't had a fight in five years, and had ballooned to over 300 pounds before beginning training for the match, and had not one tune-up fight, his optimistic backers (including Jack London) assured themselves he was unbeatable, and would surely win. They saw what they wanted to see in the former champ-- a campaign based on hope-- not what was actually there. (Jeffries was knocked out.)

I see the same phenomenon in the current campaign of Bernie Sanders. But I could be wrong.

The Multidimensional Short Story

What have I been up to the past months?

For one thing, helping to develop the "3-D" multidimensional short story. One has been released here:

"Vodka Friday Night"

Behind the Wall

RECENTLY I made a post at the New Pop Lit NEWS blog about multi-dimensional thinking. (Read it here.) We at NPL intend to soon apply these ideas to art.

IN SO DOING, we've been scouring through a host of obscure stories, novels, and movies searching for elusive examples of the point we're trying to make.

Among the more obscure works we've found is the 1966 remake of Beau Geste, written and directed by pulp novelist Douglas Heyes.

https://rarefilmm.com/2017/07/beau-geste-1966/

Yes, the film is cheap, melodramatically acted, and scantly true to its original source. BUT, its structure consists of some fairly imaginative thinking.

The setting: an isolated fort of the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. A patrol approaches the fort. All they see: a wall, with smoke coming from behind it. A member of the patrol fires a rifle in the air. In return: shots, from the fort. Then they hear more shots.

A survivor is found inside the fort. He takes the story back to the beginning-- and the narrative progresses to the present. The scenes from the opening of the movie are replayed, but, simultaneous to the approach of the patrol, we see what happens inside the fort. Behind the wall.

Why is this important? Because the movie asks the question we ask of a person, and of events, in fiction and in life: What's behind the wall? WHAT is the full story? Then the movie answers the question. Simple, but basic. A template upon which to build similar ideas.

A mark, by the way, of the movie's obscurity is that only eleven reviews of it are posted at the popular IMDB website.