Miserable Love Stories by Alex Bernstein

A ST. VALENTINE’S DAY BOOK REVIEW

There was something about Barb– the way she chewed her pens and threw them out before the ink exploded. And then I’d retrieve the pens and chew where she chewed, even if they did explode. And then I’d have blue teeth for weeks. And people would go, Eugh. He’s been chewing Barb’s pens again. Loser!

-from the story “Barb.”

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THERE’S a story– “Confession”– in Alex Bernstein’s humorous new book in which a character confesses to her mother that she’s attracted to members of the opposite sex. (!)

We have our own confession to make: Alex Bernstein is a pop writer.

Like an Erich Segal (whose classic 1970 best-selling novel Love Story we also examine as part of our 2020 St. Valentine’s Day celebration), Alex Bernstein has a natural clarity of style. This enables him to add subtle emotion to his stories– emotion with greater impact because of the writing style.

Bernstein has several pieces– “Manic Pixie Dream Girl Police” one of them– which read like screenplays. As with Erich Segal, this appears to be an excellent foundation for writing in a pop fashion– a starting point from which all things become possible. 

WHY DO YOU READ?

If you read for entertainment, enjoyment, humanity, you need to read Miserable Love Stories.

Available here from Skyhorse Publishing.

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Kitty Glitter: Pop Writer

(ADULT CONTENT INCLUDED.)

A Review by Karl Wenclas

There are many kinds of pop writing, among them Noir Pop, Fun Pop, Romantic Pop, Trash Pop, Speed Pop, and Beat Pop. There’s also Extreme Pop (a variation of Trash Pop) of which the master is a mysterious individual named Kitty Glitter who’s been making waves across the internet. (See this interview at Jezebel magazine.) Obtaining fans but also receiving some of the worst (and best) ratings and most outraged reader comments ever seen at Amazon.

We’re not advocates of Extreme Pop, but we are extreme advocates of Pop writing. Kitty Glitter’s version of it is striking. Not the writing so much as the presentation of the writing– and the promotion of the presentation. Warholesque. As with Andy Warhol, the P.T. Barnum promotion itself is the art.

Is this person on to something? Satirizing American pop culture icons from Katy Perry to Star Trek– yet at the same time celebrating them. Everything about the Kitty Glitter oeuvre catches the pop culture vibe. Each of us could present our own examples to celebrate. To me, the essence of pop culture is Joan Jett and The Runaways singing “Cherry Bomb.” Kitty Glitter is out to capture that essence.

The show is outrageous. The breaking of all bounds, tastes, identities, trademarks, copyrights– pushing the limits of speech– so all that’s left is a love of cheezy pop culture. The public’s love of it.

I’ve read a draft version of Kitty’s upcoming e-book novel The Wet Clits, which may have already been released. The Kitty Glitter books are being produced fast and furiously, perhaps to feed the burgeoning public demand for them.
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His name was Pussy Burner and he rolled up onto the scene on a motorcycle that was burning fuel like it was Hell.

Clitney was the first to notice him. She noticed his hot body and giant muscles. She noticed the Judge Dredd helmet he wore that covered the top part of his face, a helmet with an insignia that looked like a twat with a swastika cut into it.

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There’s a line between outrageousness and offensiveness. Does Kitty Glitter cross it?
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“Arr!” Monster of Frankenstein said, “I am the most famous story ever, but to be real, monster is your friend. Please take care of yourself and start making music again.”

“Whatevs,” Clitney said, “I can’t make music without a band.”

“Use four track!” Monster of Frankenstein said as he used his giant green fists to smash Clitney’s TV to pieces.

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Much of it is impossibly silly.
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“I’m not scared of you,” Green Kitty said as he pulled out a switchblade, “I’m gonna cut your butt off for what you did to my sister.”

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We at New Pop Lit believe, Elon Musk style, in breaking down literature into its constituent parts and putting them back together in a new way. Kitty Glitter has some of the Pop elements down– simplicity; superficiality; humor; cliche’. But the Glitzter also makes aesthetic mistakes. More plot hooks, more consistent and defined characters might correct them.

Then again, critiquing the writing is beside the point.

The writing has flair. Amid the omnipresent obscenity, Pop flair. In a crude sense, even style.

Wayward experiment or glimpse at the literary future?

(Possible upcoming Kitty Glitter book.)

 

Temporium by Kelly Cherry

A Review by New Pop Lit

“First on the agenda today is the topic of mystery.”

This is how award-winning writer Kelly Cherry opens her collection of Fictions, Temporium: Before the Beginning to After the End.

The theme of the book is the mystery of time. Cherry takes on a subject more appropriate for a physicist or philosopher than a literary writer, but it works. She makes real to our imagination a philosopher’s questions and wonders. They’re parables, of a kind.

An early piece, “Eternity Dies,” ponders the loneliness of God, and posits the notion that God created the universe to end his loneliness.

“His thinking that thought was the First Cause. Thus even the First Cause was caused, but it was also uncaused, because it was not caused by anything that existed. It was caused before existence existed, by his thinking of his loneliness.”

This is written with a sense of humor. Kelly Cherry is playing with physics and philosophy, with God, and with us.

In “A Maiden and Her Swain” a young couple lives in the Dark Ages as if there were no time, yet time moves forward and they find they’ve aged. The tale is a reflection on the swiftness of aging– of ourselves and our civilization– but it’s also a dream. It carries the timelessness of a dream.

These are all dreams– the kind of afternoon nap dream one has beyond plot and time; a temporary plunge into eternity. You awake with a sense of melancholy, of existential loneliness. Panic. The realization that our lives are impossibly brief– we’d like to live forever in this world but forever can happen only in our dreams. Or beyond this world of matter and onrushing time. A feeling of monumental sadness. This is the feeling Kelly Cherry captures in these fictions; these stories.

Though Kelly Cherry writes in no way like Ernest Hemingway, the book is structured like his early collection, In Our Time, with short interpolations between the longer pieces.

“SIX WORDS
Dead husband taught wife to shoot.”

Wry inserts like that one.

None of the few-score pieces is longer than a few pages. Nearly all are thought-provoking or amusing. A few stand above the rest.

“Aegea,” about a space ark; “Murray the Short Order Cook”; “He Wasn’t There Again Today”; and “Reunion” are my favorites.

One striking thing about the stories is the more surreal they are, the more real they seem. They’re speculations– amid them is an awful lot of truth and life.

They’re experimental pieces, experimental not just in style, but in ideas and theme. Part essay, part poetry, part story. Or: no review can adequately capture the feeling and meaning conveyed by this book. Plunge into it yourself and read it.

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Temporium is available at Press 53.

(Photo of Kelly Cherry.)