Alt Lit

More on the Death of Alt Lit

HTML Giant

(Leading Alt Lit website HTML Giant is scheduled to stop activity this week. Does their logo show their confused mentality?)

QUESTION: Did the literary establishment invest too heavily in the “Alt Lit” scene?

The future of Alt Lit writing was always a dead end. Trends in contemporary status quo literature were pushed by Alt Litsters to their illogical extreme. Fiction that was self-involved and unreadable became more unreadable. Poetry that was thin and irrelevant became thinner and even more irrelevant.

The problem was that the trendy young writers the media establishment nurtured and hyped were centered in one community. Brooklyn. American literature can’t and shouldn’t be defined by a collection of pampered brats in Brooklyn!

Fortunately, the ebook revolution is changing all dynamics.

Will Alt Lit writers change their mindset and their writing to fit into a changing literary environment?

We’ll be posting more on these questions here and throughout the http://www.newpoplit.com site.

But what do you think?

-K.W.

Questions for Melville House

Tao book cover

These are the questions we would’ve asked Melville House about the Alt Lit scandals had they responded to our request. (See previous posts.)

1.) Do you regret publishing Tao Lin’s novels Richard Yates and Shoplifting from American Apparel?

2.) Have sales of the books gone up with the publicity over the Tao Lin scandal?

3.) Isn’t Tao Lin’s apparent glorification of shoplifting a reflection on his character, or lack thereof?

4.) Do you consider Tao Lin an important writer?

5.) Is Alt Lit the direction in which American literature should be going?

Fairly innocuous questions. It’s not too late for them to respond!

-K.W.

Can Tao Lin Stay Cool?

tao lin II

The question everyone in the tiny realm of established literature is asking: Can Alt Lit author Tao Lin maintain his cool while controversy swirls around him? Or: Can we save this guy? (The established publishing system and more than a few of its members have invested heavily in Tao. He’s not an Ed Champion who can easily be tossed aside.)

Will the flames of scandal reach through Tao’s solipsistic bubble? For someone who believes there is no right or wrong– there just is— does he even care about any of it? (He will if the paychecks stop coming.)