About Literary Pop

Literary pop is an art form that blends pop music and narrative fiction into musical stories, novellas, and novels. Although they can be transformed into musical films and plays (traditional “musicals”), literary pop is meant to be consumed in the mind’s eye—or ear— through simultaneous reading and listening. it was invented by singer, songwriter, and novelist Morty Shallman.

The term “literary pop” also defines a genre of songs that have been created for the specific purpose of functioning in a larger narrative structure. 

Love’s Oblivion, A Novel in Twelve Pop Songs 

Shallman’s first experiment in Literary Pop with his 12-song album, Love’s Oblivion, A Novel in Twelve Pop songs. In Love’s Oblivion, each song serves as a chapter in the larger narrative or Novel. It was released in 2002 via CDbaby.com 

Last of the Zacharys, A Novel with Songs 

Shallman’s second and more ambitious effort is Last of the Zacharys, widely known as the world’s first “Novel with Songs.” In this work, a full-length literary novel is melded with 44 original songs that appear in the narrative. In LOTZ, the songs serve a variety of functions: 1) they are songs that are explicitly performed by the characters in the book. 2) They are songs that appear, much as in a musical, to carry on the plot of the book, or 3) They are songs that are performed by imaginary artists in bar scenes and/or to comment on the events in the narrative. 

Version 1.0 was released worldwide via Smashwords in 6/2010 as an ebook with links to stream the songs off the web on morty.org. The latest available version online is 1.6.

Version 2.0, Book 1, was released in late 2019 as an “enhanced” ebook in which the songs are embedded as mp3s into the file and can be played by the reader/listener as they read along. Since the enhanced ebook is a larger file, Shallman broke it up into three parts, each of which will be independently released via Morty’s website.

Pop Fiction—an neo-pop indie noir musical thriller

Shallman’s third experiment in Literary Pop is his indie noir neo-noir thriller, “Pop Fiction.” In Pop fiction, each of the four songs corresponds to the acts in a traditional screenplay structure, with song one serving as ACT 1, songs two and three serving as ACT 2, and song 4 serving as ACT 3. In addition to the song/sections, additional voice-over narratives were added to narrate and contextualize the four songs that comprise the larger work. Pop fiction was released worldwide in early 2018 as an audio EP and digital ebook with songs embedded into a pdf.