Literary Pop

A Mash-Up of Pop Music and Literary Fiction

Literary pop is an experimental multi-media art form that blends or “mashes-up” pop music and literary fiction into musical stories, novellas, and novels. 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, including Theme Songs meant to accompany more traditional literary works. The genre, invented by singer-songwriter and novelist Morty Shallman, is experimental and evolving.

Here are Morty’s seminal excursions into this new and exciting genre:

Love’s Oblivion, A Novel in Twelve Pop Songs  (2002)

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

Last of the Zacharys, A Novel with Songs (2010)

Shallman’s second experiment in Literary Pop is LAST OF THE ZACHARYS, considered to be the World’s First “Novel with Songs.” In this work, a full-length literary novel is melded with 45 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—A Neo-Pop Indie Noir Musical Thriller (2018)

Shallman’s third experiment in Literary Pop is his indie noir neo-noir thriller, “Pop Fiction.” In Pop fiction, each of the four songs in the EP correspond 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 in an enhanced PDF file.

Theme Songs & Playlists

Morty’s latest novels, The Tyranny of Desire (2023) and War and Sex (2024) are not strictly works of Literary Pop. But that doesn’t mean music has not been used to enhance the project. Using his own unique talents as a singer, songwriter AND novelist, Morty as written and released “The Tyranny of Desire, Theme Song for the Novel” and “War and Sex - Theme Song for the Novel.”

What’s Next

Next up for Shallman’s experiments in Literary Pop will be an audiobook version of Last of the Zacharys, A Novel with Songs, and a movie musical based on Book 3 of Last of Zacharys called Wrongheaded Town. Stay tuned for updates!