tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post5608202023272893318..comments2024-03-28T10:31:55.774-07:00Comments on The Passing Tramp: Pulp Poseurs: Paula Rabinowitz's American Pulp (2014) and the American Paperback RevolutionThe Passing Tramphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-87817652228279820442014-11-14T02:51:10.445-08:002014-11-14T02:51:10.445-08:00Thanks Tracy. I love the reference books too and ...Thanks Tracy. I love the reference books too and am pleased you bought Clues and Corpses. I love to read the older reviewers.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-25618411779636672942014-11-11T13:16:29.131-08:002014-11-11T13:16:29.131-08:00By the way, I was talking this over with Bill Pron...By the way, I was talking this over with Bill Pronzini, and he favors a stricter definition of the word pulps-- (one confined to the actual pulp magazines--but ironically he was a co-editor of a book also called "American Pulp," an anthology that includes stories that were not pulp by the strict definition. He told me he had nothing to do with that title!<br /><br />The pulp mags represented a lot of things but seem for a lot of people to have become synonymous with hard-boiled and noir and crime fiction. Certainly hard-boiled was a big part of pulp mags, but a lot of other things were part of that world too: adventures, westerns, horror, sci-fi, romance, even traditional mystery! Hulse points out that Agatha Christie was popular in pulp mags in the 1920s, before she moved up to the slicks. So were J. S. Fletcher and Carolyn Wells! None of these authors are what you would call sexy or sleazy, however, and I don't think anyone today thinks of Hercule Poirot as pulp (unless it's The Big Four)! But Agatha Christie, unlike a lot of the authors Rabinowitz discusses, actually was in the pulps.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-41754141924676751702014-11-11T13:04:31.356-08:002014-11-11T13:04:31.356-08:00That's an interesting point, Noah. I honestly...That's an interesting point, Noah. I honestly don't think Rabinowitz means to be pejorative, but I think one might make the argument that there perhaps is come unintended condescension in the idea "the masses" can't appreciate higher art unless it's "pulped," as she says, so that there's a girl in a bra on the cover or what have you. One literal meaning of "pulped" is "crushed into a soft, shapeless mass"--which doesn't sound very appealing! Originally when a book was pulped the copies were withdrawn from the market and destroyed, the paper recycled into God knows what. I suppose you could say that paperbacks are recycled or repurposed hardbacks in a figurative way!<br /><br />Of course when publishers put sexy covers on Faulkner or what have you, they were, surely, trying to broaden the market for his challenging books. And by broaden the market I suppose we mean in part reaching people who might not have been learning about Faulkner in college lit classes. The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-24844255890274197242014-11-11T08:06:47.609-08:002014-11-11T08:06:47.609-08:00I've been thinking about this book since you f...I've been thinking about this book since you first mentioned it, Curtis, and I'm getting it through my local library as best I can. What I'm wondering is, is this use of the word "pulp" an attempt to pejoratively label the provision of good books to the lower social classes? I'll be looking at this book with an eye to the author intimating, "Only people who read books in hardcover are the right people to be reading them. And since I don't like that poor people want to read too, I'll label the way they get those books as 'pulp' to make academics think worse of them." It kind of sounds like she's heading in that direction. <br />I agree with TracyK that this misuse is like the currently soft, mushy definitions of words like "noir" and "cozy". People just don't seem to know what the hell they're talking about and use words any old way. Including that "cozy noir" volume that was such a bizarre idea. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-55341647160705419322014-11-10T13:55:33.999-08:002014-11-10T13:55:33.999-08:00It sounds like the definition or understanding of ...It sounds like the definition or understanding of the meaning of "pulp" is as confusing as some other terms that get used ... such as noir and cozy, for example. This is a very enlightening post and I will have to come back and re-read it and digest more of it. <br /><br />I recently read O'Brien's Hardboiled America and am now reading Brian Ritt's Paperback Confidential, and have some of the others you mentioned, including Clues and Corpses. I love reading mystery reference books even when they have conflicting info or views.TracyKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08303342674824383688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-87463659701240034262014-11-10T04:54:57.998-08:002014-11-10T04:54:57.998-08:00Thanks very much for that link -- it looks in gene...Thanks very much for that link -- it looks in general to be an interesting site, the rest of which I'll explore when I'm less pressed for time!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-62311410605150902682014-11-10T00:59:20.188-08:002014-11-10T00:59:20.188-08:00Maybe "neo-pulp" will do it! And don...Maybe "neo-pulp" will do it! And don't forget ePulp!<br /><br />I was frustrated by the Rabinowitz book, because it has some interesting material in it, but I can't really see,as I explained at great length above, what it accomplishes to label all mass-market paperbacks of that period "pulp" (she includes non-fiction as well). I always thought the term "paperback revolution" served us just fine.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-34169211867897881332014-11-10T00:50:52.639-08:002014-11-10T00:50:52.639-08:00Thanks so much for the comment, and the very inter...Thanks so much for the comment, and the very interesting link. (Mike Ashley contributed an essay to Mysteries Unlocked, by the way.) It's great to have your input on this matter.<br /><br />I know there are degrees by one can move away from the strictest definition of pulp. Clearly, as Jon Breen indicates, designating paperbacks by Spillane or Jim Thompson as "pulp" or, "pulp style" is a far cry from branding Jane Austen and Henry James paperbacks as pulp, like Rabinowitz does! (There are illustration of paperback editions of James' The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller in her book.)<br /><br />To stick with these examples, I tend first to think of Spillane as "hard-boiled" and Jim Thompson as "noir," though certainly one sees the stylistic influences of "pulp," much of which was hard-boiled, of course.<br /><br />Here's a nice discussion by a UK academic: http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/Paperback%20Originals.htmlThe Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-74702993216709962642014-11-09T23:33:19.368-08:002014-11-09T23:33:19.368-08:00It does seem to have expanded the definition of &#...It does seem to have expanded the definition of 'pulp' to a point that that it becomes useless in all practical ways. Certainly in Britain the distance between popular and serious fiction is blurred by the fact that Penguin books began publishing stuff like Agatha Christie and Ernest Hemmingway in cheap paperback editions from 1935. Cheap paperback is not pulp, and only those stories actually published in pulp magazines are really pulp fiction. Certainly anything published after the downfall of the pulps that is still obviously influenced by them needs a new name. A lot of those huge paperback series like THE DESTROYER that were published in the 70s and 80s can be categorised as something like 'Neo-Pulp'.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-2360335811111484012014-11-09T20:39:56.625-08:002014-11-09T20:39:56.625-08:00An extremely interesting and useful piece -- many ...An extremely interesting and useful piece -- many thanks for it. Personally I've always (if I've thought about it all) regarded pulp as as style, rather than as something defined by the actual mode of publication; yes, obviously, the style is that born of the pulp magazines, but it seems to me not to matter a lot if a particular piece of fiction found its first publication in a paperback (or even a hardback or a radio broadcast!) rather than a magazine, so long as it's in the pulp style.<br /><br />I've just checked in the third edition of the <i>The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction</i> and I see its editors take the same tack. (Disclosure: I was deeply involved in the second edition.) In the relevant article, Peter Nicholl and Mike Ashley say: <a href="http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/pulp" rel="nofollow">"When used metaphorically the word "pulp" describes the quality and style of the fiction published in the pulp magazines – and, by extension, any similar fiction, no matter in what format it was published. The term is still used in this sense today, 40 years after the death of the pulps proper.</a> Of course, that's a long way from the definition that Rabinowitz is using which, I very much agree, seems quite useless.<br /><br />I do love that <i>Baskervilles</i> cover, though!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-9551297279466224872014-11-09T18:29:08.035-08:002014-11-09T18:29:08.035-08:00No, I didn't mean to give the impression that ...No, I didn't mean to give the impression that that's what she is saying. She's saying the paperback revolution made both Mickey Spillane and D. H. Lawrence, say, more accessible to people, not that all the same people necessarily were reading both.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-47812122683749885882014-11-09T18:15:58.219-08:002014-11-09T18:15:58.219-08:00I can only go by what you’ve written, not having r...I can only go by what you’ve written, not having read Rabinowitz's book, but it sounds to me like she’s possibly made the mistake of seeing the paperback market as a single gigantic market? Which it obviously was not. It was a whole series of different markets, markets which certainly overlapped but which were just as certainly quite separate. The people who bought Scott Fitzgerald in paperback were not the same people who bought Mickey Spillane paperbacks, the people who bought Mickey Spillane paperbacks were not the same people who bought Agatha Christie paperbacks, the people who bought Agatha Christie paperbacks were not the same people who bought Ian Fleming paperbacks, the people who bought Ian Fleming paperbacks were not the same people who bought Robert A. Heinlein paperbacks. <br /><br />There was quite a bit of overlap, but then there’s quite a bit of overlap between people who like Cole Porter and people who like Beethoven but Cole Porter and Beethoven cannot be considered to be part of a single music market.<br /><br />She couldn’t have made such an egregious error, could she? Please reassure me.dfordoomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02306293859869179118noreply@blogger.com