Category Archives: Sticking it the the Man Revolution and Counter Culture in Pulp and Popular Fiction 1950 1980

Blowback: late 1960s and 1970s pulp and popular fiction about the Vietnam War

Posted on December 4, 2019 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

If you are still on the fence about purchasing a copy of my new book, Sticking it to the Man: Revolution and the Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, the site CrimeReads is running a couple of extracts from the book. The first is my piece, ‘Blowback: late 1960s and 1970s pulp and popular fiction about the Vietnam War’.

The conflict in Vietnam cast a long shadow over pulp and popular fiction in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Vietnam veterans were hunted by small town redneck police in David Morrell’s 1972 novel, First Blood, dealt drugs in Vern E Smith’s The Jones Men, and staged an abortive bank heist in Dog Day Afternoon, both published in 1974. In the Lone Wolf series ex-New York cop and Vietnam veteran, Burt Wulff mounted a fourteen-book battle from 1973 to 1975 against the drug dealing criminal organisation, ‘The Network’, in which he treated the streets of America’s major cities as an extension of jungles of Southeast Asia. Vietnam was the training ground for many of the characters that populated men’s adventure and crime pulp in the 1970s. More broadly, Vietnam’s traumatic impact on American society would become a cypher through which pulp and popular fiction name checked cultural fragmentation, growing disillusionment with the American dream, dishonest and unaccountable government and corporations, and the power of the military industrial complex.… Read more

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Posted in 1970s American crime films, 1980s American crime films, Asian noir, Australian crime fiction, Australian noir, Belmont Tower Books, Black pulp fiction, Blaxsploitation, Book cover design, Crime Fiction and film set in Vietnam, Crime film, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp paperback cover art, Robert Stone, Sticking it the the Man Revolution and Counter Culture in Pulp and Popular Fiction 1950 1980

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Melbourne launch details for Sticking it to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950-1980

Posted on November 6, 2019 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

Melbourne folk, please join myself and my coeditor, Iain McIntyre, on Tuesday, December 3 for the Melbourne launch of Sticking it to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950-1980. Entry is free and the event will kick off at 6.30pm at the Old Bar, 74-76 Johnson Street, Fitzroy.

The book will be launched by Melbourne literary historian and pulp fiction fan, Stuart Kells. There will be readings from some of the novels featured in Sticking it to the Man, music from DJ Bruce Milne, and copies of the book will be available at a reduced price. We’ll also throw in a free pulp novel with every purchase. Kids are welcome.

I hope to see some of you there.

This is the second pulp and popular fiction related history book that Iain and me have done and it is a glorious, full colour volume. From Civil Rights and Black Power to the New Left and Gay Liberation, the 1960s and 1970s saw a host of movements shake the status quo. With social strictures and political structures challenged at every level, pulp and popular fiction could hardly remain unaffected. Feminist, gay, and black authors broke into areas of crime, porn, and other paperback genres previously dominated by conservative, straight, white males.

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Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Book cover design, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Horwitz Publications, New English Library, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Sticking it the the Man Revolution and Counter Culture in Pulp and Popular Fiction 1950 1980

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Early praise for Sticking it to the Man: Revolution and the Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950-1980

Posted on July 10, 2019 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

Just a quick reminder that the second pulp book that I have co-edited with Iain McIntyre, Sticking it to the Man: Revolution and the Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950-1980, will be out in a few months.

Amid trying to finalise a PhD, I have also been working with the US based designer on the layout of the book, and can I say it looks great. In the meantime, here is the advance praise that we have received about the book.

From the profane to the sacred, this scholarly, obsessive volume reveals forgotten tribes of Amazons, Soul Brothers, Hustlers, Queers, Vigilantes, Radical Feminists and Revolutionaries – the radical exploitation of gnostic pulp.

Jon Savage, author of 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded

This is the ultimate guide to sixties and the counterculture, of which I was a part. Long hair, bellbottoms, short dresses, and a kiss-my-ass attitude to the powers that be. Real meat on real bone, the stuff of one of the most unique and revolutionary generations ever, baby. You need this.

Joe R. Lansdale

This book is a story about stories—the rough-and-tumble mass fiction of the 1950s to the 80s, written to offend The Establishment and delight the rest of us. In Sticking It to the Man, McIntyre and Nette offer us a fascinating smorgasbord of (un)savory tales—the kind whose covers entice and whose texts compel.… Read more

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Posted in 1960s American crime films, 1970s American crime films, Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980, Men's Adventure Magazines, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Sticking it the the Man Revolution and Counter Culture in Pulp and Popular Fiction 1950 1980

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Farewell to Victor J. Banis, pioneer of gay pulp & popular fiction

Posted on March 16, 2019 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

I am a bit late to the sad news that Victor J. Banis, a long time writer, who some have called ‘the godfather of modern popular gay fiction’, died on February 22, after finally succumbing to cancer.

I didn’t know Banis personally, but I was very aware of his work. He published his first short story in 1963 in the Swiss gay journal, Der Kreis. He went on to write heterosexual, bisexual and gay erotic and pulp fiction for Brandon House, Greenleaf Press and Sherburne Press.

Of particular note, from 1966 to 1968, he wrote eight pulp fiction titles in his ‘Man From C.A.M.P.’ series, a overtly queer takeoff of the television spy series, Man From UNCLE. The central protagonist of the successful series, was the openly gay undercover agent, Jackie Holmes, who did battle with BUTCH (Brothers United To Crush Homosexuality). The series helped establish that gay audiences were particularly hungry for stories which portrayed characters in a fun and positive light. In doing so, Banis saw himself as playing a consciously activist role.

In all, Banis wrote over 160 books – pulp, porn, queer and straight fiction and non-fiction, under his own name and pseudonyms such as Victor Jay, Don Halliday, Jan Alexander and Lyn Benedict. He wrote everything from romance, to marital guides, to installments of the Mack Bolan Executioner series.… Read more

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Posted in Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp paperback cover art, Sticking it the the Man Revolution and Counter Culture in Pulp and Popular Fiction 1950 1980, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

While many Pulp Curry readers will be familiar with names such as Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines, I’d wager far fewer know very much about them. Fewer still would be across the details of how they came to be published and their enormous influence. Filling in the gaps in this relatively little known but important aspect of mid-20th century pulp history is Kinohi Nishikawa’s Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground.

Street Players is the story of the now defunct Los Angeles based publishing company, Holloway House. Founded by two white men, Bentley Morriss and Ralph Weinstock, throughout the 1960s it published run of the mill smut paperbacks, mainly sexology and spicy confessional stories, as well as the pin-up magazines Adam and Knight, all written by white writers and aimed at white readers.

The company’s trajectory radically changed with the release of Pimp in 1967. It appeared under the by-line, Iceberg Slim, the street name of a former Black hustler, prisoner and pimp called Robert Beck. Pimp was a huge hit. White readers enjoyed the voyeuristic peek it offered into the subterranean world of pimping. Despite the fact the Beck’s story was heavily fictionalised, Black readers saw in it a genuine slice of their urban ghetto experience.… Read more

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Posted in Black pulp fiction, Crime fiction, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980, Neo Noir, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Sticking it the the Man Revolution and Counter Culture in Pulp and Popular Fiction 1950 1980

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