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Recommended reading
The lurid world of pulp
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Tag Archives: Country Place
Pulp Friday: American Pulp – How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street
I’ve always been fascinated by how relatively insignificant objects you’ve lost in the course of moving around in life can later come to hold important meaning. An example for me is a black and white photograph of my father on holiday in Queensland’s Surfers Paradise in the early 1960s. It was destroyed when my friend’s shed, in which I stored all my possessions while travelling overseas, burnt down. I find it hard to recall what else was lost, but I remember that photo. Dad is sitting in a chair on the beach, wearing dark sunglasses and reading a paperback by the prolific Australian pulp writer Carter Brown.
Two things gave me cause to think about this picture recently. The first was the hype around the Anzac Day centenary commemorations – I’ll explain that connection later. The second was reading US academic Paula Rabinowitz’s beautifully written, highly original work, American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street.
Most people view pulp as either exploitative lowbrow culture or highly collectable retro artefact. Yet pulp has a secret history which Rabinowitz’s book uncovers. Her central thesis is that cheap, mass-produced pulp novels not only provided entertainment and cheap titillating thrills, but also brought modernism to the American people, democratising reading and, in the process, furthering culture and social enlightenment.… Read more
Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Carter Brown, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers
Tagged Alan Yates, Allen Lane, American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street, Ann Petry, Avon, Carter Brown, Chester Himes, Country Place, D’Arcy Niland, Gold Medal, Horwitz Publications, If He Hollers Let Him Go, Katherine Forrest, Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels 1950-1965, Paula Rabinowitz, Queer Pulp, Ruth Park, Susan Styrker, Tereska Torres, The Big Smoke, The Harp in the South, Women’s Barracks