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Post by dem bones on Oct 28, 2008 8:38:42 GMT
Ron Goulart - An Informal History Of The Pulps (Ace, 1973: Originally published 1972 as Cheap Thrills. Reprinted under that title - with additional material - by Hermes Press, 2007) The Pulpwood Era Heroes For Sale Soldiers Of Fortune, etc A. K. A. The Shadow Thank You, Masked Man Doc Savage And His Circle Special Agents Dime Detectives Cowboys Tarzan And The Barbarians Super Science Odds And Ends Penny A WordBlurb: Spanning the years between the dime novels of the 19th century and today's paperbacks, pulp magazines provided millions with their first and only taste of "literature."
The noble, resourceful heroes of those gripping tales of fiction, along with their monstrous, evil antagonists, were depicted on cheap paper, and housed in lurid covers that shocked all but the near-blind.
There was THE SHADOW, scourge of the underworld, DOC SAVAGE, superhuman adventurer, and THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE, sleuth extraordinaire, as well as the breathtaking exploits of World War I sky fighters, mad scientists, TARZAN and a host of now-immortal writers.
The printed word has indeed be--come alive in that most vigorous and thrilling of literary eras. Illustrating pulphack's remarks on the The Avenger: Red Moon thread that his esteemed breed do, in the main, take time and effort over their work, I note that, for it's recent republication, Goulart has revised and fleshed out the original Cheap Thrills rather than take the easy "just go ahead and reprint it" option. I've yet to see a copy, so what follows is relevant to the Ace edition, possibly not so the Hermes. Those of you who have The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror And The Supernatural will have already encountered an edited version of the sequence tackling Weird Tales and the Shudder pulps.You'd expect the man who gave us the tits 'n bums extravaganza that was the Vampirella series to maybe have some sympathy with the 'Sex & Sadism' brigade. Evidently not. " .. there were helpless maidens assaulted by lascivious goat-men, small town girls attacked by voodoo snake men, dancing girls hypnotised by lustful Chinese illusionists. Young couples had their honeymoons blighted by putty-skinned cavemen or by inquisitorial octogenarians. There is considerable torture carried on in the latter-day horror pulps and a great deal of fascination with pain. Deformities, maimings, disembowelings are all presented in explicit, often loving detail. You'll have to take my word for this, since this is one genre I am refraining from quoting." Considering he's written several novels in the genre, Goulart devotes surprisingly little space to horror titles, lumping Weird Tales and the aforementioned shudder pulps in with love story and sports adventure titles in the Odds & Ends chapter. His preference would appear to be for series' featuring tough guy heroes battling it out with super-villains in fancy dress (he also favours the good guy winning). Not that it matters. The books primary importance is as a history of an exciting episode in American pop culture which dovetails just so with E. S. Turner's superlative Boys Will Be Boys (Michael Joseph, 1948), a glorious celebration of the British pulp tradition from the Gothic The Monk rip-offs through to Dick Barton. Goulart saves the best 'til last: several of the better known names get to have say, and it's tempting to quote the whole five pages and have done with it! You soon come to realise what these guys were up against. Most of them began writing during the depression and at least one facet of Russell 'Bruno Fischer' Gray's story seems typical. He was editing Socialist Call, the official voice of the Socialist Party, when one of his friends told him there was money to be made in the pulps. Gray picked up a pile of horror titles and set about aping the style. His first story was accepted, he quit his job, and spent the next two decades freelancing for the pulps, during the course of which he made the 'Sex & Sadism' genre his own. Frederick C. "The Molemen Want Your Eyes" Davis comes over as an eminently practical human being, and then there's a deadpan Norman Daniels. "I know what you're after, but there isn't anything glamorous about writing in any medium .... I sold the first story I ever wrote, sold the second and decided this was for me. I didn't sell any more for a year .... Before long, I was doing a number of contract novels, the 45,000 features used in the pulps in those days. I wrote G-Men, The Phantom Detective, The Candid Camera Kid, The Black Bat, Nick Carter, Doc Savage .... I've forgotten how many and their titles. I wrote under so many names, I had to keep a file so I'd know who was who when I wrote the by-line."
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