Defending the Pulps. At least some of them...

My chosen topic: Pulp Fiction. I don't mean the "Bring Out the Gimp/ Royale with Cheese" Tarantino film of the same name, but rather the stories that fall under the category title. I tend to read an awful lot, and lately more than ever I've been on a big short story kick. Many of the anthologies I read feature stories originally printed in pulp magazines. The Pulps, for those who don't know, flourished in the early part of last century, with their heyday in the 30's. They were the forerunners of comic books and featured primarily adventure stories and detective fiction, although horror and science fiction pulp magazines were among the most popular as well. The literati of the time regarded pulp magazines with the same level of contempt that I regard the entire Romance genre and the writings of Anne Rice; that is, to say, a high level (I'd rather rub shit in my hair than read either of these things). Being seen reading a pulp magazine back then was kinda like being caught with an issue of Juggs (fine publication though it may be), and generally pulps suffered from the stereotype of really bad writing pandering to the lowest of the literate unwashed.

While it's true that the pulps did showcase some of the worst hacks imaginable and offer some of the crappiest writing ever read, this stereotype is, like most stereotypes, relatively undeserved. Some terrific stories, characters, and writers came from the pulp genre and their influence endures. And it's not like bad writing died with the pulps; one need look no further than the Harlequin romance shelves or the aforementioned Anne Rice to see that not only does bad writing persist, it's lucrative.

Critics of the pulp stories tend to point to the fact that in many cases character development is nonexistent, plots are cliched, and dialogue is stilted at best, completely ridiculous at worst. They also point to the blatant racism that permeates the genre. There is some truth in all of these assertions, but in order to be a critic one must put things in perspective, which I shall now do for y'all.

Character development IS nonexistent in many pulp stories, and the reason why is simple: it doesn't really matter. Pulp stories are fairly straightforward and rarely are they of any significant length that would require the reader to have any more information about characters than the author presents. The exception to this generality are serialized stories and stories with returning characters, and even then, character development beyond the superficial is rare. What motivates Conan the Barbarian? Pretty much nothing more than gold and plump wenches (same here). Who really gives a crap what motivates Doc Savage? Usually it's no more than saving the girl and beating the bad guy. The reader just wants to be thrilled by his latest adventures. Neither one of these characters is as complex as Hamlet or Raskolnikov; we don't need to identify with them-in fact, you really can't! That's the POINT. If realism was the story's goal, it wouldn't have been in the pulps in the first place.

Pulp stories in many cases ARE cliched. Then again, so are many stories and movies nowadays. How many horror movies have you seen where the camera lingers close-up on a character from the front view, then the character turns around and AAAAA!!!! There's the bad guy....right behind them all along! You couldn't see him because of the extreme close up....but we're supposed to be terrified like we haven't seen this device 800 times and didn't know it was coming. Or the beginning of every action movie where we meet the brother/buddy/girlfriend of the cop/soldier/ex-con-trying-to-go-straight and we KNOW that by no later than 20 minutes into the movie, that person is gonna be dead, killed by the bad guy, and the hero must get revenge, and...awww, you know the rest.

One of the things I noticed when reading Raymond Chandler years ago was that the dialogue was Oh-so cliche....it was like every lame private eye character I'd ever seen in movies, tv, and comics. Until I realized that Chandler wasn't cliche, he practically INVENTED the whole private eye genre. Everything that came after him was the cliche! Anyone who has ever read Mickey Spillane knows that dialogue in pulps can be pretty ridiculous; his character Mike Hammer talks like I did in high school-there's no one in the world tougher than Mike Hammer, and he'll tell you that himself every chance he gets. (Spillane even spoofed his own character in Lite Beer commercials years back). Other characters really force you to suspend your disbelief while they wax philosphical. Then again, try reading any of James Fenimore Cooper's crap and tell me you believe his characters would talk as they're written.

As far as the racism goes, it's there in buckets. Sax Rohmer wrote book after book about Dr. Fu Manchu and the "Yellow Peril"; the only thing that stood in the way of the East taking over the world were two stalwart (and very white) Englishmen. Rohmer alternately praised and denigrated the Chinese in his books; Fu Manchu was brilliant, refined and cultured, but ultimately evil, and in control of a vast army of "sub-races"(in other words, non-white). I recently read Robert E. Howard's tales of Solomon Kane and lost count of the amount of times I read the phrase "black savages". H.P. Lovecraft named a protagonist's black cat "Nigger-Man". Even the Tarzan tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs make Tarzan, a guy raised by APES fer Chrissakes, more "civilized" than the native Africans he hangs with. To these criticisms I can only say it was a much less enlightened time...these stories were written decades before the Civil Rights movement. One must read them for what they are-entertaining and in some cases well-written, but certainly not politically correct-which is probably why Rohmer's work is out of print in the US(but easily enough found in used bookstores).

What's really exceptional about the pulps, however, are the writers themselves. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan, inspired a whole genre known as sword and sorcery. Robert Howard was the most prolific, and some say the greatest, pulp writer ever. Howard published assloads of stories in his short career until he blew his own brains out at age 30. Not all were winners, to be sure, but to say he had an influence on fantasy literature is a vast understatement.-kinda like saying Shakespeare wrote some decent plays. Same thing with H.P. Lovecraft...his stuff went largely ignored for decades after the death of the pulps but is now more popular than it's ever been, especially around these parts, as Lovecraft was from Providence.

What blows my mind about these guys is the sheer drive they possessed. Both of them were self-educated in a time where there was no easy access to information. There was no Internet, and even the libraries weren't as well stocked as they are these days. Robert Howard lived in rural Texas, and yet was more informed about ancient history than most college professors. He created an entire age of civilization as a backdrop for his tales. In order to get his education, he had to request books from libraries all over the place. He wrote tons of letters (many to Lovecraft) in addition to his stories. Lovecraft created an entire Mythos, and also was a prolific letter-writer, and read more than a few books himself-check out his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature if you want a GREAT resource for some good horror reading. Most importantly, they loved to write. Financial motivation for these guys was at best secondary; they contributed to the pulps regularly at a time when they were paying half a cent a word. Not even Howard, by far the most prolific of the pulp writers, was a wealthy man, and most couldn't even make a living with what they wrote for the pulps. I admire them for the fact that they had more motivation than I ever had-they wrote stories instead of just talking about it like I do while sitting on my ever-widening ass.

I recently saw two films about these two authors, which is why I guess I'm focusing on them above all others. One was a documentary about Lovecraft called The Eldritch Influence, which features interviews with contemprary writers like Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell and Brian Lumley-who, in my humble opinion, is a pompous ass (a term my friend AnnMarie has used to describe yours truly on more than one occasion). Interesting and at times very campy (like the interview with the professor from Lovecraft's fictional Miskatonic University) it's worth seeing if you're one of the people reading this (if you're still reading this) who is into Lovecraft, but isn't likely to be readily available outside of a specialty shop (like the comic shop I patronize-The Annex, in Newport, R.I. Tell Wayne I said howdy.).

The other movie is more mainstream (which means you could probably find it if you looked)...it's called The Whole Wide World, and it's a film all about Robert E. Howard and what a complex guy he was. It features Vincent D'Onofrio as Howard, and Renee Zellweger as his girlfriend Novalynne Price, who later wrote memoirs about Howard and his life. I wasn't expecting much, but it surprised me. Mostly I was surprised anyone would make a movie about Robert E. Howard, but it's actually a pretty good flick.

Anyway, that's my sermon. I'm sure I'll have more to say about writing in general and pulps in particular-if you have any comments sound off. I'm off to read some more.