I keep reflecting on the pulps. ERB and REH, HPL and so on, to varying degrees of literacy, wrote what has become the basis for genre pioneered by Poe and a few others. Flaws and all, those pulp writers pounded out manual typewriter worlds that continue to define fiction today. Was this creation or merely them occupying spaces identified in fiction since the 1700s?
By the same token, I’m embarrassed when, say, Robert Bloch cites HPL as authority in a true crime account of Ed Gein, supposedly the murderer who inspired Norman Bates and Psycho. It makes his article shallow, with none of his references rising above the juvenile.
So pulp writers are a mixed bag, mostly of lesser skill, and the concomitant lesser stature, despite the impact their work has had. It’s possible the aspects of pulp that appeals to readers so strongly is part of what keeps it anchored in the second rate; plot, melodrama, coincidence, and other ploys of the storyteller who rushes through an ad lib.
Stephen King, in a talk with college students, said HPL couldn’t write a scene. No action enlivened his baroque descriptions, his prose is purple, and his vocabulary an arch affectation. It’s where Lovecraft’s ego lurked. This would be a fatal flaw today. Perhaps it was even in the Pulp Era, during which HPL’s work was sustained mainly by one editor, that of WEIRD TALES. His stuff was sufficiently weird.
Then, had August Derleth not founded Arkham Press to preserve Lovecraft’s work between hard covers, most if not all his work would have rotted away along with the pulp paper on which it appeared. Much of what Derleth preserved had never been published. So, with all its flaws, Lovecraft’s work was lucky enough to find one or two enthusiastic supporters willing to go beyond mere fandom, into preservation.
Undoubtedly, HPL’s fiction has proven charismatic, but it’s a Lon Chaney grotesque, a quirky character actor, a minor key set against the major thematic issues of literature. On a technical level, it’s not very good at all.
Yet, somehow, it draws readership, galvanizes other writers, and inspires pastiche to eyebrow level. We’re drowning in it. It’s a sub-genre, Lovecraftian being the adjective for it. It’s a thing, as plebes grunt. It’s garish. It attracts, with its putrescent ichor and eldritch mind-blasting horror, its night-haunts and Cthulhu, et alia, loyal readers eager to write more of such stuff.
Poe wrote exceptionally well and knew it. His work is careful, well-made, and forceful. He limited a short story, by his own clearly-delineated literary theory, to “one thing changes” and it proved a remarkable rule of thumb allowing art to arise from otherwise Gothic and Romantic tropes and topoi already tired in his own time. Rather than subsuming the story with kudzu prolificacy, the eerie details in Poe’s fiction all served a single point, one being made not only in narrative, dialogue, and action but in atmosphere and vocal tone, too. He explored, and invented, genres others brushed aside or ignored. He illuminated Mystery, Horror, Science Fiction, even Humor, showing their potential. He did it all with a craftsman’s care and an artist’s eye.
From this grew the pulps, and Pulp Era boomed in the late 1890s and readers eagerly sustained it until the 1950s, when, arguably, TV eroded reading as a pulp delivery system. Radio had been there most of the Pulp Era, yes, but it involved imagination and patience, in ways TV obliterated with its flash-bang instant gratification.
Even before the 1890s there were dime novels, which made Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday into mythic figures. Prior to dime novels were penny dreadfuls, which were broadsides and pamphlets full of murder, mayhem, blood, and gore to thrill the few literate among the great unwashed masses of the Industrial Era. Diversion, or a thrill, if not well-rounded entertainment, for a penny, promising demon barbers and spring-heeled jack-booted throat-cutters, gave the destitute a harsh escapism they could grasp.
By the 1920s, much of Pulp had become the Hard-Boiled school of detective mystery fiction. Some of the best fiction written came from this; Hammett and, yes, Hemingway, “The Killers” for example. They explored this realm’s dark corners and empty streets that reflected cheap neon bar lights in rain puddles and pools of blood. Noir movies kicked in 20 years later, with DOUBLE INDEMNITY, but pulpy fiction had been lurking beforehand. Ask Bryan’s great uncle, Lamont Cranston. The Shadow knows.
So we see Pulp has a lineage much like our own. It’s rough, it’s muddy, much of it is bloody, but it’s bluntly honest. Pulp did not require much reading skill, nor patience, nor outside knowledge. It delivered its break-neck chases, its derring-do, it’s improbable escapes and astounding coincidences the way a beer wagon delivered barrels of suds. It hit the reader like a bundle of newspapers hot off the press, tossed off the delivery wagon to smack the sidewalk beside the news-stand. It could knock you down if you weren’t braced for it.
Yes, it also delivered its clear, unfair echos of racism, stereotype, jingoism, misogyny, and all manner of bigotry. Being of the people, it could hardly do otherwise in a conflicted place like America.
Much like Rock & Roll’s stance against Big Band and symphonic music, much like Punk’s reaction against over-produced high-falutin’ prog and glam rock, Pulp Fiction, unlike Tarrantino’s would-be sophisticated, derivative pilferage in his film of that name, required only rudimentary education, only superficial world experience. It let everyone in. Egalitarian, Pulp gave the working folks, the masses, engaging stories akin to the frontier’s Tall Tales, crammed with exciting plot-points and bereft of fancy phrases or recherché allusions.
Stephen King famously said, “I write the Big Macs of literature.” This catches precisely the goal of reaching as many people as possible. A naturalist, not a stylist, King gives good weight in character, story, and references anyone can identify with. His work is democratic in all the best senses. Nor is it ill-written or sloppy; far from it. King’s work is careful, controlled, and, despite the door-stop thunk of many of his books, concise. It is psychologically astute and well observed. HIs work is superb without putting on airs, or singing arias.
This is Pulp’s best legacy, serious fiction in popular form. It’s a set of excellences any write can, and probably should, aspire to, each in his, her, or its own voice and way. Sure, most stuff is mediocre. That’s statistics. Yet we see more superior books published each year than any single person could read. That percentage of writers able to rise toward an elusive set of bests, and focused on always improving, fulfills Pulp’s promise of a fictional voice of, by, and for the people. Let the academy and ivy-rotten towers of academia remain exclusionary and insular in what they award and praise. Some of that literary stuff is excellent, too; probably the same percentage. But it is in popular fiction we find what America can do when left to its own thoughts.
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