Bookmark: Afterwords #2 - Pulpy Fictions

Pulp fiction - those cheaply bound paperbacks - would bring a generation of new readers to serious books, making them less intimidating with alluring art and low prices. These unabashedly commercial books were “an expression of democracy” and an affirmation that culture was for everyone. This sleaze was, somewhat paradoxically, a force for literacy and empowerment

This week, Umapagan Ampikaipakan presents an ardent argument for how these ubiquitous paperbacks, with their tawdry covers and low brow entertainment would create millions of readers across the world.

Show Notes:

i) If the history of the 21st-century pulp fiction revival is ever written, Adam Christopher's Empire State might well be seen as its starting point. Super-heroes? Check. New York City? Check. Parallel dimensions? Check. Hardboiled noir? Check. Empire State is a homage to all things pulp, a multi-genre mash-up of a novel that really holds up. Read it!

ii) You can find the best collection of contemporary pulp fiction over at Hard Case Crime. A wonderful imprint by Charles Ardai that tries to bring back the sexy paperback in an age of digital excess. You can listen to Uma and Charles Ardai lament the long lost days of the paperback here.

iii) There is a great piece on io9 about the badass women of the pulp era. In it Jess Nevins debunks that common perception that pulps were written by male writers, about male characters, for male readers. He makes the argument that pulps were in fact more progressive than mainstream fiction. Read the article here.

iv) Check out Pinterest for a great selection of tawdry pulp fiction covers. 

v) Also. Go watch Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, and Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, and The Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, and Touch of Evil, and Tomorrow is Another Day, and Double Indemnity, and Sunset Boulevard, and...