If the hair on the nape of your neck doesn’t rise when you see story titles like “Mistress of Snarling Death,” “Blood Bait for Hungry Mermaids” or, best of all, “The Mole-Men Want Your Eyes,” you should probably just scroll along. Ignore me, for I am about to take a detour off the main course of American letters and wander the meandering, weedy path of pulp fiction.
Or better yet, stroll along with me.
Now, when I talk about “pulp fiction,” I’m referring to the real thing: genre stories from the mountains of ephemeral popular literature of the early 20th century. You’re a working stiff in 1934 with an extra dime or 15 cents in your pocket. You pass a newsstand or drug store on your way home and see row after row of fiction magazines with gaudy, thrilling, enticing covers. The magazines’ titles promise a cornucopia of delights, with something for every taste.
GOLDEN FLEECE, BLACK MASK, DIME DETECTIVE, SPICY MYSTERY – “His eyes fiery, tongue hanging from slobbering lips…” – WEIRD TALES, THRILLING WONDER STORIES, DOC SAVAGE, THE SHADOW and even, if you don’t mind purchasing from under the counter, SCANDALS: STORIES OF PEOPLE LIKE THOSE YOU KNOW. Ha. If I knew someone who looked like the knockout brunette pictured on the cover of the November/December issue, I’d never get any work done.
THE CLASSIC ERA OF AMERICAN PULP MAGAZINES by Peter Haining is a nostalgic perambulation down the glory road that was the pulps. Haining, who is best known as an anthologist with an uncanny knack for finding genuine nuggets lost among the pyrite of pop culture, spends most of his time writing about the crime, fantasy and science fiction pulps as these genres represent his main areas of interest. These genres were immensely popular, although paled in numbers of titles published when compared to the Western pulps.
Many anthologies of pulp fiction have been printed since the magazines went under in the mid-1950s, victims at first of the paper shortage of World War II, and then finally of the rise of paperbacks, comic books and television. Some of the writers went on to lasting fame in slick magazines and books: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, MacKinley Kantor, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sinclair Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke all got their starts in the cheap fiction mags of the day.
But this volume concentrates on the history of the pulps, and emphasizes the artists over the writers. The book is filled with reproductions of cover art, and I promise that you will see dozens of brightly colored paintings that’ll make you want to own a copy of the magazines they once adorned. Actually, pulp cover art has become a big-time collectible. It’s hard to find since so many of the artists used the same canvas over and over again, painting over last month’s cover of THE SPIDER with this month’s cover for G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES. Given the speed with which these remarkable craftsmen produced their work, the fact that so much of it is stylistically recognizable is surprising. Look at the illustrations in this book carefully and you’ll have no trouble telling an H.J. Ward cover from SPICY DETECTIVE from a Norman Saunders’ SAUCY STORIES even without the titles.
I haven’t spent much time here writing about the history of the pulps, i.e. what the first one was (ARGOSY) or even why they’re called “pulps” (Frank Munsey, who founded ARGOSY, decided to save money on production by using the cheapest wood pulp paper), but that’s okay because you can learn about that stuff when you read the book.
At least look at the pictures. –Doug Bentin
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