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American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street
A richly illustrated cultural history of the midcentury pulp paperback
"There is real hope for a culture that makes it as easy to buy a book as it does a pack of cigarettes."―a civic leader quoted in a New American Library ad (1951)
American Pulp tells the story of the midcentury golden age of pulp paperbacks and how they brought modernism to Main Street, democratized literature and ideas, spurred social mobility, and helped readers fashion new identities. Drawing on extensive original research, Paula Rabinowitz unearths the far-reaching political, social, and aesthetic impact of the pulps between the late 1930s and early 1960s.
Published in vast numbers of titles, available everywhere, and sometimes selling in the millions, pulps were throwaway objects accessible to anyone with a quarter. Conventionally associated with romance, crime, and science fiction, the pulps in fact came in every genre and subject. American Pulp tells how these books ingeniously repackaged highbrow fiction and nonfiction for a mass audience, drawing in readers of every kind with promises of entertainment, enlightenment, and titillation. Focusing on important episodes in pulp history, Rabinowitz looks at the wide-ranging effects of free paperbacks distributed to World War II servicemen and women; how pulps prompted important censorship and First Amendment cases; how some gay women read pulp lesbian novels as how-to-dress manuals; the unlikely appearance in pulp science fiction of early representations of the Holocaust; how writers and artists appropriated pulp as a literary and visual style; and much more. Examining their often-lurid packaging as well as their content, American Pulp is richly illustrated with reproductions of dozens of pulp paperback covers, many in color.
A fascinating cultural history, American Pulp will change the way we look at these ephemeral yet enduringly intriguing books.
"There is real hope for a culture that makes it as easy to buy a book as it does a pack of cigarettes."―a civic leader quoted in a New American Library ad (1951)
American Pulp tells the story of the midcentury golden age of pulp paperbacks and how they brought modernism to Main Street, democratized literature and ideas, spurred social mobility, and helped readers fashion new identities. Drawing on extensive original research, Paula Rabinowitz unearths the far-reaching political, social, and aesthetic impact of the pulps between the late 1930s and early 1960s.
Published in vast numbers of titles, available everywhere, and sometimes selling in the millions, pulps were throwaway objects accessible to anyone with a quarter. Conventionally associated with romance, crime, and science fiction, the pulps in fact came in every genre and subject. American Pulp tells how these books ingeniously repackaged highbrow fiction and nonfiction for a mass audience, drawing in readers of every kind with promises of entertainment, enlightenment, and titillation. Focusing on important episodes in pulp history, Rabinowitz looks at the wide-ranging effects of free paperbacks distributed to World War II servicemen and women; how pulps prompted important censorship and First Amendment cases; how some gay women read pulp lesbian novels as how-to-dress manuals; the unlikely appearance in pulp science fiction of early representations of the Holocaust; how writers and artists appropriated pulp as a literary and visual style; and much more. Examining their often-lurid packaging as well as their content, American Pulp is richly illustrated with reproductions of dozens of pulp paperback covers, many in color.
A fascinating cultural history, American Pulp will change the way we look at these ephemeral yet enduringly intriguing books.
408 pages, Hardcover
First published October 19, 2014
11 people are currently reading
198 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 3, 2023
The subject of this book is fascinating.
Unfortunately, the book reads like a collection of lectures and is rambling and unfocused. There are bits and pieces of useful information scattered among what amounts to long-winded speeches.
The e-book edition was also a disappointment. Everything is in black and white, and if one is to get the proper "feel" of what old, original paperbacks looked like, then you need to see them in color.
I was disappointed in the book, though I credit the author for studying a subject that is part of cultural history but rarely examined.
Unfortunately, the book reads like a collection of lectures and is rambling and unfocused. There are bits and pieces of useful information scattered among what amounts to long-winded speeches.
The e-book edition was also a disappointment. Everything is in black and white, and if one is to get the proper "feel" of what old, original paperbacks looked like, then you need to see them in color.
I was disappointed in the book, though I credit the author for studying a subject that is part of cultural history but rarely examined.
September 5, 2017
Although dense and detailed, I was disappointed with this cultural history. The main point of the book - the subtitle (how paperbacks brought modernism to main street) - is basically proved in a couple of pages and I found the rest of the material idiosyncratic and representing the author's own collecting tastes as opposed to a true examination of the impact of pulp fiction.
November 18, 2014
Ah, the lowly paperback. It has had a powerful impact on American culture. Author Paul Rabinowitz delineates the role it has played since first appearing for sale on American newsstands, drugstores, and coffee shops in the 1930’s. Her book, American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street, examines the often overlooked influence that the cheap, pocket-sized books had on every phase of American culture.
The word pulp usually often connotes prurient, escapist literature featuring unsavory characters who live outside the moral norms ostensibly espoused by the rest of society. Rabinowitz broadens the definition, however. For her, pulp defines the character of the medium; shoddily bound coarse paper volumes that degrade quickly.
According to Rabinowitz, pulp has influenced every facet of American culture from civil rights to the feminist revolution. It set the stage for the sexual revolution of the mid-twentieth century. The paperback, more than any other medium, carried Modernist thinking, or Modernism, into cities and villages across the country. As the author writes:
"This is a story of paper, or rather of paperback books, produced in massive numbers between the late 1930s and the early 1950s These throwaway items hold within their covers a rich history of literary tastes; the point to, even reflect, a democratizing literacy and the new forms of identity and community that emerged in mid-twentieth-century America."
Curiously, the above passage is very good example of the author’s rambling, verbose writing style. If, for example, the story is about paperbacks, it follows that it would also be about paper. If the period of time for the study is from 1930 to 1950, readers know it is the mid-twentieth-century. Either “point to” or “reflect” adequately carries the thought, unless the reader is being asked to resolve the author's ambivalence.
Rabinowitz writing reflects her passion for her subject. Some passages are truly eloquent and succinct. The highly quotable lines flutter around like canaries lost in a murder of raucous crows. What eventually wears the reader down is a tedium of overwriting. Rabinowitz slings a sentence like a hammock over seven or eight lines of text and then loads it up with subordinate clauses and phrases, modifiers galore, parenthetical observations, personal asides, multiple verbs and allusions to other authors, artists, historians and philosophers. She invariably prefers the less well-known modifiers. The phrase “The demotics of reading” appears no less the 4 times within the first 80 pages of text. (Demotics, the plural form, was not recognized by Word or WordPress Spell check.) Demotic means ordinary, common or popular. Using the plural, Rabinowitz morphs the term from an adverb into a noun--commonness or popularity. Readers are usually accepting of a coinage when they are clever and easy to recognize. Not so in this case. This is writing to impress rather than inform.
Anomie, evanescent, quotidian, and totemic, as words, are impressive, but seldom heard in everyday conversation, even among academics and rarely found in paperbacks intended for the general population.
Rabinowitz writes around her subjects. Her definition of Modernism is there, of course, but sprinkled here and dribbled there when a straightforward presentation of the meaning in the context the author intends would be greatly appreciated.
Modernism, in its most pervasive form, represents a breaking away from the moral, aesthetic, social, political and theological values that prevailed through most of the 19th century and into the first few decades of the 20th. Modernism emphasizes individual autonomy over conformity to established ethical and aesthetic codes. The paperback was an effective stealth medium for tearing down old standards because it was cheap, portable, and widely available.
The author strives to make the simple point that slavery is a grave sin of America’s past. Racial discrimination continues today. The paperback put a tool in the hands of writers eager to address this evil as an unrecognized crime that goes on year after year in our communities. Paperbacks, the conveyor of sleazy sex and brutal crime stories, become the medium through which the crime of discrimination is exposed. Thus, a medium that is usually about crime becomes a tool against the ignored crime of racism. That’s what? Ironic? Making this point in writing about African-American author Richard Wright, the author explains:
"Crime, as a narrative device, enabled, as had for two of his inspirations, Theodore Dreiser and Fyodor Dostoevsky, his exploration of psychological and economic forces, showing how the two collide in an individual. But it did more for Wright – or rather he did more with it – and this is the subject of this chapter: how Richard Wright’s and Edwin Rosskam’s phototextual book, 12 Million Black Voices, supplements the crime narrative, or better, inverts it, to make clear that the crime, that which the American people (or at least white Americans) have been lied to and been lying to themselves about, was the crime of slavery and its attendant Jim Crow laws and culture of racism. This is the true crime story that Wright was exploding/exposing—America’s crypt encrypted, thoroughly evident yet utterly unrecognized, its corpse not dead by haunting us still."
Rabinowitz strains to make a several points in the above passage but simply overlooks the obvious. Wright and others used the paperback because it was there, an efficient propaganda tool, cheap, and widely distributed. The point is so self--evident. The author is over intellectualizing. The passage is representative of the style in which the book is written. It speaks for itself. Rabinowitz's propensity for leaving the choice of verbs up to the reader and telescoping qualifying phrase within qualifying phrase creates a dithering maze that obscures rather than clarifies her thoughts.
This is all such a shame. Despite the author’s lack of precision, the book has many redeeming features as it includes numerous reproductions of book covers, some in color. The notes about the artists responsible for the cover designs are intriguing. Readers will be surprised by the names of some of the artist contributors. The author’s comments about collecting and collectors are some of the best reading in the book. This is a beautifully produced volume on an engaging subject that cries out for an editor’s hand.
This article, somewhat condensed, first appeared in bookpleasures.com
The word pulp usually often connotes prurient, escapist literature featuring unsavory characters who live outside the moral norms ostensibly espoused by the rest of society. Rabinowitz broadens the definition, however. For her, pulp defines the character of the medium; shoddily bound coarse paper volumes that degrade quickly.
According to Rabinowitz, pulp has influenced every facet of American culture from civil rights to the feminist revolution. It set the stage for the sexual revolution of the mid-twentieth century. The paperback, more than any other medium, carried Modernist thinking, or Modernism, into cities and villages across the country. As the author writes:
"This is a story of paper, or rather of paperback books, produced in massive numbers between the late 1930s and the early 1950s These throwaway items hold within their covers a rich history of literary tastes; the point to, even reflect, a democratizing literacy and the new forms of identity and community that emerged in mid-twentieth-century America."
Curiously, the above passage is very good example of the author’s rambling, verbose writing style. If, for example, the story is about paperbacks, it follows that it would also be about paper. If the period of time for the study is from 1930 to 1950, readers know it is the mid-twentieth-century. Either “point to” or “reflect” adequately carries the thought, unless the reader is being asked to resolve the author's ambivalence.
Rabinowitz writing reflects her passion for her subject. Some passages are truly eloquent and succinct. The highly quotable lines flutter around like canaries lost in a murder of raucous crows. What eventually wears the reader down is a tedium of overwriting. Rabinowitz slings a sentence like a hammock over seven or eight lines of text and then loads it up with subordinate clauses and phrases, modifiers galore, parenthetical observations, personal asides, multiple verbs and allusions to other authors, artists, historians and philosophers. She invariably prefers the less well-known modifiers. The phrase “The demotics of reading” appears no less the 4 times within the first 80 pages of text. (Demotics, the plural form, was not recognized by Word or WordPress Spell check.) Demotic means ordinary, common or popular. Using the plural, Rabinowitz morphs the term from an adverb into a noun--commonness or popularity. Readers are usually accepting of a coinage when they are clever and easy to recognize. Not so in this case. This is writing to impress rather than inform.
Anomie, evanescent, quotidian, and totemic, as words, are impressive, but seldom heard in everyday conversation, even among academics and rarely found in paperbacks intended for the general population.
Rabinowitz writes around her subjects. Her definition of Modernism is there, of course, but sprinkled here and dribbled there when a straightforward presentation of the meaning in the context the author intends would be greatly appreciated.
Modernism, in its most pervasive form, represents a breaking away from the moral, aesthetic, social, political and theological values that prevailed through most of the 19th century and into the first few decades of the 20th. Modernism emphasizes individual autonomy over conformity to established ethical and aesthetic codes. The paperback was an effective stealth medium for tearing down old standards because it was cheap, portable, and widely available.
The author strives to make the simple point that slavery is a grave sin of America’s past. Racial discrimination continues today. The paperback put a tool in the hands of writers eager to address this evil as an unrecognized crime that goes on year after year in our communities. Paperbacks, the conveyor of sleazy sex and brutal crime stories, become the medium through which the crime of discrimination is exposed. Thus, a medium that is usually about crime becomes a tool against the ignored crime of racism. That’s what? Ironic? Making this point in writing about African-American author Richard Wright, the author explains:
"Crime, as a narrative device, enabled, as had for two of his inspirations, Theodore Dreiser and Fyodor Dostoevsky, his exploration of psychological and economic forces, showing how the two collide in an individual. But it did more for Wright – or rather he did more with it – and this is the subject of this chapter: how Richard Wright’s and Edwin Rosskam’s phototextual book, 12 Million Black Voices, supplements the crime narrative, or better, inverts it, to make clear that the crime, that which the American people (or at least white Americans) have been lied to and been lying to themselves about, was the crime of slavery and its attendant Jim Crow laws and culture of racism. This is the true crime story that Wright was exploding/exposing—America’s crypt encrypted, thoroughly evident yet utterly unrecognized, its corpse not dead by haunting us still."
Rabinowitz strains to make a several points in the above passage but simply overlooks the obvious. Wright and others used the paperback because it was there, an efficient propaganda tool, cheap, and widely distributed. The point is so self--evident. The author is over intellectualizing. The passage is representative of the style in which the book is written. It speaks for itself. Rabinowitz's propensity for leaving the choice of verbs up to the reader and telescoping qualifying phrase within qualifying phrase creates a dithering maze that obscures rather than clarifies her thoughts.
This is all such a shame. Despite the author’s lack of precision, the book has many redeeming features as it includes numerous reproductions of book covers, some in color. The notes about the artists responsible for the cover designs are intriguing. Readers will be surprised by the names of some of the artist contributors. The author’s comments about collecting and collectors are some of the best reading in the book. This is a beautifully produced volume on an engaging subject that cries out for an editor’s hand.
This article, somewhat condensed, first appeared in bookpleasures.com
June 8, 2016
If you love mid 20th century paperbacks, then this book is for you. I have a longer review contained on my bookblog: http://quirkyreader.livejournal.com/4...
This is a wonderful book dealing with ephemeral histrory.
This is a wonderful book dealing with ephemeral histrory.
February 6, 2017
Another academic thesis that should not have become a book. Books about books, reading, bookstores, etc. are always fun for me to read. This sounded like a fantastic read about how the lowly paperback helped democratize information. In light of the recent discussions and arguments about "fake news" and "alternative facts" and other similar ideas the book sounded like this would be especially topical on how information can be distributed to the wider masses.
Unfortunately (and perhaps as usual), my expectations were not met. The author has some interesting points to make on the story of how the paperback was cheaply and massively produced to increase the reach of the book. But the thesis is simply lost in overly wordy sentences, digressions or discussions about specific books. The text desperately needed much better editing.
There is a really fascinating topic to discuss. From the content of the books, to the designs, the covers, to the concept of the books themselves (cheap books that were not meant to last), there was a lot of ground to cover. But it's clear the author somehow got what appears to be a first draft past an editor (or more) and had it published before cutting down and polishing her work.
It's clear she did a lot of research: something like one-fifth or one-sixth of the book are the end notes and references. It's unfortunate there was no one to help her shape and format this into a really interesting history.
Like another book in the genre, 'When Books Went to War' it's clear the author is passionate about the topic but really needed to work with a stronger editor or co-author to hammer it out and refine the text. I look forward to reading a book about books that is more accessible to the everyday reader. I'd skip this one. Library if you must. It's also a brick of a book so set aside some time if you really want to work through it.
Unfortunately (and perhaps as usual), my expectations were not met. The author has some interesting points to make on the story of how the paperback was cheaply and massively produced to increase the reach of the book. But the thesis is simply lost in overly wordy sentences, digressions or discussions about specific books. The text desperately needed much better editing.
There is a really fascinating topic to discuss. From the content of the books, to the designs, the covers, to the concept of the books themselves (cheap books that were not meant to last), there was a lot of ground to cover. But it's clear the author somehow got what appears to be a first draft past an editor (or more) and had it published before cutting down and polishing her work.
It's clear she did a lot of research: something like one-fifth or one-sixth of the book are the end notes and references. It's unfortunate there was no one to help her shape and format this into a really interesting history.
Like another book in the genre, 'When Books Went to War' it's clear the author is passionate about the topic but really needed to work with a stronger editor or co-author to hammer it out and refine the text. I look forward to reading a book about books that is more accessible to the everyday reader. I'd skip this one. Library if you must. It's also a brick of a book so set aside some time if you really want to work through it.
December 4, 2014
American Pulp is a super resource for information on vintage paperbacks, with a solid chapter on lesbian pulp fiction. I originally put the book on hold at my local library in hopes of finding out more about Sloane Britain (real name: Elaine Williams.)
Unfortunately (though this is by no means the author's fault since no one seems to know much about the very talented pulp fiction writer whose style was elegant, sincere and deeply heartfelt) there is no mention of Williams or her pseudonym. Sloane Britain's These Curious Pleasures and 1st Person Third Sex are must reads for lesbian pulp fiction fans.
Apparently a very private person, Elaine Williams worked as an editor for Midwood Tower Books in the 1960s. Her pulp fiction sometimes had rare happy endings, but towards the end of her young life her tales took a sadder, darker turn. I mention this because I wish more was known about her and wonder why she isn't as well known as, say, Ann Bannon.
Paula Rabinowitz excels in her research. The bibliography and references to titles I'd never heard of before really impressed me, but (yikes!) also added much to my Kindle TBR list. For anyone with a passion for vintage paperbacks (not just lesbian pulp) this is your book! :)
Unfortunately (though this is by no means the author's fault since no one seems to know much about the very talented pulp fiction writer whose style was elegant, sincere and deeply heartfelt) there is no mention of Williams or her pseudonym. Sloane Britain's These Curious Pleasures and 1st Person Third Sex are must reads for lesbian pulp fiction fans.
Apparently a very private person, Elaine Williams worked as an editor for Midwood Tower Books in the 1960s. Her pulp fiction sometimes had rare happy endings, but towards the end of her young life her tales took a sadder, darker turn. I mention this because I wish more was known about her and wonder why she isn't as well known as, say, Ann Bannon.
Paula Rabinowitz excels in her research. The bibliography and references to titles I'd never heard of before really impressed me, but (yikes!) also added much to my Kindle TBR list. For anyone with a passion for vintage paperbacks (not just lesbian pulp) this is your book! :)
December 8, 2015
I wish I would have given up on this book. It lacks focus and editing. Rabinowitz is a frustrating writer, whose ideas are vague and who failed my first rule as a critic or historian and that is to make me want to read more. This book actually makes me not want to read more pulp. She goes on long digressions and often adds irrelevant details. She also repeats herself often. She adds incredible amounts of details that simply bog down the book. I agree with her points when she has one but often she doesn't. Take for instance the last chapter on censorship. She gives a long, overly detailed account of all the censorship trials in which she will tell all about what the judges and lawyers thought or wrote about pulp. She will then juxtapose this with memos from the editors of the pulps regarding these trails. And that's it. For 35 pages. Outside of her analysis of Borges, which I found lacking, I have little interest in reading much of any of the other authors she discusses, when she does discuss actual authors. Instead she spends most of the book talking about the covers and the blurbs on the covers. She spends way too much time talking about pulps as physical objects rather than about anything inside them. If you can't tell I'm a little mad at the waste of my time.
December 20, 2014
"There is real hope for a culture that makes it as easy to buy a book as it does a pack of cigarettes.”—a civic leader quoted in a New American Library ad (1951)"
American Pulp makes a persuasive argument for enduring yet overlooked pop artifacts—a physical media declared dead every few months (ironic that I read an ebook version). As a scholarly work it can make for dry or heavy reading, though it’s well-researched and contains a number of book covers and photos to give examples to the reader. Its analysis is impressive, showing keen insight and an attention to details which may otherwise have slipped through the cracks of history. Rabinowitz writes with authoritative power, backed up by the human element of personal interest—in the preface, she relates that “American Pulp is about the kind of paperback books that sat on my mother’s nightstand all through childhood,” the kind of books that have left a strange but enduring legacy to millions of American readers.
Full review found here.
American Pulp makes a persuasive argument for enduring yet overlooked pop artifacts—a physical media declared dead every few months (ironic that I read an ebook version). As a scholarly work it can make for dry or heavy reading, though it’s well-researched and contains a number of book covers and photos to give examples to the reader. Its analysis is impressive, showing keen insight and an attention to details which may otherwise have slipped through the cracks of history. Rabinowitz writes with authoritative power, backed up by the human element of personal interest—in the preface, she relates that “American Pulp is about the kind of paperback books that sat on my mother’s nightstand all through childhood,” the kind of books that have left a strange but enduring legacy to millions of American readers.
Full review found here.
October 31, 2014
This well-researched and detailed exploration of American pulp publishing is both enlightening and thought-provoking. The author examines how the expansion of paperback publishing made a wide range of reading matter available to an increasingly large and varied audience, and although much of it was what we generally understand to be “pulp fiction” some of it was highbrow fiction repackaged to seem accessible to a general readership.
This literary and cultural history will be of interest to many, but for me it was spoilt by a lot of academic jargon and convoluted sentence structure when I would have preferred a more populist approach. I found much of it quite tedious to read even though I was interested in the subject matter. More of a work for the academic than the general reader – which is somewhat ironic as its subject matter is the democratisation of access to literature!
This literary and cultural history will be of interest to many, but for me it was spoilt by a lot of academic jargon and convoluted sentence structure when I would have preferred a more populist approach. I found much of it quite tedious to read even though I was interested in the subject matter. More of a work for the academic than the general reader – which is somewhat ironic as its subject matter is the democratisation of access to literature!
October 11, 2016
Although Rabinowitz's central argument is a very interesting one, her method of organizing that argument and then expanding on it leaves her overall trajectory fairly muddled.
February 25, 2025
Tons of fun archival research in this one! Rabinowitz's writing style can be a little impressionistic and repetitive, so I wouldn't recommend this as a systematic cultural history of paperback and pulp literature.
January 25, 2020
Very well-researched study of paperback pulp literature from its birth just prior to World War 2 through the 1950s. The prose is rather dense at times, but I learned a great deal from the author.
July 14, 2020
Literary studies is not my genre - very hard to unpack what she's arguing.
January 1, 2015
This overview of the glory days of the American paperback provides an interesting historical survey of the time period and the genres that influenced – and were influenced by – the pulp industry. The full-color collection of pulp covers presents a fascinating variety of the artwork for which the form was known. The book does suffer, however, from the author’s tendency to stray into overblown academic prose.
The chapters could stand on their own as individual essays. This impression is enhanced by the different styles that the author employs. For me, the best sections were those in which she presents the material in a straightforward, informative manner. I enjoyed learning the history of the pulp industry and found numerous ideas for future reading. I particularly enjoyed her summary of Vera Caspary’s Laura and its uses of many classic features of pulp style. The most tedious sections were chapters that appear intended for publication in an academic journal.
The author’s excesses accumulate most noticeably in her chapter on Jorge Luis Borges, whose first appearance in English translation was in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1948. Perhaps it is an homage to Borges, but the style in this chapter verges on the ridiculous. The author finds correlation in coincidence, wondering if there is significance in the fact the Borges story “The Garden of Forking Paths” was translated at different times by two men named Anthony and another named Andrew, all of whose names start with the same letter as “author.” She describes Borges as a product of his neighborhood, in which “after all, on Calle Murillo in the city of Buenos Aires, one can find Alef Cueros, factory and outlet for leather goods of all sorts. The establishment is just down the block from the Doctor Max Nordau synagogue, which is across the street from an apartment building, number 666.”
While the author continued to present such strained connections, I began hearing the voice of John McEnroe in my head: “You can not be serious!” And I realized that my little brain friend Mr. McEnroe was right. There was no way that she could intend this as legitimate analysis. It must be parody. The chapter on Borges would be a fitting entry in The Overwrought Urn. Once I reached this conclusion, and began laughing at her writing instead of cringing, I enjoyed the book much more.
The theme that runs through all chapters of the book is that the introduction of pulp paperbacks brought reading to the masses. The author’s word of choice is “demotic,” a word which I don’t recall ever encountering before, but which appears with astonishing frequency in this book. I was reminded of Proust’s description of the surprising concentration of beautiful women at a party that his narrator attended. With respect to the word “demotic” this book is “like one of those chemical industries by means of which compounds are produced in large quantities which in a state of nature are encountered only by accident and very rarely.” It got to the point that if I did not see the word for a half dozen pages, I began to get nervous, knowing that at any moment it would jump out at me again.
January 27, 2015
Our fascination with pulp novels remains almost as strong as our love of the unique art that was on their covers, and, in American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street, University of Minnesota professor Paula Rabinowitz suggests that the real victors in the early days of paperback novels were the literary tastes of readers.
Full of intriguing information—Jorge Luis Borges’ first English-language publication was a story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, for instance—and historical insights, American Pulp makes the case for paperbacks novels as providing cheap access to both classic and groundbreaking literature, thus expanding the literary scene and introducing generations of Americans to reading for enjoyment.
In addition to being a haven for genres like science fiction and mysteries, pulps also provided the first large marketplace for LGBTQ and black writers. The low cost and easy access on drugstore racks put these works into the hands of people who often didn’t have access to a library—or who were afraid of being seen checking out some kinds of material. It was a form that ran from Ann Bannon’s Beebo Brinker lesbian books (and Rabinowitz has a chapter on that) to James Joyce’s “banned in Boston” Ulysses. ...
(Full review on Lit/Rant: http://litrant.tumblr.com/post/105774...)
Full of intriguing information—Jorge Luis Borges’ first English-language publication was a story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, for instance—and historical insights, American Pulp makes the case for paperbacks novels as providing cheap access to both classic and groundbreaking literature, thus expanding the literary scene and introducing generations of Americans to reading for enjoyment.
In addition to being a haven for genres like science fiction and mysteries, pulps also provided the first large marketplace for LGBTQ and black writers. The low cost and easy access on drugstore racks put these works into the hands of people who often didn’t have access to a library—or who were afraid of being seen checking out some kinds of material. It was a form that ran from Ann Bannon’s Beebo Brinker lesbian books (and Rabinowitz has a chapter on that) to James Joyce’s “banned in Boston” Ulysses. ...
(Full review on Lit/Rant: http://litrant.tumblr.com/post/105774...)
August 25, 2016
I have two problems with this book. The first is that the author claims a more than she can deliver. She seems to mistake correlation with causation. Did pulp paperbacks have a modernizing, de-provincializing influence on American culture? Of course. But so did the mass-market magazines of the first decades of the 20th century, and the pulp magazines that followed, dime novels that preceded both, and most especially, the movies.
The second problem is one of style and diction. It's tempting for some writers, and all too easy, to hide vague reasoning behind a veil of elliptical academese.
The second problem is one of style and diction. It's tempting for some writers, and all too easy, to hide vague reasoning behind a veil of elliptical academese.
October 27, 2024
The thesis statement of this book did not match what was actually delivered. We were promised a sort of social history explaining 'how paperbacks brought modernism to Main Street' and got a rambly stream of consciousness mess instead. When Rabinowitz did manage to make sense like in the chapter on the pulp books sent to soldiers overseas it was very interesting. Unfortunately, much of the book read like a very disorganized, but passionate professor whose lectures are 70% sidebars.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews