"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 it brought modernism to Main Street,
democratized literature and ideas, spurred social mobility, and
helped fashion new identities by introducing readers to books by
and about gays and lesbians, African Americans, and other
marginalized groups. 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. Examining their often-lurid packaging as well as their
content, "American Pulp" is richly illustrated with reproductions
of dozens of pulp covers, many in color.
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
lowly genres such as 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
telling 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.
A fascinating cultural history, "American Pulp" will change the
way we look at these ephemeral yet enduringly intriguing books.
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