Search Results

Chapter 1 begins with Michael Warner’s question, ‘What will we do with our shame?’, and proceeds to consider, and to critique, the revisiting of shame in much recent queer theory – a revisiting that generally seeks to mine that affect for its positive political potential. The chapter assesses the uses and limitations of ‘queer shame’, via a consideration, first, of contemporary queer theory, and second, of the recent republication – and implied ‘recuperation’ – of the formerly shameful sub-genre of mid-century lesbian pulp fiction. Through readings of Ann Bannon’s Women in the Shadows (1959/2002) and Della Martin’s Twilight Girl (1961/2006), the chapter focuses particularly on questions concerning the (in)visibility and (un)intelligibility of gender and race, and matters of performance and ‘passing’. It shows how, in both novels, non-whiteness becomes a site of both fascination and shame, functioning indeed as both an intensifier of queer shame and a mirror of/analogy for that shame, in what might be viewed as a troubling case of shame appropriation.

Evidence of the French Surrealists’ interest in Anglo-American pulp fiction can be found as early as 1942 in the essay ‘Explorers of the Pluriverse’ by the journalist Robert Allerton Parker, which acted as the preface to the exhibition ‘First Papers of Surrealism’ organised by exiled Surrealists in New York during the Second World War. Allerton’s expansion on this in his essay ‘Such Pulp as Dreams are Made On’ – concerned with H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and the burgeoning SF pulp scene in America – could be read the following year in the Franco-American Surrealist journal VVV, probably known to the writer Raymond Queneau in Paris during the war in his post-Surrealist phase. Queneau is usually given credit for introducing American SF into France in 1950 in the pages of Georges Bataille’s journal Critique, but the details of postwar Surrealism’s contribution to this reception are less well known. This chapter situates Surrealism, for the first time, in the complex reception of US SF in France by demonstrating the nuanced rejection of its typically interplanetary strains by the Surrealists in the 1950s in favour of an adjacent literature of the fantastic that met its established prewar theory and tastes. Repudiating Isaac Asimov, Frederick Pohl, A.E. van Vogt, and Robert A. Heinlein, the Surrealists favoured ‘voyages in time and histories of parallel worlds,’ in the words of Robert Benayoun, ‘when they break a path onto the fantastic and onto legends,’ prioritised in the writings of Lewis Padgett, Ray Bradbury, John Wyndham, Fredric Brown, Theodore Sturgeon, and William Tenn. This chapter also observes the ways in which Michel Carrouges, an important fringe figure in postwar Surrealism, manoeuvred the writings of André Breton to figure the SF of Bradbury and others as a form of modern myth, in the same ways as Breton had theorised the Gothic novel in the 1930s.

By the late 1970s, black pulp fiction experienced formulaic saturation, as Joseph Nazel continued to churn out forgettable books and Leo Guild returned to the fold to write voyeuristic erotica. At the same time, Players suffered a precipitous decline in quality with writing that rivaled the misogyny of sleaze and hardcore pictures that left nothing to the imagination. The chapter pivots on these trends to show how black pulp fiction received a new lease on life from readers themselves. Recognizing that black women constituted an increasing share of its readership, Holloway House tried, but consistently failed, to expand pulp fiction into the romance genre. In the early 1990s, black women sidestepped the company altogether and began to write, publish, and distribute stories that reflected their own experience. The grassroots popularity of their work led to the rise of “urban fiction,” a gendered competitor to “black experience” paperbacks. In a contemporary development, young black men like Tracy Marrow were inspired by Holloway House’s books but spun off their own urban narratives through “gangsta rap.” Marrow, better known by his moniker Ice-T, was exemplary of a wave of hip-hop artists who parlayed pulp into rap careers.

This chapter discusses Quentin Tarantino’s claims that the history of cinema failed to recognize the potential of cinema’s relationship with time. He attempted to resolve the failure through Pulp Fiction (1994), a film which was presented out of chronological sequence. The chapter examines the effects of the disrupted chronological sequence of events, as well as the insertion of clichés and quotations to the film’s overall approach of movie presentation. One of the effects of time disruption was the destruction rather than confirmation of the spectators’ expectations for the film.

This chapter examines Albert Einstein-themed stories in pulp fiction magazines. The analysis reveals that the stories used relativity themes in a half-formed protest against the incursion of intellectual advancement and mass media into everyday life. The findings also indicate that relativity themes were used to highlight the popular concern about the impact of communication technology on domestic life and social relations.

This chapter explores the relationship between musical performance and popular culture, where nostalgia can be central to the construction of meaning. It considers some of the cultural implications of the emergence of the soundtrack as a vital element in contemporary popular cinema. With specific reference to three films from the 1990s, Forrest Gump (1994), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Boogie Nights (1998), it examines the ways in which such films mobilise their soundtrack to produce particular cultural associations and a preferred history of the late twentieth century. The chapter points out that the soundtrack film has been part of a wider process whereby the canon of ‘classic’ pop has been raided and repackaged. Finally, it argues that borrowed music can create meanings that exceed the initial level of the narrative.

In the second half of the 1970s, Holloway House and Players magazine were made to mirror each other to a great degree. This was signaled by the return of Iceberg Slim. He authenticated his narrative persona by recording Reflections, an album of toasts from urban black men’s oral tradition, and lent his street credibility to Players by publishing short stories in the magazine. The synergy between pulps and pornography was further sealed by what this chapter terms the “reality effect.” Across the country, the black press covered new titles of black pulp fiction with great interest. Newspapers would cover novels published by local authors, suggesting that the fictions were based on real-life experiences. Holloway House parlayed this reality effect into a “black experience” brand, which was then transmitted to Players through its advertisements for black pulp fiction. For its part, Players’s outlandish pictorials and centerfolds constitute what this chapter terms the “pornographic exception”—a suspension of streetwise realities in favor of outright sexual exploitation. The reality effect and the pornographic exception grounded the appeal of pulps and pornography to urban black men.

The vast literature of the Vietnam War reflects the many conflicting and unresolved emotions of the era. Memories of the brutality of combat and the furious disagreements at home over the wisdom of American involvement ran deep, but so did the urge to forget and move beyond a painful and traumatic epoch. Over one thousand novels with Vietnam themes have appeared, and they continue to be published. These war novels ranged from the complex Graham Greene classic, The Quiet American (1955), to contemplative veterans' tales to simple popular literature. Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato (1978) and Larry Heinemann's Paco's Story (1986) both won National Book Awards for their meditations on memory. Realistic accounts of battles, pulp fiction, and outright pornography acquired a larger readership. Many of these more popular stories drew upon waves of regret about the way the war had turned into a national trauma for the United States. They expressed longing for victory or vengeance, sometimes over the Communist Vietnamese and sometimes over treacherous or incompetent American officials.

This chapter notes that the Ku Klux Klan was also a staple of popular fiction in the 1920s, particularly as a thrilling backdrop in the pulp fiction published in magazines like Black Mask. Novelists like Thomas Dixon, in books like The Clansman, had laid the seeds of the Klan revival. Much as in these earlier works, fictional treatments of the Klan in the postwar period spoke to a cultural identity that equated white supremacy with Americanism and placed this identity squarely at the center of American popular culture.

This chapter discusses the genre and context of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). It begins by tracing the emergence of science fiction in literature and in cinema. The chapter then looks at how film serials popularised pulp science-fiction cinema in the form of rocketships, ray guns, alien invaders, evil intergalactic emperors, and damsels in distress. One can see them as the inspiration for the likes of Star Wars and the myriad superhero blockbuster movies that continue to dominate Hollywood today. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey returned science fiction to its origins in Greek mythology. It is perhaps the first example of ‘transcendent’ science-fiction cinema, exploring the human need to place trust in a force larger than ourselves. In the early 1970s, science-fiction films were more overtly concerned with identity and environment, and how both were increasingly shaped or misshapen by technology. Meanwhile, post-9/11 has seen a move towards intelligent science fiction as a bankable commodity within Hollywood. Part of the genre's continuing appeal is, of course, the showcasing of state-of-the-art cinema technology within the sci-fi narrative. Special-effects technology has evolved in line with cinema's own development.

This chapter focuses on Ray Bradbury's early disappointments in getting his science fiction stories published. Publication of Bradbury's new short stories, written in collaboration with Henry Hasse, in science fiction pulps proved to be a far more difficult proposition than it had been with “Pendulum.” In October 1941, for example, Julius Schwartz was able to place “Gabriel's Horn” in Captain Future, but it reached print only in the spring 1943 issue. This chapter considers Bradbury's limited success with any of his science fiction stories after ending his collaboration with Hasse, including “Eat, Drink, and Be Wary,” which he sold to John Campbell for the “Probability Zero” contest in the July issue of Astounding; only “The Candle” appeared in print during the rest of the year—in the November 1942 issue of Weird Tales.

While Iceberg Slim stumbled into the Black Power era, an unknown quantity named Donald Goines began publishing books with Holloway House that were distinct from sleaze. This chapter shows how Goines, between 1971 and 1973, surpassed Slim’s output and set the terms for the market for black pulp fiction. Goines’s books were fast-paced and action-packed; they rarely exhibited the vernacular flair for which Slim was known. But as much as he relied on the sex-and-violence formulas of men’s pulps, Goines proved enormously popular among black readers while not conceding anything to white voyeurism. Harrowing, inner-city dramas that tackled drug addiction, criminal enterprises, and even the corruption of Black Power ideology: Goines’s novels forged a literary underground that was indifferent to white tastes. Bentley Morriss saw the potential in this market. In a reversal of Holloway House’s founding, he began a black pornographic magazine, Players, to complement the black pulp fiction Goines had pioneered. Local writer Wanda Coleman edited the magazine, which featured stories, reviews, pictorials, and centerfolds tailored to black men’s tastes. The founding of Players sealed Morriss’s commitment to producing books and magazines for a different kind of readership.

This chapter describes the streamlining of production that occurred in the early years of the black literary underground. In editing and writing for Players, Wanda Coleman wanted to steer the magazine toward quality fiction, stylish fashion, and celebrity coverage. But she was frequently stymied by Ralph Weinstock, who acted as Bentley Morriss’s editorial arm and streamlining enforcer. Eventually, Coleman was replaced as Players’s editor by Joseph Nazel. A veteran pressman, Nazel was willing to follow Weinstock’s directive to repeat tried-and-true formulas. He did this not only for Players but for Holloway House. While Donald Goines’s festering heroin addiction made his productivity erratic, Nazel proved capable of churning out scores of novels for the company. Under his real name and different pseudonyms, Nazel helped fill out Holloway House’s catalog in the same way Paul Gillette had done in the 1960s. Applying such practices of the pulp trade to race-oriented fare, Holloway House did not balk when Goines was murdered in his home in 1974. In addition to publishing a sensationalistic biography of Goines, the company had its author, a white man named Carlton Hollander, ghostwrite Goines’s final novels.

The book concludes by revisiting Stuart Hall’s essay “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” and suggests that race, for Holloway House, was a sliding signifier of competing interests and tastes. The “blackness” of black pulp fiction was not inherent to the writer or his work. Rather, it was an effect of how Bentley Morriss and Ralph Weinstock marketed pinups, paperbacks, and pornography to different audiences, white then black, over a long period of time. True alternatives to their control over the black literary underground only emerged when women writers and hip-hop artists began producing their own urban narratives. Once those gained traction in the 1990s, it was only a matter of time before the white men’s symbiotic enterprise would come to an end. Holloway House and its affiliate companies closed for good in 208. The structure of the literary underground lives on, however, in uncanny ways: Donald Goines’s books are now reprinted by a romance publisher that used to be a sleaze outfit, and Iceberg Slim’s books are now reprinted by an urban fiction imprint founded by hip-hop artists.