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A Quick Quote on “Pulps vs. Slicks”

A Quick Quote on “Pulps vs. Slicks”

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As you read this, I’m in Atlanta to see my brother graduate from medical school. Which means that this is “time-bomb post” I put in the queue to automatically go off and post itself while I’m away. Which also means that I’m keeping this a bit short, as I don’t have the weekend to write up something more in-depth.

What I’ve decided to do instead is let somebody else do most of the work for me. I’m going to share a quote about the pulps that I came across when I was doing my research for my two posts about Frederick “Max Brand” Faust. This comes from Jon Tuska’s essay “Frederick Faust’s Western Fiction” from The Max Brand Compnaion (Greenwood, 1996). Tuska makes an interesting comparison between writing for the pulps and writing for the “slicks,” the glossy magazines that offered supposedly greater prestige for writers who could break into them. Tuska shows a reversal of how people view pulp literature vs. “mainstream” literature:

Both [Faust] and [his agent] Carl Brandt areed that the only way to cope with the depressed economy was for Faust to move into slick magazines which paid much better. Faust, studying the market, readily realized that restrictions in the slicks were more rigid and confining than they ever had been in the pulps. Writing for Western Story Magazine, he had to concern himself with such general notions as a pursuit plot, which [editor] Blackwell preferred, or delayed revelation. Writing for the slicks, he realized that the editors sought to dominate a contributor’s mind. Attitudes and ideas were everything. Beyond entertainment, which both pulp and slick fiction alike provided, slick fiction had to deliver an ideological message to readers which agreed with the editorial policies of the magazine and these were dictated by the advertisers and their agencies. Perhaps it is for this reason that so much of the slick fiction of the 1930s and 1940s had become hopelessly dated while pulp fiction from that same period still pulsates with imagination and iconoclasm. Ideology is time-bound.

In other words, take that Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s! Long live Black Mask, Weird Tales, and Astounding! (And Black Gate carrying on their legacy.)

See you next week.

The Spider vs. The Empire State

The Spider vs. The Empire State

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Layout 2The Spider Revival: Part III

The Spider vs. The Empire State
Norvell Page (Ace of Aces Books, 2009)

I have previously written about the revival in trade paperback of the adventures of The Spider, the bloodiest of all 1930s pulp heroes. My reviews of The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham and The Spider: City of Doom, both published by Baen, contain plenty of background about the character and his main author, Norvell Page, so if you’re unfamiliar with the blood-soaked vigilante insanity of this region of the pulp universe, I’d advise that you start there.

This third collection of Spider adventures comes from a new publisher (Ace of Aces Books) and presents for the first time three connected novels that were originally published consecutively in The Spider Magazine. These three novels, which ran in the September, October, and November 1938 issues, form “The Black Police Trilogy,” one of the darkest episodes in the character’s history. Norvell Page and his editor Harry Steeger decided to put newspaper headlines and national fears into their pulp adventures: an allegory for Nazism, viewed as it might arise in the middle of contemporary New York State. It Does Happen Here might serve a good alternate title.

The first book of the trilogy, The City That Paid to Die, came out exactly a year before the Nazi invasion of Poland. The U.S. and the rest of the world were in an uneasy position with the seemingly unstoppable rise of fascism in Europe and the apparent weakness of the liberal democracies. A few small fascist sympathetic groups bubbled up in the U.S., but by 1938 the isolationist nation was becoming concerned about the ambitions of the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. It was an era ripe for terror and panic—and Norvell Page seized those feelings to create a pulp adventure uncomfortably close to 1938 concerns.

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Because One Frederick Faust Post Isn’t Enough: The Sacking of El Dorado

Because One Frederick Faust Post Isn’t Enough: The Sacking of El Dorado

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frederick-faust-in-brentwood“So it will be when we are dead that perhaps our lives will stand for something.”

“A typewriter is almost like a human being to me.”

“Have recently sent thirty-eight poems to our leading magazines and received thirty-eight poems back from our leading magazines.”

“All that can save fiction is enormous verve, a real sweep, plus richness of character, blood that can be seen shining through.”

“Why is my verse so difficult, so dead, so dull to other people?”

—Frederick Faust, from various letters

I was surprised but pleased to see the positive reaction that my post about Frederick Faust, a.k.a. Max Brand, received last week. It was enough for me to want to spend an extra week on the author, specifically to take a closer look at an individual volume of his work. Faust has rarely received this sort of attention, as John C. Hocking pointed out in the comments last week, and so I’ll spend another Tuesday of your time talking about a man who was not only the most prolific of the pulpsters, but one of the most skilled and literary.

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Adventures in Pulp Awesomeness: The Clayton Astounding

Adventures in Pulp Awesomeness: The Clayton Astounding

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claytonOver at Dark Worlds, editor G.W. Thomas has completed the first of three planned reprints of the Clayton Astounding, the first incarnation of the grand old lady of science fiction.

Astounding changed its name to Analog in 1960 and continues to publish today, 80 years after its first issue hit the stands in January, 1930. In an era when most genre magazines last only a handfull of issues, that’s an incredible run.

During most of that time it’s been the single most important magazine in the field, discovering such names as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, and literally hundreds of others.

The first volume of this new series, The Clayton Astounding: Vagabonds of Space is 212 pages in paperback, and is now available at Lulu for $13.99.

This volume collects the best Space Opera from the Clayton years. According to Thomas, future volumes will include Out of the Dreadful Depths (undersea tales), Planetoids of Peril (stories set on moons, planets, and asteroids) and possibily “a book of space invaders, robots and mechanical enemies.” Yeah baby.

Here’s the description from Lulu:

Before John W. Campbell’s “Golden Age” (beginning in 1938) editor Harry Bates created an SF Pulp that was meant to entertain with stories of adventure and action in outer space and on far planets. This magazine has become known as “The Clayton Astounding” to delineate it from later incarnations. The first volume, VAGABONDS OF SPACE, represents the best Space Opera from the magazine’s first run of 1930-1933. Features stories by Harl Vincent, Edmond Hamilton, Anthony Gilmore, Sewell Peaslee Wright, Nat Schachner, Edwin K. Sloat and Jack Williamson. Each author is introduced with commentary by G. W. Thomas.

Fiction from an era when “space opera” meant sword fights in space with weird metal sticks.  All I need to know. You had me at “adventure and action in outer space and on far planets.”

Looking forward to the next volumes.

Somebody Has to Talk about Frederick Faust

Somebody Has to Talk about Frederick Faust

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…and I guess it’s going to be me.

When I first started blogging officially here at Black Gate, I wondered what would constitute “on topic.” Obviously, writing about new crop developments in Iowa would be “off topic” (and I don’t know anything about that anyway) but would writing about Godzilla (about which I know far too much for my own good) be considered “on topic” because I could count on at least half the site’s readership thinking it was interesting? I still wrestle with these questions, and perhaps that’s why I don’t sleep as well at night as other people.

One thing that I’m certain now is “on topic” is anything that has to do with pulp magazines. I’ve written about Norvell Page’s Spider novels (and will do so again soon) and mystery and suspense author Cornell Woolrich, and nobody’s taken me to task for either. So now I throw caution to the four winds and write about Frederick Faust because somebody has got to do it. If I’m going to write about pulp magazines, I have an obligation to write a post about Frederick Faust. You have no obligation to read it, but I strongly urge you to look below the cut because … this fellow is seriously interesting and you should give him a glance some time.

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The Weird of Cornell Woolrich: “Speak to Me of Death”

The Weird of Cornell Woolrich: “Speak to Me of Death”

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speak-to-me-of-deathMost pulp writers of the 1930s were itching to break into the hardcover book market. Since reprints of pulp stories in book form were rare at the time, these writers did not expect that their work for the newsstands would survive past an issue’s sell-date. They felt comfortable re-working and expanding on them to create novels. Raymond Chandler famously called his process of novelizing his already published work as “cannibalizing.” He welded together different short stories, often keeping large sections of text intact with only slight alterations. Other authors took ideas that they liked, or else felt they could do more justice to in the novel format, and enlarged them into books without text carry-over. Robert E. Howard used “The Scarlet Citadel” as a guide for The Hour of the Dragon. And Cornell Woolrich turned many of his short stories into novels. “Face Work” became The Black Angel. “Call Me Patrice” became I Married a Dead Man. “The Street of Jungle Death” became Black Alibi. And “Speak to Me of Death” became Woolrich’s most depressing novel (which is really saying something), Night Has a Thousand Eyes.

In most of these cases, Woolrich made major changes from the short version to the longer one. “Face Work” is a minor piece and only remains as an incident within The Black Angel. “Street of Jungle Death” is a pretty wretched piece of junk, and yet Woolrich took this silly “big cat on the loose in Hollywood!” and fashioned it into a grim classic — one of his best novels — set in the web-ways of a South American city.

But in the case of “Speak to Me of Death” and its growth into Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Woolrich changed little of the story. He instead deepened this examination of fate, psychic powers, and police work so it lasted over three hundred pages. The short story is a classic, and so is the novel — it’s merely a matter of the length of the author maintains the effect. If Night Has a Thousand Eyes is the superior work, “Speak to Me of Death” might be better for your nerves because it ends much sooner.

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Dark Adventure Radio Theatre’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Dark Adventure Radio Theatre’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth

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shadow-innsmouthI work for a small software company in Champaign, Illinois.  I live in St. Charles, about three hours away. I spend a lot of time in the car. I’ve learned to love audio books.

In the past three years I’ve listened to The Old Man and the Sea, To Kill a Mockingbird, all seven Harry Potter novels, Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher, Isabel Allende’s Zorro, and dozens more.

It’s how I get the bulk of my reading done these days. If I had someone to read fiction submissions to me in the car, I swear we could publish Black Gate weekly.

Late last month, as Highway 47 was smothered in fog and I made my way carefully through a desolate winter landscape, I popped an adaption of H.P. Lovecraft’s  “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” into the CD player. It was, hands down, one of the best audio experiences I’ve ever had.

“Innsmouth” is one of Lovecraft’s most well-known stories, a creepy and wonderfully atmospheric tale of a young tourist stumbling off the beaten path into a shadowy New England fishing village with a dark history and a rather nasty aversion to visitors — especially those who ask too many questions. It originally appeared in a minuscule edition of 200 copies in 1936, the only book Lovecraft published in his lifetime.

Dark Adventure Radio Theatre has transformed the story into a 77-minute radio play just as it might have been broadcast in the 1930s, with a large cast of talented actors, terrific sound effects, and original music. You’ll hear the creak of doors, ominous footsteps, the muttering of hostile crowds, and the sounds of a frantic rooftop escape  from an unknown something, pounding through the walls.

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The Weird of Cornell Woolrich: “Dark Melody of Madness”

The Weird of Cornell Woolrich: “Dark Melody of Madness”

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dimemysteryContinuing from last week’s look at the weird tales of pulp suspense maestro Cornell Woolrich, today I’ll walk around another bleak urban corner of the midnight-hued world of my favorite pulp author.

“Dark Melody of Madness,” first published in the June 1935 issue of Dime Mystery and often reprinted under the less-chilling title of “Papa Benjamin,” is one the superb pulp horror stories, and one of Woolrich’s earliest classics, written during the first year of his career as professional magazine writer. In its use of race as an undercurrent, it has connections to some of the great horror works of Robert E. Howard, in particular “Pigeons from Hell,” which also uses the device of voodoo of the West Indies. Anyone interested in the American Weird should read it. Fortunately, it’s been reprinted in many anthologies.

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The Weird of Cornell Woolrich: “Jane Brown’s Body”

The Weird of Cornell Woolrich: “Jane Brown’s Body”

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harry-clarke-upon-the-bedIt might surprise regular readers of this website that Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard are not my favorite pulp writers. They rank among the authors who have influenced and inspired me the most—and they provide endless material to discuss and analyze. But my favorite pulper, perhaps my favorite writer of all time, is Cornell Woolrich.

I haven’t written anything about Woolrich on Black Gate before because his genre doesn’t intersect with the dominant focus of the magazine, except maybe in the broad way that Black Gate readers are usually interested in the pulps in general. Woolrich wrote suspense and mystery stories, and the majority of his work appeared in crime magazines like Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and the legendary Black Mask. His specialty was the “emotional thriller,” harrowing trips into fear and paranoia with suspense set pieces that no author has equaled. Often called by admirers and critics “the literary Hitchcock” and “the twentieth-century Edgar Allan Poe,” Woolrich could wring more palpitating dread out of everyday life than any writer I’ve encountered. His style is defining of noir, the existential crime tale. Eventually, Hitchcock and Woolrich did merge, when Hitchcock turned Woolrich’s short story “Rear Window” (originally published as “It Had to Be Murder”) into a film that you might have heard of.

But there is one part of Woolrich’s oeuvre that falls into the compass of Black Gate: he made occasional forays into stories of the fantastic. He was actually ideally suited for the horror story, but the market for such tales was not as strong as the crime fiction market (just ask anybody to whom Weird Tales owed money). Woolrich had a personally dismal view of existence—universe and fate are essentially hostile to humanity, and the inevitability of death made life pointless—that could transfer perfectly to the supernatural, where those malign forces of the universe manifest in the unnatural occurrences. The idea that the world doesn’t care for you is one also found in H. P. Lovecraft, although visualized in a different way. If the two men had ever met, there would have been a strange, strange discussion. (Woolrich, however, could rarely be budged from his hotel room in Manhattan. H. P. Lovecraft was a partying socialite in comparison.)

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Post-Birthday Leftover Cake: Robert E. Howard’s “Wolfshead”

Post-Birthday Leftover Cake: Robert E. Howard’s “Wolfshead”

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weird-tales-april-1926Last week, when I answered the call to a group celebration of Robert E. Howard’s birthday, I originally chose to write about his breakthrough short story, “Wolfshead.” Somehow, I got sidetracked and ended up typing out a personal reflection on the first Howard story that I ever read, “The Fire of Asshurbanipal.” But I still have my notes about re-reading “Wolfshead” (now easily available in The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard from Del Rey) and it seems a shame to waste them. So here are some thoughts on this early and often reprinted work and how it helped set off the Great One’s career.

Plus, today is my birthday, and I get to do whatever I want. (Told you it was close to Howard’s. Please also wish Jason M. Waltz, Australia, and Paul Newman a happy birthday as well. A bit tough in Paul’s case . . . oh well.)

One reason that “Wolfshead” occurred to me as a topic is that a re-make of the classic Universal film The Wolf Man (elided into The Wolfman) comes out in theaters next month. The film has gone through enormous production and post-production hell and numerous delays, so I’m skeptical about its quality. I hope—fervently hope—that the film works beyond expectations, because right now werewolves need a boost. Vampires and zombies seem to run the horror world right now—they have always been far more budget-friendly than werewolves—but I would joyfully welcome a werewolf Renaissance. Of all the classic European monsters, the werewolf has always been my favorite. “Wolfshead” was a story that was ahead of its time in the way that Howard changes around the shapeshifter myth; in many ways, current werewolf stories haven’t quite caught up to him.

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