Title
American pulp : how paperbacks brought modernism to Main Street / Paula Rabinowitz.
ISBN
9780691150604 hardcover
0691150605 hardcover
Published
Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2014]
Copyright
©2014
Language
English
Description
xv, 390 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 23 cm
Call Number
PS374.P63 R33 2014
Dewey Decimal Classification
813/.509
Summary
"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"--Dust jacket.
"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"--Publisher description.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Pulp: biography of an American object
Pulp as interface
Richard Wright's savage holiday: true crime and 12 million black voices
Isak Dinesen gets drafted: pulp, the armed services editions, and GI reading
Pulping Ann Petry: the case of Country place
Señor Borges wins! Ellery Queen's garden
Slips of the tongue: uncovering lesbian pulp
Sci-unfi: bombs, ovens, delinquents, and more
Demotic Ulysses: policing paperbacks in the courts and Congress
CODA: the afterlife of pulp.
