The Return of Pulp Fiction

[suelange]

Originally Posted by NicholasV

I don't think you will see any authors of the stature of a Dickens, Camus, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Orwell, Huxley, etc. with a prospect to become widely read anymore.

I hate to say this, but I tend to agree. I'm reading a book right now that has "New York Times Bestseller" on the front cover. It is very poorly written. Boring, in fact. The only reason I'm reading it is I'm doing research for an event I'm running.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Redcard

I love how people pretend that writers of today are somehow worse than writers of old.

Or that the ones who are still red and talked about today were the only ones writing novels a few centuries ago... for every surviving classical author, there's hundreds who never made it. And it would not surprise me in the least if there were some truly brilliant writers among that last group of hundreds, some of them undoubtedly more deserving to live on than the ones who did.

[xg4bx]

i would argue that pulp never went away: see the romance section at your local bookstore.

[Catlady]

I'm a reverse snob; I avoid "literary" fiction in favor of pulp fiction/genre fiction. I want to read competent writing with a plot.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I was thinking about this, and what I would like to see is not only the return of old forms such as the novella but also the return of the SERIAL. I distinguish the SERIAL from the SERIES. WE all know the series- the great, honking fantasy saga that comes out in 1000 page installments every 3 years or so.
I'd like the SERIAL to come back. Back in the olden days, writers would publish their work in novella-sized chunks that came out in magazines every couple of months. Classic novels like Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION or Harry Harrison's DEATHWORLD came out just like that.
I would like to see some experimentation along that line-novels that would come out in 100 page installments every three months or so over the course of 1-2 years. Hey, it beats waiting 3-5 years of waiting to find out what happens next in the King-killer Chronicles or ASOIAF. The Kindle Single format (Quick Reads in iBooks) would be perfect for it.

I've seen a couple of examples of this from independent authors more recently.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by NicholasV

I look at most novels that can be popular as only being pulp quality, they just charge alot more for them now and perhaps take longer to write.

Only a person who has never actually read pulp fiction could write this. Pulp is the ancestor of much genre fiction, and sf in general. But it is also generally *bad.* Bad enough to make Dan Brown look like a good writer. And I can't think of anything else that would do that.

I remember this article or interview I found by some European writer(was he a Czech?) horrified by his popularity, considering it an insult to his craft that his writing became popularized, because it denotes it is of deficient quality if his work can satisfy the low threshold of the modern public. I really wish I bookmarked that article, if someone has read that same article and can remember it from my hazy paraphrasing PM it to me.

How can you think of this quote as being anything but arrogantly pretentious? Feeling superior to the common reading public is not something to be lauded, it's something to be laughed at. Particularly from this guy, who, as it turns out, was writing at the level of the general reading public.

I don't think you will see any authors of the stature of a Dickens, Camus, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Orwell, Huxley, etc. with a prospect to become widely read anymore. Writers who had something to say to us about the human condition, and the social context that this condition finds itself in a given society. If writers of such stature emerge today of necessity they must remain hidden given the societal predilections, I think Kurt Cobain summed it up well: "here we are now, entertain us." Or perhaps Huxley with, "Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today." The debased public of today can only send writers like Koontz, J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, King, Palahniuk*, etc. to the top of the bestseller lists with their cheap gimmicks and otherwise lack of literary merit.

Let me guess, college sophomore? Who else would be so unintentionally ironic as to quote Kurt Cobain - whose albums sold tens of millions - concerning the decline of popular taste.

*Perhaps this is not so fair with him because he has no seeming pretensions and uses a more down to earth writing style closer to the colloquial. At least in his debut novel Fight Club, he actually had some incisive social commentary.

"Social commentary" is a meaningless term that applies to Jonathan Franzen as well as Christian romance novels.

Originally Posted by RolandD

I think Dickens qualifies as a pulp writer, even though his work was masterful social commentary. His works were serialized for the the masses. As for Palahniuk, all his works contain social commentary. Some more subtle than others.

No, Dickens was not pulp. Not even close.

Originally Posted by Catlady

I'm a reverse snob; I avoid "literary" fiction in favor of pulp fiction/genre fiction. I want to read competent writing with a plot.

Genre fiction is not pulp fiction. There is a lineage, but there is also a huge difference. If reading genre fiction is like making love to a beautiful person, reading pulp fiction is like making love to a beautiful chimpanzee. The lineage is there, and you can see the relationship...and yet it's not the same at all.*


*This theory has not been empirically tested. By me, at any rate.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Genre fiction is not pulp fiction. There is a lineage, but there is also a huge difference. If reading genre fiction is like making love to a beautiful person, reading pulp fiction is like making love to a beautiful chimpanzee. The lineage is there, and you can see the relationship...and yet it's not the same at all.*

Did I say the two terms were interchangeable? No, I did not. However, neither form is "literary" or self-consciously pretentious. Pulp fiction and genre fiction are concerned with telling a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, not exploring lofty concepts or trying to dazzle the reader with the author's supposed brilliance.

*This theory has not been empirically tested. By me, at any rate.

Good to know.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Only a person who has never actually read pulp fiction could write this. Pulp is the ancestor of much genre fiction, and sf in general. But it is also generally *bad.* Bad enough to make Dan Brown look like a good writer. And I can't think of anything else that would do that.

You've never tried to read any of the Twilight books then...

[crich70]

Actually the term Pulp originated not from the writing itself but from the poor quality paper that the stories were written on. A lot of the pulp magazines died out during WWII I understand because of course the paper was needed elsewhere. And I imagine a number of the authors were otherwise engaged as well since they were probably in the army etc. Many of the old Classics were 1st serialized in newspapers or magazines before they were printed in book form. Sherlock Holmes for example was one such. And I remember hearing that one old woman died a few hrs after having the last serialized chapter of one of Dicken's books read to her. Stephen King has tried it in e form before. The Plant was his stab at ebook serials in the 90's. He also published the Green Mile in serial format in pbook format.
I think there are always new writers who are considered part of the pulp tradition when they start out and who gain respectability later. It comes down to time. Ebooks are just a new way to do it.