Waubonsee Community College

American pulp, how paperbacks brought modernism to Main Street, Paula Rabinowitz

eng

Includes bibliographical references (307-375) and index

platesillustrations

index present

non fiction

American pulp

bibliography

877364320

Paula Rabinowitz

how paperbacks brought modernism to Main Street

"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"--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

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