I’ve been going through some old pulp fanzines recently. And this quote about the pulp era from Xenophile No. 9 (December 1974) caught my eye. I thought i’d share it with you.
It’s originally from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (May 1950) and attributed to Erle Stanley Gardner, who is probably best known for his Perry Mason books. But Gardner had many stories published in Black Mask and numerous other pulps from 1921 through the mid-1930s.
Some 25 years ago, a new force vitalized the field of fiction. Mystery writers began selling stories.
The old-fashioned mystery story dealing with deduction, a recapitulation of the clues midway in the story, and a detective who ‘slipped something into his pocket while the police detective was looking the other way’ was thrown out of the window.
In its place there came a new, virile type of story told in terms of action. The reader, moreover, was given an equal break with the detective. Those were the days when wood-pulp magazines were at their zenith.
The public eagerly devoured the stories. While it didn’t demand characterization in the best literary style, it did demand a story. A lot of slush has been written about the pulps, principally by writers who knew the market only by hearsay.
It is true, as has been frequently charged, that the better pulp writers, being paid by the word, ground out a terrific wordage. They were able to do this, however, only because they had imagination.
The telling of the story may have been sketched with road strokes. There was certainly no time for subtlety. But the writer of the period either had ingenuity, imagination, and touch of novelty, or he went broke.
– William
