In sort of a backwards move, fictioneer Laurence Donovan’s first known piece of fiction appeared in a “slick” magazine about three years before his next known fiction work was published in a pulp.
A short–short by Donovan, “The Old Copy Desk,” was published in the “Short Turns and Encores” page of the Oct. 17, 1925, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. It’s a vignette drawn from Donovan’s experiences as a newspaper editor. (And even – maybe, especially – today, it still rings true for copy editors.)
Read it for yourself:
The Old Copy Desk
SCENE — Copy desk of a daily newspaper in a state metropolis.
TIME — All day.
OLD COPYREADER: Here’s this report of the two–hundred–and–fifty–million surplus in the U.S. Treasury. Good Page One stuff, eh?
NEWS EDITOR: Naw! Ditch it. Mark it editorial page. Put a one–column head on it. Nobody reads the editorial page anyway. Here, gimme an eight–column banner an’ a two–column head on this flapper–bandit story from V–––––.
O.C.R. (thirty minutes later): How about this Coolidge speech? Gonna play it? Gotta good line in it on cooperation between the European nations.
N.E.: What’s eatin’ you? Cut it to a hun’erd words an’ slop it for a one–line head inside. Didja forget to send up the synopsis for the radio vamp? Composin’ room’s yellin’ for it.
O.C.R. (thirty minutes later): Whatcha doin’ with this professor’s report on conservation? Means a thousand new settlers in Duwamish Valley. Playin’ it?
N.E.: Hey! Shove that monkey story along with a top head. Slug it Page One — send it up in takes. Hold that professor’s junk for time copy. Maybe it’ll make a filler for the early tomorrow.
O.C.R. (thirty minutes later): Maybe there’s a regular story in this market report. Best crop in years in the Inland Empire. Oughta be a play in it. Lot of good figures in it. How about it?
N.E.: Can that stuff an’ grab the phone on this bank holdup. Gotta make the first street with it. Nev’ mind about that other. It’ll go in the hold–over anyway.
O.C.R. (thirty minutes later): This new railroad yarn’ll be a good line for the Mazama Range folks. Hadn’t we oughta keep that outside — huh?
N.E.: Nothin’ doin’. Push that church fight head along. Gimme two–column drop. Take that car smash next.
O.C.R. (thirty minutes later): Human–interest angle in this old–woman story. Been workin’ years to put her boy through school, and he’s honored at that scientists’ meeting today. Wanna freak it up?
N.E.: You’ve been gettin’ barmier an’ barmier all day. You’ll be retired on a pension, film’ an’ clippin’ exchanges, first thing you know. Jazz up that bootleggin’ yarn a little. Get some pep in the top o’ the head.
And so on to the end of another copy–desk day.
Donovan’s first known pulp story, “Mad Mystery Mine,” showed up in the September 1928 number of Mystery Stories. His pulp career took off, resulting in dozens of sales to a variety of pulps, including The Phantom Detective, Pete Rice Magazine, Air War, Detective Fiction Weekly and Speed Western Stories.
He contributed nine Doc Savage adventures, plus the title novels in The Skipper and a number of The Whisperer. Then his output slowed in the 1940s, until his death sometime around 1950.
Though he may never have made the jump from pulps to slicks, he certainly jumped the other direction.
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