As I’ve mentioned before, I enjoy reading commentary on the pulp magazines from the time the pulps proliferated on the newsstands. And this letter on the pulps caught my attention, so I thought I would share it.
David Lee Smith, the admin at the Pulp Magazines group at Yahoo, posted it a few days back. (This is sort of a follow-on to the Harold Hersey post from last week.)
It’s a letter by Fred. T. Marsh to The Bear Garden column running on the books page of New York’s original The Sun newspaper, dated June 25, 1932.
Marsh is identified only by his name. So I’m not certain if this is the same individual, but a Google search turns up a number of literary criticisms written by a Fred. T. Marsh for The Nation, The New York Times Book Review and other publications from the 1930s.
Here’s what Marsh had to say:
Guild Or Guilt
Editor, the Bear Garden:
Jack L. Myers‘s letter about pulp magazine fiction is old stuff to me, for I have friends in the business and have heard them talk shop, ringing the changes on their craftsmanship. And even in non-professional moments I have heard them, forgetful of their better natures, launch forth into a defense of their guild.
Craftsmanship, the pulp stories have of a kind. And no trade is easy to learn. You don’t sell your story unless you know your technique, all the tricks of the trade, and keep within prescribed bounds. For not only your editors but your readers know that technique and expect it.
The people who read the pulp magazines do so for relaxation. Some people do crossword puzzles. Some play solitaire. Some read detective stories. It is a game. Reading them fills in the gaps, soothes that gnawing restlessness which is the curse of our day, helps to stave off the frightful possibility of an hour’s reflection. No one, except people with 12-year-old mentalities, reads them for emotional experience. The kind of mind that makes these stories and the kind of mind that reads them is the puzzle mind, the game mind, the (on a simple plane) mathematical mind. I know of one successful member of the craft who enjoys seeing how many times he can take the same story and rewrite it by shuffling the combinations.
Popular story writing has produced some honored names — men who worked by order and because they liked the job as well as the money in it. But the reason they are remembered is not for the “craftsmanship” which enabled them to sell their stuff in the popular markets, but because, outside of that, there was something fresh, original, solid, and fundamental In their work, a larger “craftsmanship,” if you like, which had nothing to do with thestereotyped formula. But the pulp magazines of today have a stranglehold on their authors. They demand stories which conform to a few set patterns and must comply with an arbitrary system of totem and taboo, wit, irony, realism, originality in a thought or an expression, all that which marks out and isolates the man behind a typewriter, are forbidden. Even dialect must conform tothe remotest resemblance to actual talk.
Yes, one can make money after he has learned the racket (and I agree that that is not so easy as it looks) and learned to work passively under the rigid discipline imposed by editors. But I cannot understand how the good professionals could take themselves seriously as literary craftsmen in any except the narrowest sense. Of course these chaps are better than their stuff; and of course many of them have done good work in other fields. I know by hearsay of a man who wrote one “true story” as a way to keep himself and his family alive while engaged on a serious piece or work. But he did kid himself about his craftsmanship in the true story field — and even that formula is not so easy to master. The sad fact about the business is that competent writers have no other market for their wares, no market for honest action and character fiction, for a people’s literature which might play a significant role in our age.
One wonders if few of the popular magazines changed their policy to conform in some degree with the spirit of the times — as the so-called quality magazines have partially changed theirs — if they could make a goof it. It may be true, but I doubt it, that fight fans prefer the spurious sentimental stuff of the various fight-story magazines to fight stories like those of Lardner, Hemingway or Callaghan. If so it is because of habit. But if there can he no large open market for good writing on a popular level, for stories that, without going in for refinements, subtleties, or richness in language could still give expressionto sound ideas, portray genuine backgrounds, and deal with fundamental emotions — well, it is a sad commentary on the age.
A lot of what Marsh writes still rings true. I know I don’t read pulp stories for their character development or emotional content. But rather, I enjoy them as escapist fare — as pure entertainment.
An online search hasn’t turned up Jack L. Myers’s letter, but I’m curious about what prompted Marsh’s response. A trip to the local library may be in order.
Stay tuned.
