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Recent Posts
- Dishing up Pulp Curry in a new way: why I am starting a Substack newsletter
- Book reviews: Deadly dames, midcentury Brit pulp and 1970s science fiction
- Mackenna’s Gold (1969): Gold, Ghosts and Frontier Violence
- Orphan Road book launch
- Orphan Road now available
- Pre-orders open for my new novel, Orphan Road
- Cover reveal: Orphan Road, my follow up to Gunshine State
- Breakfast in the Ruins podcast: New English Library Bikermania
- Why 1973 was the year Sidney Lumet took on police corruption
- Men’s Adventure Quarterly: Gang Girls issue
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Nothing but noir
Recommended reading
The lurid world of pulp
- 20th century Danny Boy
- American Pulps
- Bear Alley
- Bloody, Spicy, Books
- Comics Down Under
- Everything second hand
- Existential Ennui
- Greenleaf Classic Books
- Irv O. Neil's Erotica is My Trade
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- Murder, Mayhem and Long Dogs
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- Romance Fiction Has a History
- Rough Edges
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- Spy Guys and Gals
- The department of Afro American Research Arts & Culture
- The Dusty Bookcase
- The Haunted World of Richard Sala
- The Moon Lens
- The Nick Carter & Carter Brown Blog
- The Pulp & Paperback Fiction Reader
- Too Much Horror Fiction
- True Pulp Fiction
- Vault of Horror
- Vintage Nurse Romance Novels
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- Welcome to the Pan Paperback
- Yellow and Creased
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Author Archives: Andrew Nette
Reading John Frankenheimer’s Seconds
Early in this excellent monograph on John Frankenheimer’s criminally underseen 1966 film, Seconds, by Jez Conolly and Emma Westwood, the authors ask the reader at what point they first viewed the movie and what they made of it. For me it was a random VHS store pickup on a slow Saturday night sometime in the late 1990s. I can remember being as confused as I was impressed by the sheer bizarreness of Seconds. I was particularly perplexed by the presence of Rock Hudson. What was this major American actor, best known for the series of romantic comedies he did with Doris Day, doing in a downbeat, existentially bleak fusion of science fiction, thriller and noir?Watching the film more recently, with the benefit of considerably more knowledge of film history and Hudson’s career, I was blown away by the brilliance of Seconds.
Conolly and Westwood begin with the proposition that the film very much deserves a second life, a notion that is also central to its plot. Seconds concerns a bored, ennui riven middle class wage slave, who through an almost Faustian pact with a mysterious entity known only as the Company, is given a new body and face, and second chance at life. Escaping from everyday domestic responsibilities, particularly the possibilities for self-discovery and erotic adventure that this promised, would become a key topic of American film and literature from the mid-part of the 1960s onwards.… Read more
Posted in 1960s American crime films, John Frankenheimer, Men's Adventure Magazines, Neo Noir, Rock Hudson, Science fiction and fantasy, War film
Tagged David Ely, Hornet's Nest (1970), Ice Station Zebra (1968), James Wong Howe, John Frankenheimer, Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971), Robocop (1987), Rock Hudson, Roger Vadim, Salome Jens, Seconds (1966), Seven Days In May (1964), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Videodrome (1983)
Punchdrunk at the Yarra Valley Writers Festival
With a bit on my plate at the moment, I have not been posting as much as I would like to this site. I have a few things up my sleeve in terms of posts over the coming weeks that will hopefully turn this situation around but, in the meantime, I just wanted to hit you all with news of an event I am taking part in a few weeks that may be of interest.
The Yarra Valley Writers Festival is taking place, in person, on the weekend of July 16 and 18. You can check out the entire program online here. On the Saturday of the program, July 17, at 10.30am at the Warburton RSL, I’ll be interviewing author Michael Winkler about wonderful book, Grimmish. Grimmish tells the story of Joe Grimm, one of the most flamboyant boxers ever to our visit Australia’s shores in the early part of last century. Partly based on real events and part fiction, the book can best be described as a literary fever dream that speaks to our collective relationship to physical power, masculinity and pain. I’ll be talking to Michael about all these topics, the process of research Joe Grimm’s life and whether a traditional sport such as boxing add to the evolving discussion on what is to be male.… Read more
Book Review: The Snow Was Dirty
For reasons that I have not quite been able to pinpoint, over the last couple of years I have found myself reading more and more older crime fiction. The most recent of these was on the recommendation of a US crime writer I have recently had a bit to do with on Twitter, called Max Thrax, Georges Simenon’s The Snow Was Dirty – or Dirty Snow as it appears in some territories – originally published in 1946.
I had, of course, heard of Simenon but must come clean that before doing some research about him as a result of reading The Snow Was Dirty, knew virtually nothing about him or his work. Indeed, without any basis, I had dismissed as a writer of cosy procedurals.
No one knows exactly how many books Belgium born Simenon wrote over the course of his career. There are not many authors you can say that about. He started off in the 1920s, like so many mid century writers, as a pulp hack, working under a bewildering variety of pseudonyms. In the 1930s he started to churn what would become approximately 75 novels featuring the fictional French police detective, Jules Maigret, many of which were subsequently adapted for radio and the screen, large and small.… Read more
Book Review: Jane Gaskell’s A Sweet, Sweet Summer
One of the authors I really wanted to include among those examined in the third book I have co-edited with my friend, Iain McIntyre, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, was British writer, Jane Gaskell. In particular her novel, A Sweet, Sweet Summer, first published in hardback by Hodder and Stoughton in 1969. To be honest, as is so often the case, what first attracted me to finding out more about this title was the cover of the 1971 Sphere edition, with its uniquely early 1970s dystopian take on the female juvenile delinquent. It’s a wonderful piece of photographic paperback art, of the sort that the British did so well at the time, no doubt cheaply done (in all likelihood the model was one of the typists in the Sphere office), but very effective.
Plans to include Gaskell in Dangerous Visions and New Worlds were scuppered by the fact that I simply could not find a copy of A Sweet, Sweet Summer anywhere at a price that I could even remotely afford. The book is incredibly rare and has not been republished. Indeed, as I discovered when I posted an image of the cover above on Twitter – long after Dangerous Visions and New Worlds had been put to bed – I just was one of many bibliophiles who had been on the lookout for an affordable second-hand copy of this Gaskill book.… Read more
Posted in Book cover design, Book Reviews, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds Radical Science Fiction 1950 to 1985, Dystopian cinema, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980, New English Library, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp paperback cover art, Science fiction and fantasy
Tagged A Sweet Sweet Summer, China Miéville, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds Radical Science Fiction 1950 to 1980, Dave Wallis, Hospital Ship (1976), Jane Gaskell, Martin Bax, Michael Moorcock, New English Library, Only Lovers Left Alive, the Atlan Saga, The Shiny Narrow Grin, Valencourt Books, Youthsploitation
Video of my talk, The motorcycle – rebel in pop culture, now available
For those of you who were unable to attend my recent talk hosted by the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, ‘The Motorcycle: Rebel in Pop Culture’, there is now a video of the entire presentation on Youtube. The wonderful folks at QAGOMA have even done an Auslan interpretation of it for the vision impaired.
My talk will take you on a journey through the various representations of the motorcycle in youth and popular culture history, mainly in the United States, Australia and Great Britain. I examine what has given the motorbike its cool reputation and discuss how it has also functioned as a lightning rod for post war concerns around various youth subcultures. In addition to film, I also look at the representation of the motorbike in music and pulp fiction. You can also find it on YouTube here.… Read more
Posted in 1960s American crime films, 1970s American crime films, Australian crime film, Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Book cover design, British pulp fiction, Crime fiction and film from Japan, Dystopian cinema, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980, Horwitz Publications, Mad Max, Men's Adventure Magazines, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Steve McQueen, True crime, Vintage pulp paperback covers
Tagged Andrew Nette, Bikers, Bikies, Marlon Brando, QAGOMA, The Motorcycle Design Art Desire, The motorcycle in pop culture, Youthsploitation, Youthsploitation pulp