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Recommended reading
The lurid world of pulp
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Category Archives: Pulp fiction
Book review: The World of Shaft
You might remember the news last year that New Line pictures had acquired the rights to do yet another film remake featuring the iconic character of John Shaft. If so, you may also remember the ensuring controversy that erupted over plans to make said film a comedy, including an open letter protesting the move by award winning journalist, David F Walker.
I am not sure at what stage the proposal Shaft remake is at, but I totally agree with Walker in his introduction to Steve Aldous’s recently released guide to the character, ‘When author Ernest Tidyman’s book Shaft was first published in 1971, and director Gordon Parks’ cinematic adaption followed a year later, a new era of representation began in American pop culture.’
The World of Shaft attempts to chronicle the cultural phenomena that is the ex-juvenile delinquent, Vietnam Vet, New York private eye known as Shaft. From the character’s origins via the pen of white ex-newspaperman Tidyman to the, in my opinion, rather average 2000 cinematic remake, this is an exhaustive examination of every aspect of the character and his various manifestations.
Shaft emerged from a combination of Tidyman’s desperation to make it as a writer and, as he put it in an interview, his “awareness of both social and literary situations in a changing city.… Read more
Posted in 1970s American crime films, Blaxsploitation, Book Reviews, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Yaphet Kotto
Tagged David F Walker, Ernest Tidyman, Flower Power, Gordon Parks, John Shaft, Richard Roundtree, Shaft (1971), Shaft in Africa (1973), Shaft's Big Score (1972), Steve Aldous, The French Connection (1971), The World of Shaft, Yaphet Kotto
Mike Hodges’ Pulp & mass paperback fiction on the big screen
The opening credits of Mike Hodges’ under appreciated 1972 film, Pulp, are a delight for any fan of cheap pulp paperback fiction. As text roles across the screen (in type writer font, of course), the camera pans between the faces of the three female stenographers transcribing the words of sleazy English expat pulp writer, Mickey King (Michael Caine). As Caine’s nasal voice-over recites his latest novel, The Organ Grinder, we see the different reactions of the women, disgust, shock, and excitement. It’s a reminder that once, before it was reduced to an object of outre fascination for its cover art, pulp fiction elicited strong emotions.
The movie shifts to King, in his cheap white suit and big hair, Jack Carter – the character he played in Hodges’ Get Carter only a year earlier – gone to seed, stepping out of the Italian hotel he lives in to hail a cab. As he sits in the reception area waiting for his completed manuscript, King’s voice-over goes: “The writer’s life would be ideal but for the writing. This was a problem I had to overcome. Then I read the Guinness Book of Records about Earl Stanley Gardner, the world’s fastest novelist who would dictate up to the rate of ten thousand words every day.… Read more
Posted in 1960s American crime films, British crime cinema, Crime fiction, Crime film, Michael Caine, Pulp fiction, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers
Tagged Brett Halliday, Davis Dresser, Earl Stanley Gardner, Get Carter (1971), Joseph Cotton, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), Lisbeth Scott, London in the Raw (1965), Massino Pupillo, Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney, Mike Shayne, Nadia Cassini, Pulp (1972), Robert Altman, The Bloody Pit of Horror (1965), The Long Goodbye (1973), The Third Man (1949)
Pulp Friday: The Man Who Fell to Earth
Like so many people, I was enormously saddened by news this week of the death of David Bowie, from cancer at the age of 69.
There is no need for me to replicate all the sentiments that have been expressed elsewhere about Bowie’s passing, except to say that for me, as for so many of you, his death has left a huge hole in my popular culture landscape and the world is a less interesting place without him.
I did want to do something on this site to commemorate Bowie, however. And what better way to pay tribute to the man who once said his perfect idea of happiness is reading, than through books. So, my first Pulp Friday offering for 2016 is dedicated to the wonderful David Bowie: a selection of paperback tie ins for The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed by Nicolas Roeg, released in 1976.
It was only when I was doing research for an article on the ‘David Bowie Is’ exception that toured Melbourne last year, that I discovered The Man Who Fell to Earth was a book before it was a film. The Man Who Fell to Earth was first published in 1961. It was written by US novelist Walter Tevis whose debut work, The Hustler, featured as a Pulp Friday post here in 2013.… Read more
Posted in Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Pan Books, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Science fiction and fantasy, Vintage pulp paperback covers
Tagged Candy Clark, David Bowie, Nicolas Roeg, Rip Torn, The Hustler, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis
Pulp Friday: witches, sorcerers & Satan’s disciples
Satan, witches, warlocks, demons, they were everywhere in the sixties and seventies and no more so than on pulp fiction covers. To mark Halloween, today’s Pulp Friday offering is a selection of covers featuring the lord of darkness and his various disciples.
It’s hardly surprising that Satanism and witchcraft featured so prominently in pulp. Not only did these books mirror then contemporary tabloid fascinations with black magic and witches, but the subject was an excuse for a bit of gratuitous sex and nudity. Especially sex. Devil worshippers, particularly Satan’s female disciples, were nothing if not sexually promiscuous, at least in the pages of pulp fiction.
The selection of covers below hail from the UK, US and Australia. They ran the gamut of key pulp fiction sub-genres: fiction (Dennis Wheatley’s To the Devil a Daughter, one of many occult themed books he wrote); history and so-called exposes (James Holledge’s Black Magic, ‘The world of uncanny occult rights, psychic phenomena, weird sex rities’); how to guides (How to Become a Sensuous Witch); television and movie ties ins (The Witchfinder General and The Grip of Evil, the latter part of a series of paperback spin offs based on the hugely popular early 1970s Australian television show, Number 96), and smut titles (Bride of Satan and The Cult of Flesh – ‘Violent debauchery in a Satanic Cult of Flesh Worshipers’),
Even Carter Brown, hardly the most salacious of pulp writers in the sixties, touched on occult themes in books like Blonde on a Broomstick.… Read more
Posted in Australian popular culture, Ben Wheatley, Horror, Horwitz Publications, New English Library, Pan Books, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Tandem Books, Vintage pulp paperback covers
Tagged Calvert Publications, Carter Brown, Dennis Wheatley, James Blish, James Holledge, New English Library, Number 96, Pan Books, Peter Haining, Ronald Bassett, Satanic pulp fiction, Scripts Publications