I do like the pithy summaries of the Bard's plays by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (shakespeare.org.uk)
Here's a few favourites...
A Midsummer Night's Dream: "People get lost in the woods. Puck manipulates their romantic affections and (in one case) anatomical head shape. They put on a play."
Twelth Night: "Viola thinks her brother is dead. He thinks she is dead. Everybody thinks that she is her brother. Everybody thinks that her brother is her. Shenanigans ensue."
King Lear: "King divides kingdom snubs daughter, goes mad. There's a storm and everyone dies."
Troilus and Cressida: "Troilus loves Cressida, but she betrays him. Achilles loves Patroclis, but he is killed. The Trojan War goes on. No one is happy."
The Merry Wives of Windsor: "Falstaff tries to pursue two married women. The women are smart; they put him in a river, dress him as a woman, and bring him to a haunted forest. Everyone is happy."
As You Like It: "All brothers hate each other for some reason. Rosalind dresses up as a boy and convinces her crush to hit on her while she's a boy. Everyone is married by a Greek God."
Henry VIII: "Cardinal Wolsey is shifty. Henry divorces Katherine and marries Anne. Queen Elizabeth is the most extraordinary being ever to be been, praise her."
Today in pulp I'm looking back at a very popular (and collectable) form of art: Micro Leyendas covers!
Micro Leyendas (mini legends) are a Mexican form of fumetto, small graphic novels normally pitting the everyday hero against the weird, the occult and the unfathomable.
The art of Micro Leyendas is bold, macabre and very funny. The books often tell a cautionary tale of revenge or humiliation, much like a modern folk tale.
Today in pulp: what makes a good opening sentence for a pulp novel?
Now this is a tricky one…
The opening sentence has an almost mythical status in writing. Authors agonise for months, even years, about crafting the right one. Often it’s the last thing to be written.
Which is odd, because very few people abandon a book if they don’t like the first sentence. It’s not like the first sip of wine that tells you if the Grand Cru has been corked! Most people at least finish Chapter One.
The Time Machine, Brave New World, 1984: these weren’t the first dystopian novels. There's an interesting history of Victorian and Edwardian literature looking at the impact of modernity on humans and finding it worrying.
Today in pulp I look at some early dystopian books…
Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1863, was the second novel penned by Jules Verne. However his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel rejected it as too gloomy. The manuscript was only discovered in 1994 when Verne’s grandson hired a locksmith to break into an old family safe.
The novel, set in 1961, warns of the dangers of a utilitarian culture. Paris has street lights, motor cars and the electric chair but no artists or writers any more. Instead industry and commerce dominate and citizens see themselves as cogs in a great economic machine.
In January 1919 a new magazine heralded the dawn of the Weimar era. Its aesthetic was a kind of demented Jugendstil, and its stories were dark gothic fantasies.
This is the story of Der Orchideengarten...
Der Orchideengarten: Phantastische Blätter (The orchid garden: fantastic pages) is probably the first ever fantasy magazine. Published in Munich by Dreiländerverlag, a trial issue appeared in 1918 before the first full 24 page edition was published in January 1919.
"The orchid garden is full of beautiful - now terribly gruesome, now satirically pleasing - graphic jewelery" announced the advanced publicity. It was certainly a huge departure from the Art Nouveau of Jugend magazine, which German readers were already familiar with.