"Yes, Mary McCarthy is a much neglected novelist now and that's a shame..."
"Gee it really is hard to argue against Emile Durkheim..."
"'The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.' Wow. Just... wow!"
"I'm telling you Katie you have to read White Noise before you read Underworld. You have to get into the rhythm of his sentences. DeLillo is all about the sentence..."
"Margaret Atwood opened my eyes, but Octavia Butler... she blew my mind!"
"My Aeolic Greek is a little rusty, but if that isn't a motto of Sappho then it surely should be."
"No madam, I'm not that J.D. Salinger."
"Then we throw our manuscripts into the fire and that's the end of the writer's retreat. We're free baby, free of our hangups and ready to really write! Anyway, next year we're in Montreal..."
What are the pulp archetypes? Pulp novels are usually written quickly and rely on a formula, but do they use different archetypal characters to other fiction?
Let's take a look at a few...
The Outlaw is a classic pulp archetype: from Dick Turpin onwards lawbreakers have been a staple of the genre. Crime never pays, but it's exciting and trangressive!
Some pulp outlaws however are principled...
As Bob Dylan sang "to live outside the law you must be honest." Michel Gourdon's 1915 hero Dr Christopher Syn is a good example. A clergyman turned pirate and smuggler, he starts as a revenger but becomes the moral magistrate of the smuggling gangs of Romney Marsh.
Given the current heatwave, I feel obliged to ask my favourite question: is it time to bring back the leisure suit?
Let's find out...
Now we all know what a man's lounge suit is, but if we're honest it can be a bit... stuffy. Formal. Businesslike. Not what you'd wear 'in da club' as the young folks say.
So for many years tailors have been experimenting with less formal, but still upmarket gents attire. The sort of garb you could wear for both a high level business meeting AND for listening to the Moody Blues in an espresso bar. Something versatile.
Today in pulp I look back at the publishing phenomenon of gamebooks: novels in which YOU are the hero!
A pencil and dice may be required for this thread...
Gamebooks are a simple but addictive concept: you control the narrative. At the end of each section of the story you are offered a choice of outcomes, and based on that you turn to the page indicated to see what happens next.
Gamebook plots are in fact complicated decision tree maps: one or more branches end in success, but many more end in failure! It's down to you to decide which path to tread.