Literature
Valuable Sleaze: A Treasure Trove of Pulp Fiction
By Brian Lampkin
All photos in this article by Jim Bush
“Harlot—Killer—Mother—Judge—all tied together, all good, all rotten. Rape and murder was only the tip of the iceberg. This was the Real World, and nobody was innocent.”
—from the cover of The Criminal, by Jim Thompson
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The University at Buffalo has received a donation of over 25,000 pulp fiction titles from George Kelley, a graduate of UB and currently a teacher at Erie Community College. Called, what else, The George Kelley Pulp Fiction Collection, the books are both a revelation of popular culture and a marvel of preservation. Random House defines “pulp” as “a magazine or book printed on rough, low-quality paper made of wood pulp or rags, usually containing sensational and lurid stories.” People often confuse “low-quality paper” with “poor writing,” or mistakenly assume that “sensational and lurid” equals “unworthy of serious consideration.” The Kelley collection has a home in an academic setting because so much about American culture is revealed in these books and because, on occasion, certain extraordinary writers found a home in this low-rent format.
The great detective writers of the mid-century—Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Cornell Woolrich—are inseparable from the titillating covers and over-the-top presentation of the pulp world. Reading their novels in any other format is somehow a less exhilarating experience, a less authentic encounter with the time and place of their creation. And one pulp detective writer stands out among the masters of the genre—Jim Thompson. Many of Thompson’s violent, disturbing and psychologically complex novels were originally published as paperbacks by pulp houses such as Pyramid and Regency. Amazingly, Thompson’s work was long out-of-print in this country (though continually read through the fifties and sixties in France during its love affair with existentialism and subterranean Americana) and wasn’t resurrected until the 1980s when Black Lizard Books faithfully recreated the pulp format and reprinted many Thompson titles. In fact the only discernible difference from the originals is the $3.95 price replacing the rock-bottom pulp prices and the appearance of legitimizing blurbs on the covers from reviews in the New York Times.
The charm and challenge of the pulps was the absence of this kind of legitimization—the reader was on his or her own in determining the value of any work. There was no high culture imprint of a significant publisher determining for you that this or that work mattered. The forgettable and the fabulous were marketed the exact same way. Truly original writers, as in the case of William Burroughs, could often only be published in the pulps because the “sophisticated” publishing world had not caught on to what they were doing. Two early Burroughs novels, Junkie and Naked Lunch, were published as paperback originals by Ace when Allen Ginsberg, acting as Burrough’s agent, could find no other publisher.
The term “pulp fiction” was not coined until the early 1950’s and much of the Kelley collection is from that decade. There are a few hundred titles from the 40’s (prior to then books of this nature were referred to as “dime novels” and Stanford University has the most noteworthy collection) and thousands from the 60’s onward, but still the 50’s are the era of the pulps.
Lockwood Library Director Judy Adams-Volpe has spent a great deal of time among the rows and rows of plastic bag-covered paperbacks and has found herself reading more than a few of them. “Nobody made a move without a cigarette,” is among the observations Adams-Volpe has made about the novels, but she also points to the clear prejudices against all Asians prevalent in the 40’s and 50’s. Furthermore she sees America sorting out its feelings about women’s sexuality. “Men—and women—were often scared of women’s sexual power—theirs was a power not so easy to control,” Adams-Volpe says. The cover art typically presented ludicrously exaggerated depictions of these “dangerous” women.
Cover after cover depicts scantily clad women mesmerizing the reader with a mysterious and malevolent stare. Women were neither innocent nor helpless and certainly not the stereotypical housewife of straight culture’s imagination of the fifties. Pulp fiction women were tough, sinister, smart, and willing to use their sexual charms to get what they needed. Compare television women of the 50’s with pulp fiction women (imagine Harriet Nelson caught in a world of lesbian thieves and poisonous prostitutes) and you see a culture with a split personality. The “alternative” women present in many 50’s pulp novels presaged the coming sexual revolution and even presented an idea of feminism in action, if not in ideology.
There were other important alternative stories being told. Gay and lesbian material was not typical fare in respectable publishing houses, but the pulps—luridly and often exploitatively—had hundreds of gay and lesbian story lines. But at least they were there. Gays and lesbians were not invisible and sometimes, barely beneath the surface, pulp novels revealed an understanding of the gay world that suggested a guiding and knowing intelligence. Gore Vidal, writing under assumed names, wrote several explicitly homoerotic novels. Furthermore, erotic lesbian novels—supposedly marketed for straight men—became underground classics for lesbians desperate for any information on lesbian sexuality.
Schmid says it is difficult to estimate the monetary value of the Kelley collection, but he guesses that it’s worth millions of dollars (Burrough’s Junkie in mint condition can sell for upwards of $1,000). Kelley’s donation is an extraordinarily generous act that will serve the UB community and all pulp fiction connoisseurs for generations. Adams-Volpe has had t-shirts made to commemorate the collection. On top of the cultural and monetary value, the Kelley Collection is just plain fun. Even academics and librarians—people not necessarily known for their frivolity—can’t resist the joys of the pulp fiction world. You can visit this lurid landscape at the Lockwood Library on UB’s North Campus or access it on the web at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/lml/kelley/.
Brian Lampkin is the owner of Rust Belt Books in Buffalo, NY and the editor of Pathways, an HIV and AIDS newsmagazine.
The Kelley Collection’s Greatest Hits
George Kelley says that the books in his collection are “windows revealing Pop Culture from mid- to late-20th Century.” Kelley even provides his own “greatest hits”—the ten pulp fiction classics that provide a distinct and notable view of America. Each of Kelley’s choices is a paperback original.
1) Junkie, by William Lee (Ace 1953) William Burroughs first published book.
2) The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula LeGuin (Ace 1969).
3) The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut (Dell 1959).
4) The Killer Inside Me, by Jim Thompson (Lion 1952). According to Stanley Kubrick, “probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered.”
5) Finger Man, by Raymond Chandler (Avon 1946).
6) Martian Time-Slip, by Philip K. Dick (Ballantine 1964).
7) The Einstein Intersection, by Samuel Delany (Ace 1967). Delany now teaches literature at the University at Buffalo.
8) The Con Man, by Ed McBain (Pocket Books 1956).
9) The Female Man, by Joanna Russ (Bantam 1975).
10) This Girl for Hire, by G. G. Fickling (Pyramid 1957).
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