Pulp Fiction Vs Literary Fiction
Pulp fiction has given us some of the best writing of the 20th century: Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, and Lovecraft. Even Tennessee Williams and Faulkner admired the form. Bradbury, Hubbard, Asimov, Dick, etc. are all honored alum of classic newsstand pulp fiction. This is not writing for children.
Two things I avoid with a passion: "funny" novels (if I want comedy I know where to get it) and "serious" literature. I keep reading reviews of books that are "laugh-out-loud" funny, humorous, or just damned stupid. If the book is a joke to the author why should I take it seriously? Chandler and Thompson are funny, between the violent murder, lies, fatal seductions, beatings and corruption. "Serious" literature isn't worth the paper it's printed on, or the bytes of an e-book for that matter. The best new writing seems to be by kids or emotionally arrested adults. It used to be by guys you'd swear were erudite, philosophically trained sociopaths. I'll take the latter any day.
I made it a point never to read anything I was told to read in HS, passing on Catcher In The Rye and The Diary Of Ann Frank for Naked Lunch, Justine and The Thief's Journal. Burroughs, Sade and Genet having more to say about the world I actually lived in, filled with ubiquitous violence, harassment by the cops, drugs, perversion, decadence, shady characters, the threat of prison and open homosexuality. Now after cutting my teeth in my adolescence on stuff like that why would I want to read some neurotic white bread suburban memoir of drab run of the mill people with drab run of the mill problems? "My mother was crazy and my father was crazy and a drunk and my sister has cancer, my brother is gay and I'm depressed, but we're all quite educated and well-off so our crack habits barely eats into our kids' college fund." Oh, boo-fucking-hoo.
One-dimensional cardboard characters and clich
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