In a message dated 6/2/2002 8:01:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca writes:
<< Also, there's been some discussion about Gruber's
THE PULP JUNGLE...I've
been meaning to get this for some time but have yet to
do so...to those who
have read it: worth the time and trouble to track down
a copy?
Ron Clinton >>
Frank Gruber's THE PULP JUNGLE is well worth reading for
anyone interested in the pulps and genre fiction publishing
in the 1930s-1940s. Gruber also covers his breakthrough into
novels and later Hollywood. His stories of Faust (Max Brand)
are fascinating. It reads like it was dictated. I say that
not as a criticism as the stories roll out in a
conversational style. It was written near the end of Gruber's
life and if he had tried to write something more elaborate,
it likely would not have been finished. I seem to recall he
was collecting past issues of Black Mask in his later life
and was something of an expert on it, even the issues prior
to his appearance in the magazine. He also published BRASS
KNUCKLES by the same publisher Sherbourne Press (1966) which
is a collection of his Oliver Quade stories from Black Mask.
It also features a foreward "The Life and Times of the Pulp
Story" which runs about 40 pages. Everything in that forward
is in JUNGLE but it is a nice shorter version and I rather
like the collection as well.
Gruber had sold some Sunday School stories and a few pulp
pieces when he decided to move to New York in 1934. He made
the rounds of the editors and describes the scene very well.
Lots of color, such as the weekly luncheon where writers
flashed checks they had just received and editors were
smoozed.
There are also nice touches like the time he ran into
an old, semi-retired H.Bedford Jones in a bookstore. IIRC, it
was Gruber and Steve Fisher (I WAKE UP SCREAMING) who kept
Woolrich out late one night and got him in trouble with his
elderly mother waiting for him back at his hotel.
Most of the other pulp stories I have read originated with
the science fiction writers like Asimov. Gruber was prepared
to write anything and everything any editor wanted.
I highly recommend THE PULP JUNGLE. For dedicated pulp
lovers, there is a nice section on Adventure (perhaps my
favorite pulp) in T.S. Stribling's autobiography. Just as the
crumbling pages of Startling Stories and other SF pulps
contain the ancestors of "Star Wars," Adventure, at one time
the most popular pulp, was the ancestor of Indiana
Jones.
Richard Moore
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