-----Original Message----- From: Michael Robison [mailto:
miker_zspider@yahoo.com]
Mario Taboada wrote: Depending on who you listen to, the
fifties were either an age of innocence and prosperity or one
of decadence and change of the guard. For example,
Halberstam's history of the decade oscillates between one and
the other view.
--Kind of hard not to have all of this at all times somewhere
in a society.
I see a three-way tug of war going on here with Meaker's
first book. Gold Medal wanted something sensationalistic.
Growing conservatism demanded moral themes. And Ms Meaker
wanted to write something true and honest. It's incredible
that somebody could write under that kind of pressure.
--I'm not sure we were seeing "growing" conservatism, Mike.
The reactionaries were simply flexing more of their
well-financed muscle. After all, as Meaker has pointed out,
any upbeat lesbian-themed paperback was likely to be seen as
propaganda for lesbianism, and therefore obscene and not
legally mailable (male-able and malliable. Not what a
paperback publisher wanted to see. And not a new development
in the early '50s.
In an odd bit of synchronicity, Marty Halpern sent this link
along to FictionMags for a p/r for a new series of
feminist-press reprints of "pulp fiction" novels... http://news.bookweb.org/1851.html
...and featuring not a bit of other ignorance about the
subjects at hand:
What is scheduled for publication in early November are
Dorothy B. Hughes' In a Lonely Place, Valerie Taylor's The
Girls in 3-B, and Faith Baldwin's Skyscraper. While some
might be a bit surprised that the press is publishing pulp
fiction, others might wonder whether Hughes' harrowing 1947
novel -- which is narrated by a male serial killer and rapist
-- is appropriate for Feminist Press' raison d'괲e, Casella
said. "I think it's going to be controversial. I'm sure there
will be people who don't think this was appropriate for the
Feminist Press to do. But I think the distinction that should
be made, and that's made almost from page one, is that this
is about misogyny, as opposed to books by Jim Thompson, which
are misogynistic."
Casella explained that Hughes offers plenty of commentary in
the novel through its main character. "Why else would she
have named him Dix Steele?" she queried.
A number of today's leading women mystery authors, including
Sarah Paretsky and Marsha Muller, have agreed to write blurbs
for In a Lonely Place.
"Dorothy was like their grandmother," said Feminist Press
associate publisher Lisa London. "They're thrilled that she's
getting her due and being brought back to print with a very
serious emphasis. We're not just going for the fact that this
is pulp. It's also literature."
Backing up London's point is Lisa Maria Hogeland's afterword
to A Lonely Place, which features this quote from Erin A.
Smith's study of hard-boiled fiction: "Reading these texts
[pulp fiction at large] as classics is not at all the same as
reading them as trash." Hogeland continues, "This reissue of
In a Lonely Place invites us to read its feminist
work."
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03 Oct 2003 EDT