The NY Times carried an article Sunday on Philip K Dick;
something must be done to show that the Good Grey Lady is hep
to his Library of America collection. The article was headed
"The Prince of Pulp" ("pulpish sensibility," "Thrilling
Wonder Stories," "lurid cover"). It contains some nice
insights into his work ("to a considerable extent Mr. Dick's
future is a lot like our present"), but it uses "pulp" as if
this kind of writing is suitable for Hollywood pot boilers.
The Times implies that pulp is totally unattached to any kind
of literary merit, as if whatever benefits there are to
Dick's writing, they exist *in spite of* the fact that he
wrote for popular genre magazines and Ace Doubles that were
sold on newsstands. It's a kind of bourgeois snobbery that
characterizes every literary and film evaluation of the
paper, and IMO a sign of its attitude about popular culture.
It's not cluelessness; it's hostility, based on its belief
that the proper reader must base his/her values in
entertainment on a "decent" class system. "Nobody would ever
dream of looking to [Emerson] for movie ideas. Emerson was
all brain, no pulp."
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