By TJ Martinell
The original pulp fiction was meant as a throw-away form of entertainment. It was enjoyed via dime novels by the poor and cowboys isolated on wild west ranches. The term “pulp” referred to the cheap form of paper used to print those books, with the assumption they would be tossed aside once read. No one thought they would be taken seriously or remember.
Initially, that is what happened. There are countless pulp or dime novels that were written that no one can recall, authors whose words will never be evoked again.
To be fair, that fate is deserved. Pulp fiction’s poor quality is what inspired pencil-maker Edgar Rice Burroughs to throw his gauntlet down and challenge writers to do better. It goes without saying he succeeded in a way that perhaps he did not even anticipate. He and others paved the way for other pulp writers to explore genres that otherwise would have never existed outside of pulp.
I suspect that what made Burroughs and other pulp writers that followed him, such as Robert E. Howard, is that they were serious about their craft. What preceded them were stuff made for a generation that had to do with whatever they found. A man living in the bunk house of a ranch subsisted off Sears Roebuck catalogs and whatever novel he could find written by someone telling tawdry tales in melodramatic ways and with predictable endings.
The great pulp writers came of age when the wild west was gone, and technology had made such cheap forms of entertainment replaceable. Princess of Mars came about right before the golden age of silent films. Solomon Kane was created just as the sound film era was born via the Jazz Singer. It was also the golden age of the radio. Men could do more than read poorly written works. They could watch films, read the funny papers (comics), or listen to sports events.
Moreover, the great pulp writers witnessed an enormous civilization transition. They lived when there were still lands to be tamed, wilderness to be explored, and areas not yet settled. The West may have been taken, but there were yet unconquered realms. The age of flight allowed and permitted access to otherwise unknown lands.
The great pulp works sought to tap into the white man’s fascination and imagination with the world beyond civilization. Burroughs wrote more than a dozen novels about his beloved character Tarzan, yet not once did he step one foot in Africa (nor did Howard, who set stories about Solomon Kane in the same continent). What drove much of their writing was an angst, which I believed Western men still feel, regarding their place in history. Burroughs was a pencil-maker, and Howard lived in a random part of Texas. Not exactly the circumstances associated with their stories.
Aside from being cheap entertainment, pulp was written as a form of escapism. It wasn’t meant to depict the real world the way literary fiction attempts to do. It features heroes in fantastic settings amid extraordinary circumstances. If you lived a rather plain, perhaps even banal lifestyle, pulp was a way to use your imagination to go beyond the confines of civilization’s restrictions.
The eternal truth is that all men are by nature barbarians and savages who, at least for Western men, renounced their ferocity in exchange for all the comforts and conveniences that civilization provides.
However, a part of the price paid for that exchange is man’s innate desire for unhindered adventure. Fundamentally, a man surrenders a part of himself and his potential in order participate in civilized society. One can argue whether it is a paid worth paying, but it is a loss felt by men who in older times would have been on the frontier or partaking in some great expedition, who always wondered what was to be found around that next corner.
When pulp was first written, men still could wet his beak in that regard if he chose to do so. The creators of King Kong, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, were infamous for venturing into regions where no white man had set foot and record nature films featuring primitive tribes and feral beasts. Whatever invention or idea inspired them, they could pursue and had relatively few hurdles or obstacles in their path.
Sadly, this cannot be said about today’s world. I think I will provoke little debate or argument when I say that the 21st Century, so far, is the era of the Longhouse. The priorities and values of the feminine – safety, conformity, security, consensus – are the default values of our society. It has made exceedingly difficult for men to indulge in any meaningful sense of adventure outside of preapproved, prescribed paths. Those that do partake in anything remotely dangerous have to either live a radical alternative lifestyle or have significant wealth.
The Modern West is becoming a haven for low-energy, risk-adverse souls who prefer to live quiet lives of resignation. Their only passion is to extinguish the passion of others that might drive them to do mighty things.
This is the situation we must contend with for the foreseeable future.
While I don’t recommend a direct, actual revolution against this system, I do propose a way to resist it.
We must go Back to the Pulps.
The one thing that cannot be taken away from us is our imagination, and through it we can channel our enthusiasm, creativity, desires, and dreams – all unbound by any would-be foe threatened by what they symbolize.
To say that men are by nature barbarians and leave it at that is to tell a half-truth. They also by nature adhere to their own rules. A “civilized” man does what he is told because that’s what he was told. The pulps were about men who had their own rules, their own Code, and their unflinching adherence to it is what drove them. Whether it was Solomon Kane or Sam Spade, their Code defined them.
The Longhouse does not want men with their own Code. It wants men who do what they are told, irrespective of what they are being told at that moment.
When you follow rules for your own personal reasons, you are not controlled. Good or evil, you are your own man.
Ultimately, the pulps were about men who, though shackled by modern civilization, refused to be civilized by it. Such freedom originates in the mind, which is where we must liberate men. They may not be able to physically break out of the Longhouse, but through pulp fiction, we provide them space to free their hearts and spirits.
If the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, then let us brandish it with resolve.
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