Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers (Facts on File Library of American Literature)

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I've been a fan of Lee Server's books for a while now (don't miss OVER MY DEAD BODY, a fun and dirty tour of 1950s-era pulp paperbacks), and this book does not disappoint. It's an encylopedia-style rundown of "schmucks with Underwoods," but don't let that stop. Half the fun is flipping the page and finding some other forgotten scribe who deserves to be remembered (and read). Highly recommended.

This brief compendium of biographical enties on major and minor pulp writers is interesting and illuminating. It has just about the right amount of photographs, and some of them are rare. This volume is not as indipensable a starting point for research as it would have been before ithe nternet, wikipedia, and all the new online pulp studies. But this book is useful, easy to use, and fun to read. It is far from able to serve as an excyclopedia, or to deserve that name. I'd like to see it expanded on a regular schedule, and also cover the pulp artists who contributed so much to the pulp experience. This is a pleasant contribution to the growing field of pulp studies. Modest but very nicely done.

Why would an author who believes Sam Spade to have been created by Raymond Chandler (page 62) bother to write about pulp fiction writers? And, more to the point, why would you bother to read him?

There is little actual information in the book, except for generalities, brief plot synopses and more or less widely available biographical data. There are a few interesting snippets here and there about some lesser figures, but they are hardly worth your 20 bucks.