THE PULP JUNGLE. [Hardcover]

Frank. Gruber (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Los Angeles: Sherbourne Press, Inc., (1967)
• ASIN: B0028QCDRM
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but ultimately unsatisfying, April 5, 2011

By 

Rory Coker (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The pulp jungle (Hardcover)

Frank Gruber was in many ways the ultimate pulp hack, a one-man fiction factory, and yet in many decades of pulp collecting and reading, I have never obtained a single issue of any pulp that contained one of his stories, nor have I ever encountered a hard-back or paper-back edition of any one of his many mysteries or westerns. One problem is that one of his steadiest pulp markets was SHORT STORIES, a pulp almost completely ignored by collectors, and about which very little is known or remembered today, although in its heyday it was probably one of the top three pulp markets in terms of prestige (the other two being ADVENTURE and BLACK MASK).

This ultimately unsatisfying book, which ends so abruptly that I had visions of poor Gruber falling dead onto his typewriter, tells of his difficult entry into the world of pulp writing, and his gradual transition to hard-back novels, and film and TV series scripting. Gruber's dates are 1904 to 1969, and this book was written circa 1966. Gruber was already 30 when he impulsively moved to NYC to try to carve out a pulp career, and after one very, very lean year, editors learned that you could call Gruber around noon, tell him you needed a story of a certain length to fill out the next issue ready for the presses, and have him deliver it to your office before noon the next day. He sold everything he wrote from then on.

Every pulpster seemed to dream of making the transition to the high-paying slick magazines such as THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. Gruber tried that market and found it needed fiction so effeminate and emasculated that it was no pleasure to write it. He was much more successful writing mystery and western novels for hardback publication (with, of course, magazine serialization as well). Another dream of pulpsters was to make the transition to movie scripting, but few did. However, many more did eventually transition to TV scripting, including Gruber... writing for a weekly series was a very close analog of writing for the pulps.

Most people would read this book to get Gruber's word portraits of editors and authors of the day, and there are quite a few... but ultimately probably not enough. Gruber's life was a bit too short (he died at 65) for him to live to see the explosion of interest in pulps and pulp collecting that emerged in the late 1960s and dominated the 1970s and 1980s before dying away as the supply of pulps not already in the hands of collectors dwindled to zero. So this book is the only source we have for his memories of and experiences in that heroic era.

4.0 out of 5 stars The King of the Pulps, February 14, 2012

By 

Keith Otis Edwards "Keith Otis Edwards" (Dearbron, MI United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The pulp jungle (Hardcover)

I confess that, despite his apparent fame and success as an author during my lifetime, I had never heard of the late Frank Gruber(1904-1969) or any of his work, until I obtained "The Pulp Jungle," his autobiography. I had just purchased some old paperbacks, and I was struck by how quaint they now seem. Even if you are an aficionado of pulp fiction, this book will introduce you to the names of many men who wanted to be writers and who tried their best to actually make a living from writing. Most are now forgotten and their work has disappeared up some chimney, but at one time, people paid to read their work. If you have scant interest in bad fiction, this book is still of interest, because the anecdotes Gruber has to tell are often hilarious.

One of the names I had never heard of before reading this book is probably the most prolific writer of all time, a man who wrote under the name Max Brand. Do a search for that name here and you'll see that many of his books are still available -- 1,908 titles, and that doesn't include any of the books he wrote under his own name or any of the movie scripts he wrote. He wrote a million words a year, and he accomplished this while drinking two quarts of whiskey each day during his work day, then going home to commence serious drinking. I leave it to your judgment to decide whether such a feat is possible, but Gruber states it as fact.

The plots of a few pulp-fiction stories are recalled, and they are the most awful, preposterous, absurd stories you could imagine. If you were challenged to sit down and write the worst story you could imagine and given a week to complete it, you could not think of anything worse than the stories recalled here. Yet men were paid for writing such stories, and they often turned out a half-dozen such awful stories a week.

A line quoted from a 1926 Western story reads, "Yuh stinkin' bull ain't gonin' tuh git away without tryin' to tell yuh again, Larry?"
Laugh if you must, but people are paying good money for copies of such American literature.

Although my interest was aroused by this book, and I ordered a couple of titles he mentions that can be found cheaply, I'd have to say that, if this book is any evidence, Frank Gruber wasn't very polished at his profession. He's a clumsy writer, and syntax no good he at which.

A typical sentence reads, "That there is no money in poetry everyone knows."
Another sample is, "And he was physically nicely streamlined."

But still, the man must be given credit. He was a success at doing what he loved.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Primary Resource for Pulp Magazine Fiction, November 2, 2009

By 

Keith Alan Deutsch (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The pulp jungle (Hardcover)

A superlative, very readable, anecdotal memoir and history of the pulp magazine fiction scene among writers, editors, and publishing houses in New York City during the 1930's and 1940's. Includes colorful, brief portraits of many writers and editors. Charming, informative, personal, and generally very accurate.