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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but ultimately unsatisfying,
By
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.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Primary Resource for Pulp Magazine Fiction,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
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.
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