Get your high pulp

I feel like I’ve been waiting for this project for weeks and weeks, but finally, the Anthony Neil Smith-edited online issue of the Mississippi Review is finally up and running, with more fiction, sex and sleaze than you can shake a stick at. There are big names (Bruen, Stella, Pollack, Hendricks, Gischler ) old friends like Pat Lambe and Craig McDonald (with his first published piece of fiction!) as well as names that should be big someday, like Brian Barr, Vishal Kanna, and Kathy Kubik.

As for why? Let Mr. Smith explain:

Who says people can’t experiment with language and

storytelling in the pulp genre? Are best writers have been doing

it for quite a while now, but publishers and readers have been a

bit slow catching on. Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn

turned a few heads several years ago, a literary noir novel that

deconstructed hard-boiled language through a Tourette’s

afflicted private eye. Beyond that, James Ellroy and Ken Bruen

write bare bones prose that comes at you like a montage of

images and dialogue, doing away with the formality of

description. It can happen anywhere. It does. If you care about

the characters, you’ll stick around regardless. George Pelecanos

gave us several novels in which the characters were more

interested in telling us about their record collection that

about committing crimes. And they were good books, almost

documentary-like, maybe even minimalist noir. I’m saying that

the formula is busted. Some people still pick it up and tinker

with it, repair it now and then, but for the most part, great

pulp writers absorbed the basics and have now moved on to find

the most interesting way to tell you their stories.

That’s what this issue is all about. The stories had to give

me a certain feeling. They had to make my eyes go wide, make me

say “Wow, I’ve got to tell someone about this.” I wanted these

pulp stories to reflect contemporary times instead of nostalgia

for the Forties. I wanted them to come across with strong unique

voices, the characters giving us the story as only they can do

it. I wanted them to be addictive, exciting, full of writing

that slaps you silly and makes you like it.

In the primetime of pulp magazines, readers would leave them

on trains, in cabs, in bus stations, for someone else to find

and enjoy. That’s what I’m doing for you now. I’m leaving this

issue at our cyber bus station because these stories are too

good for me to keep to myself. Besides, the writers would beat

the living hell out of me if I tried to do that anyway. I’m

really afraid of them all.

Very well said. Now go spend some quality time reading these most excellent stories.