(After this most recent discussion of "whither the PI", I
suspect that us rara-avians are the ones most interested in
this lovely offer from our buddy Anthony Neil Smith, master
publisher of Plots without Guns, and The Mississippi
Review.)
October 2006: Postmodern Pulp Edited by Anthony Neil
Smith
Call for Submissions: Fiction, Max 2000 words
So who are the pulp writers in the postmodern world, since we
no longer have the cheaply produced tabloids or the throwaway
dime novels? They've raised the stakes, learned to twist and
flip genre expectations until they've produced real art. Sin
City, in using the genre, has found deeper waters to swim in.
It's intentionally over the top serio-comic literature beyond
absurd, but still shadowing conventional humanist literary
concerns. It deconstructs our fascination with the criminal,
the cheat, the femme fatale, the average joe who's in over
his head. It exploits our exploitations.
Chandler, Hammett, and Cain became literary over the decades
the way wine ages. They had to ferment, let the culture catch
up with them. Some of the pulp kings of the fifties like
Goodis and Thompson are shaping up nicely like scotch in an
old oak barrel. But we live in different times and create art
in different ways. Postmodern, Cyberpunk, Parody, Pastiche,
Dogma 95, Digital, Indie. What does pulp look like when you
try it through those different lenses? What can you keep,
what do you lose, and what does it pick up along the way?
Pulp is supposed to be titillating, shocking. Unexpected. So
today's pulp writer is outside of the mainstream, throwing
rocks at the windows on both the genre and the literary. A
real fucking maverick.
For the Post-Pulp issue of Mississippi, we want you to use
pulp to make something new, something that smashes our
expectations by toying with them. Don't let us catch you
smiling or winking while you do it, either. Pulp is serious
candy. We want crime fiction that's out of focus or has
coffee spilled all over it. Apply the new tricks of the
literary game to refresh the genre, make it jump context. As
Richard S. Prather once put it, "Dig that crazy grave!"
KEY DATES FOR THE POSTMODERN PULP ISSUE No submissions until
July 1, 2006 Submissions end: Sept 15, 2006 Issue
publication: October 1, 2006 Submissions to Anthony Neil
Smith after July 1, 2006.
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 19 Feb 2006 EST