Re: RARA-AVIS: Philip K Dick, the NY Times, and pulp

From: Robert Elkin ( rictusaporia@yahoo.com)
Date: 06 May 2007


I dunno, Jay--that "transparent eyeball" of RWE's has potential (heh heh heh) R
--- Jay Gertzman < jgertzma@earthlink.net> wrote:

> The NY Times carried an article Sunday on Philip K
> Dick; something must
> be done to show that the Good Grey Lady is hep to
> his Library of America
> collection. The article was headed "The Prince of
> Pulp" ("pulpish
> sensibility," "Thrilling Wonder Stories," "lurid
> cover"). It contains
> some nice insights into his work ("to a considerable
> extent Mr. Dick's
> future is a lot like our present"), but it uses
> "pulp" as if this kind
> of writing is suitable for Hollywood pot boilers.
> The Times implies that
> pulp is totally unattached to any kind of literary
> merit, as if whatever
> benefits there are to Dick's writing, they exist *in
> spite of* the fact
> that he wrote for popular genre magazines and Ace
> Doubles that were sold
> on newsstands. It's a kind of bourgeois snobbery
> that characterizes
> every literary and film evaluation of the paper, and
> IMO a sign of its
> attitude about popular culture. It's not
> cluelessness; it's hostility,
> based on its belief that the proper reader must base
> his/her values in
> entertainment on a "decent" class system. "Nobody
> would ever dream of
> looking to [Emerson] for movie ideas. Emerson was
> all brain, no pulp."

 
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