Book Discussion: Cult Fiction

You'd think a book called Cult Fiction: Popular Reading and Pulp Theory would be fascinating reading, well, you would if you were me, but if you were me, and you thought that, you would be so wrong. Not fascinating reading, though there are a lot of points of interest. Lots just went, whoosh, over my head. Other things droves me nuts, like the typos, lots of them throughout the text or the big example, the one I looked up online just to be sure, was the pin-up queen Ms. Page spelled with a -y not an -ie. No wonder I spell it wrong half the time anyway, but the book was published that way: "If Betty Page is the queen of trash art then she will return speaking Klingon."

I was way confused about the definition of pulp: "Pulp is both a desire for respectability and a refusal." And I spent a good chunk of the first chapter wishing for a better definition because I had too many questions about it. After a while, I sort of get what Bloom is saying about pulp because in many respects of my personality, I suppose I could be considered "Pulp Moira." Like, I want to be considered respectable and "cool" but I don't want to be a part of that culture at the same time. For instance, and this has little to do with anything, I am currently sitting in the library at the Rhode Island School of Design. The people who hang out at this place are pulp to the extreme, and if libraries can be pulp, this one is definitely pulp. (Did I mention one of my new favorite activities is to drink gin & tonic from a thermos at the library? Perhaps not...)

Pulp, Bloom asserts, is the child of capitalism, and if that's true, then so is the novel, which essentially evolved with the publishing industry (i.e. one could not exist without the other). The separation between literary and popular fiction started with people began catergorizing fiction for the academic canons of lit-ra-chur. Unfortunately for the literatis, who write for each other and not for the masses, god forbid, "... late twentieth-century art cannot be art without the market."

"It is this accommodation and uneasiness between commercial interest and aesthetic or ethical goals which marks literary works in a way other forms avoid," Bloom writes. With a novel, this link is seemingly inextricabl; It's not "If you write it, they will read it," but instead "If they buy it, then it's culture." Only, if they buy it, it probably won't be classified as lit-ra-chur by the powers that be. Pulp fiction, like the kind of mass market paperbacks without covers that I find freqently in dumpsters, is inherently ephermal:

Excluded in all accounts of literature's history, disregarded by critics and usually unknown to academics such works and their authors belong to a twilit existence where they very act of writing and their publisher's commitment to market their work seem, as if by magic, to cancel by those acts their value either as books or even as products.

Despite this, pulp has influence, invisibily shaping culture at the same time it refutes it. The genres popular today (fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc.) had their shady beginnings in the underbelly of pulp. Bloom even discusses the reader expecations within the genres and formulaic plots, which, Bloom says, won't fool the true reader of pulp, because he or she is never fooled. Is that really the case? Sure. That would account for why one book becomes a best-seller and why a slew of copycats in its wake never achieves the same acclaim. That original book held something real while the others, enjoyed perhaps for a one-night stand, didn't have the staying power of true commitment. Or something like that. (Bloom says this very instability and unpredicatible nature of the pulp is what gives it power.)

Book Discussion - A Dash of Style

After having read and enjoyed The Plot Thickens, I decided that, despite my hatred of all things grammar, I wanted to read Noah Lukeman’s A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation. This is one of those books that I know I will have to read again and again. And not just because my punctuation is mostly atrocious either.

I love how the book is aimed at the creative writer and gives specific instances and examples of the problematic usage of the different types of punctuation. I read the exercises first, telling myself I would actually sit down and do them at some point, thinking that I probably wouldn’t. Later, however, I started writing a story, based on a title culled from a list I made in the way of Ray Bradbury, via word association and topics that popped out of my head. Without really thinking about it, I tried one of Lukeman’s exercises.

The title of the story is “Midnight Guitar.” The main character, Ryan, works at 4 a.m. every day and keeps being woken up at midnight by the girl who lives in the apartment upstairs. His sentences are long, impossibly long, and before I introduced guitar-playing insomniac, I already knew that her sentences would be quick, right to the point, contrasting Ryan’s meandering speech. This story, which is pretty awesome, I think, wouldn’t have happened without my read of A Dash of Style.

[Another, slightly odd way, that this book inspired my story was with the word “triumvirate,” which Lukeman uses to describe the period, comma, and semicolin. For reasons I don’t quite understand, there is a triumvirate in my story. Strange.]

It’s this practical application that actually helps me. I could read sixty books on punctuation and the like, and it would be like I was reading in Lalaland, re-reading the same sentence over and over again and completely spacing out the whole time. While I might absorb something unconsciously from such reading, it really doesn’t help me. Having specific examples as well as suggested exercises does. (In this respect, this book reminds me a little bit of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, for the practical nature of the text.)

The chapter on commas was of particular interest. I’m always conscious of commas and try not to overuse them. An eighth grade teacher told me I was “comma happy” once, and I’ve never forgotten it. For years, I shunned all comma usage, cut anything “ungrammatical” from my texts. [As I’ve said before, academia nearly ruined me.]

Luckily, Lukeman has a section “How to Underuse It” in the comma chapter which gives concrete examples of how underuse can benefit a text. (The next section details the dangers of underuse.) He also mentions that a great number of writers use the comma differently, stylistically, so maybe that eight-grade teacher was a teeny bit full of it. (Based on my experiences with education majors, I wouldn’t half doubt it.)

Another thing I really like about this book are the sections at the end of each chapter “What your use of _____ says about you.” Perfect, yet another opportunity to psychoanalyze myself, and my writerly friends, this time, using punctuation. I didn’t need the excuse, but it’s nice to have a practical method of analysis: “Well, friend, your overuse of commas means that you just need a little love and more confidence in your ability to say what you mean.” I love it. (My friends, on the other hand, might not.)

I borrowed this book from the library, but I’m going to buy my own copy I can actively work on improving my writing. I have fifty more titles from my Bradbury list (the exercise was suggested in Zen in the Art of Writing), and I know that Lukeman’s exercises will inspire some cool stories.