Cult Fiction: Popular Reading and Pulp Theory

Bloom, C.

Here is an exploration of pulp literature and pulp mentalities: an investigation into the nature and theory of the contemporary mind in art and in life. Here too, the violent, the sensational and the erotic signify different facets of the modern experience played out in the gaudy pages of kitsch literature. Clive Bloom offers the reader a chance to investigate the underworld of literary production and from it find a new set of co-ordinates for questions regarding publishing and reading practices in America and Britain, ideas of genre, problems related to commercial production, concerns regarding high and low culture, the canon and censorship, as well as a discussion of the rhetoric of current critical debate. Concentrating on remembered authors as well as many long disregarded or forgotten, Cult Fiction provides a theory of kitsch art that radically alters our perceptions of literature and literary values whilst providing a panorama of an almost forgotten history: the history of pulp.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 1996-10-10

Format: Paperback

ISBN-13: 9780333623022

DOI: 10.1057/9780230390126

Dimensions: 216cm x140cm

Pages: 262