The Appeal of Pulp

There is just something appealing about pulp. It is something that I have loved for a long time and I began working on this first Peregrine story, I began to wonder why. What was it that drew me to this. I know that it may be my early love for the Indiana Jones movies of my youth, or the box of comic books I inherited from a grandfather I never got to meet, but evidently take after in many ways. But the more I thought about it, the more the English teacher in me kept looking at Pulp as a genre, holding it up to the light to look at its facets and figure out where the magic was.

 Then it hit me. It is the combination of simplicity and richness, as weird as that sounds. Pulp is painted in broad strokes, with capital letters, but everything is larger than life. Good is good, and bad is bad, and the action is large. The stories are simple without being simplistic. The characters are resonant.

 But there is something even deeper than that. The real reason, the true secret of the appeal of pulp.

 Pulp is fun.

 Yeah, that's really it. Pulp is stories created for the purpose of fun. It is in the nature of pulp to push the envelope of credibility. I often have to explain to my students the idea of the willing suspension of disbelief. That sometimes to enjoy a story, you have to willingly give up the cynical side of yourself and go along for the ride. Pulp takes that one step further. It is a genre driven by the notion that the "rule of cool" trumps all, and where some would consider that a detriment to it, it is what I love most about it.

Would it be hard for the Shadow to reload both those .45 caliber pistols at the same time? Who cares! He looks cooler with two guns than with one.

 Does Doc Savage have an unlimited supply of shirts so they can keep getting ripped up? Who cares! It makes him look cooler.

 Has no one really been able to look past those glasses that reporter is wearing and see the man of steel beneath? No, because secret identities are awesome.

 So what is the appeal of pulp? For me, it is the simple fact that in a good pulp story, "because its cool" is a good enough reason to explain a hell of a lot.