Gary Romeo wrote:
>
> I don't really agree that pulp writing is, in the main, (at least as I'm
> familiar with it) about mature conflict. Doc Savage, The Shadow, Op. 5,
> etc. are adults fighting adults but "mature conflict" seems too heady a way
> to describe them.
>
> Also, don't sell "kids" books short. Robert Cormier, S.E. Hinton and Paul
> Zindel all wrote some kick-ass kid fiction. The Chocolate War is very
> MATURE stuff geared for 14 year olds. Arguably more mature than anything by
> Burroughs, Dent, REH, et. al. (And I LOVE Burroughs, Dent, and REH.)
>
> I'm pretty sure pulp writer fans my age (43) became fans from reading
> paperback pulp reprints when they were teenagers. The Bantam Docs, the
> Lancer Conans, the Ballantine/ACE Burroughs, etc. So I don't think equating
> the HERO pulps (weird pulps, detective pulps could be exceptions) with youth
> is wrong.
>
> Anyway, I think this is an interesting discussion and I wish a few of the
> pulp experts out there would pipe up an opinion about the nature and
> specificity of pulps.
Sorry, no pulp expert, just me.
What the devil is mature conflict, anyway? We could work on this forever, and
when using pulp for the arena of discussion not get much closer than mature
being conflict over personal interests, and every other kind of conflict being
at someone's bidding.
All action professions involve young vital attitudes if you mean to engage in
them, and old nasty attitudes if you mean to control or enjoy them. A soldier is
fighting in conflicts that are mature only insofar as he responds to risks to
his personal life. The conflict could mean nothing to him in any other way. The
whole conflict may be mature for the purposes of some over-scum not involved in
any hide-risking fashion, but he isn't reading pulp -- or especially, Howard.
Larry Richter
