Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Part II Histories
- Chapter 7 The War Story
- Chapter 8 Narratives from Below
- Chapter 9 The Short Story and the Popular Imagination
- Chapter 10 Love What You Do
- Chapter 11 Local Color to Multiculturalism
- Part III People and Places
- Part IV Theories
- Notes
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to…
- References
Chapter 9 - The Short Story and the Popular Imagination
Pulp and Crime
from Part II - Histories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2023
By
Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Part II Histories
- Chapter 7 The War Story
- Chapter 8 Narratives from Below
- Chapter 9 The Short Story and the Popular Imagination
- Chapter 10 Love What You Do
- Chapter 11 Local Color to Multiculturalism
- Part III People and Places
- Part IV Theories
- Notes
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to…
- References
Summary
This chapter examines US pulp crime fiction published between the 1920s and the 1960s, focusing on its formal distinctiveness and its development. It shows how the forms of organization taken by pulp labor related to the literary forms found in the stories, exploring how the principles of fungibility and economy, recognizable from the industrial factory system of mass-production, were accommodated or challenged by two key crime writers: Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. It examines how the rhythms of pulp labor intersected with the stories’ formal composition. Finally, it discusses the interpellation of a white, male, working-class readership by interwar pulp crime fiction, and the way its ideological valences were reconfigured in the postwar period by writers such as Patricia Highsmith and Chester Himes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story , pp. 146 - 159Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
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