In this Book
- 1960s Gay Pulp Fiction: The Misplaced Heritage
- Book
- 2013
- Published by: University of Massachusetts Press
summary
As a result of a series of court cases, by the mid-1960s the U.S. post office could no longer interdict books that contained homosexuality. Gay writers were eager to take advantage of this new freedom, but the only houses poised to capitalize on the outpouring of manuscripts were “adult” paperback publishers who marketed their products with salacious covers. Gay critics, unlike their lesbian counterparts, have for the most part declined to take these works seriously, even though they cover an enormous range of genres: adventures, blue collar and gray flannel novels, coming-out stories, detective fiction, gothic novels, historical romances, military stories, political novels, prison fiction, romances, satires, sports stories, and spy thrillers—with far more short story collections than is generally realized. Twelve scholars have now banded together to begin a recovery of this largely forgotten explosion of gay writing that occurred in the 1960s.
Descriptions of these pulps have often been inadequate and misinforming, the result of misleading covers, unrepresentative sampling of texts, and a political blindness that refuses to grant worth to pre-Stonewall writing. This volume charts the broader implications of this state of affairs before examining some of the more significant pulp writers from the period. It brings together a diverse range of scholars, methodologies, and reading strategies. The evidence that these essays amass clearly demonstrates the significance of gay pulps for gay literary history, queer cultural studies, and book history.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright Page
- pp. i-iv
- Table of Contents
- pp. v-vi
- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-x
- Introduction
- pp. 1-28
- Proem: How to Read Gay Pulp Fiction
- pp. 29-42
- Carnal Matters: The Alexander Goodman Story
- pp. 167-189
- The Heroic Quest: Dirk Vanden’s All Trilogy
- pp. 268-291
- Notes on Contributors
- pp. 319-322
- Back Cover
- p. BC
Additional Information
ISBN
9781613762837
Related ISBN(s)
9781625340443
MARC Record
OCLC
872122280
Pages
304
Launched on MUSE
2014-03-10
Language
English
Open Access
No