(wood-)pulp literature (1928-29)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Beautiful work.

JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: (wood-)pulp literature (1928-29)
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OED has 1931 for "pulp" (= 'ephemeral literature') and "pulp magazine". I
believe that the origins for the term lie in an article written in the
Aug. 1928 _Bookman_ by Henry Morton Robinson, entitled "The Wood-Pulp
Racket".

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1928 H. M. ROBINSON in _The Bookman_ Aug. 67(6) 648/1
Wood-pulp literature is bought by the bale and sold by the long ton. ...
Wood-pulp is the great unrecorded fact of American literature, the
successor to the dime-novel as the standard literary diet of a
thrill-hungry populace. ... You all know the wood-pulp weekly. Under its
various names -- _Detective Fiction_, _Adventure_, _Black Mask_,
_Flynn's_, _Horror Tales_, _Sea Stories_ -- it has at one time or another
come under your reading eye. ... Wood-pulp, next to laudanum, is the most
habit-forming drug on the market.
-----
1928 _Ibid._ 648/2 Few mature intelligences want to write for the
wood-pulp magazines. Few can. The physical battle of hurling six thousand
words a day onto paper, the brain-pulverizing business of devising enough
hair-trigger action to stretch over the plotted area of your tale, and the
ghoulish necessity (when invention fails) of coming back again to feed off
the dead flesh of last year's yarns-- these are some of the reasons that
make wood-pulp literature the last miry trench of men who write against
despair.
-----

Robinson's article includes many more combining forms: wood-pulp artist,
wood-pulp audience, wood-pulp editor, wood-pulp hack, wood-pulp press,
wood-pulp register, wood-pulp stylist, wood-pulp worker, wood-pulp writer,
etc. (even wood-pulpery and Woodpulpia!).

The article received a great deal of press attention when it was published:

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1928 _Lancaster Daily Eagle_ (Pa.) 14 Aug. 6/1 Henry Morton Robinson, the
critic, writing in The Bookman for August, introduces you to Messrs.
Smith, Conlon, Phillips and a score of others who names mean nothing
unless you recognize them as the lads who pound out a daily 6,000-word
short story or a weekly 30,000 word novelette so that the wood-pulp
magazines may go to press.
-----
1928 _Decatur Herald_ (Ill.) 19 Aug. 6/5 Six thousand words a day is the
average output of the wood-pulp writers, according to an article on this
fiction racket by Henry Morton Robinson. In the current issue of "The
Bookman." Wood-pulp, in case you don't know, is the standard reading diet
of twenty million thrill-hungry Americans, the dime magazine.
-----
1928 _New York Times_ 26 Aug. (Book Review) 17/1 "The Wood-Pulp Racket" is
the subject of Henry Morton Robinson's article in the August Bookman. The
"wood-pulp racket" is not, as one might suspect, the buesiness of
manufacturing and selling wood pulp. It is the business of publishing the
magazines that are printed on wood-pulp paper and of writing the stories
that are printed in those magazines.
-----
1928 _Washington Post_ 26 Aug. S10/8 If you think the writing man is a
lackadaisical fellow who relies on inspiration for his output, then
consider the chaps who turn out the thriller stories for those gaudy wood
pulp magazines that feature detective, horror, and mystery yarns.
-----

As for plain "pulp", Robinson used it attributively a few times in his
article:

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1928 H. M. ROBINSON in _The Bookman_ Aug. 67(6) 649/1 No man who isn't
capable of turning out one of these novelettes in a week can ever hope to
qualify as a union pulp writer.
-----
1928 _Ibid._ 649/2 The skilful pulp artisan also knows that there must be
a complete episode and a copper-riveted climax every hundred words.
-----
1928 _Ibid._ 650/1 As one might expect, many of the best pulp artists have
been recruited from newspaper ranks.
-----

By 1929, both "pulp" and "pulp magazine" were in regular use:

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1929 _Summer Session News_ (State College, Pa.) 26 Jul. 3/3 Finishing with
her first group, she turned to the sub-literary group, which she referred
to in the trade parlance as "pulps." These, Mrs. Douglas claimed,
exhibited the popular interests of the people in their tremendous output.
http://digitalnewspapers.libraries.psu.edu/Repository/SCG/1929/07/26/013-SCG-1929-07-26-001-SINGLE.PDF#OLV0_Entity_0003_0022
-----
1929 _Los Angeles Times_ 22 Sep. A1/8 War stories have stopped as suddenly
as they began in the pulp magazines.
-----


--Ben Zimmer


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