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Dean Koontz sings psalms in praise of John D Macdonald.
Many people look up to Peter Straub as an uncanny sophisto, Straub looks up to Ross Macdonald.
What people say with awe of Stephen King’s approach to mirroring life, King says with awe about Jim Thompson.
So, comrade future horror titans, who are your favorite pulpeteers that cast their long shadows on your prose? Gil Brewer? Chandler? Williams? Wallace? Spillane?
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Disclaimer:
For the purposes of this thread ‘pulp’ means not “bad, cheap, hack, unworthy”, but “well-written crime adventures issued in paperbacks in the 1920’s – 1960’s.”
This thread also accepts mention of borderline post-pulp authors like Don Pendelton, Ed Mcbaine, Warren Murphy and Ian Fleming – super fast-paced short adventures, no longer crime pulps, but not yet representatives of the modern thriller.
Horror and sci-fi pulps need not be mentioned, as they are self-evident, but it you insist - go ahead and mention them
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My pulp shadows are Leslie Charteris and Dashiel Hammett. The first one infinitely finicky and elegant, a fountain of delight at life itself and the language that can be used to articulate that delight; the other - a hard-fisted functionalist poet of bleakness and personal codes of honor in a universe of metaphysical despair. Like a non-epic Robert Howard, haha.
...yeah, there's a million more important authors not included in the poll, like Gardner, Wallace, Stout, Brown, Chase, Creasey etc., but come on, this isn't science, this is fun
Many people look up to Peter Straub as an uncanny sophisto, Straub looks up to Ross Macdonald.
What people say with awe of Stephen King’s approach to mirroring life, King says with awe about Jim Thompson.
So, comrade future horror titans, who are your favorite pulpeteers that cast their long shadows on your prose? Gil Brewer? Chandler? Williams? Wallace? Spillane?
_____________________
Disclaimer:
For the purposes of this thread ‘pulp’ means not “bad, cheap, hack, unworthy”, but “well-written crime adventures issued in paperbacks in the 1920’s – 1960’s.”
This thread also accepts mention of borderline post-pulp authors like Don Pendelton, Ed Mcbaine, Warren Murphy and Ian Fleming – super fast-paced short adventures, no longer crime pulps, but not yet representatives of the modern thriller.
Horror and sci-fi pulps need not be mentioned, as they are self-evident, but it you insist - go ahead and mention them
_____________________
My pulp shadows are Leslie Charteris and Dashiel Hammett. The first one infinitely finicky and elegant, a fountain of delight at life itself and the language that can be used to articulate that delight; the other - a hard-fisted functionalist poet of bleakness and personal codes of honor in a universe of metaphysical despair. Like a non-epic Robert Howard, haha.
...yeah, there's a million more important authors not included in the poll, like Gardner, Wallace, Stout, Brown, Chase, Creasey etc., but come on, this isn't science, this is fun
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