The Shadow of the Pulps

Which Schmuck with an Underwood?

  • Raymond Chandler

    Votes: 3 37.5%
  • Mickey Spillane

    Votes: 2 25.0%
  • Dashiel Hammett

    Votes: 6 75.0%
  • Leslie Charteris

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • John D Macdonald

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Ross Macdonald

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Jim Thompson

    Votes: 5 62.5%
  • Donald Westlake

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Leslie Charteris

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Charles Williams

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • James M Cain

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Gill Brewer

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Lawrence Block

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Ngaio Marsh

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Richard Prather

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • John Dickson Carr

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    8
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dondomat

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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?
_____________________

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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dondomat

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I'm certainly familiar with doc Savage, but I've read nothing by Frank Long. Which will soon be remedied, or my name isn't Rumpulstinskin
 

dondomat

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We'll see, Lovecraft's protege Bloch has impressive stuff. Had cards been dealt differently, had the industry context not been focused on short pulps, had he thought of doing packaging his ideas inside an A. Hailey narrative structure, he could have been the King-before-King.

But Long seems to belong to the generation before Bloch, which could mean crazy bursts of poetic descriptions when you least expect it. I'm just starting on the Crystaline Intelligence.
 

Laura_6

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The only oldie I loved was Asimov.

Newer crushes include: Koontz, Rice, King, McCammon
I read SF, too, and love Peter F. Hamilton

Okay, now I'm done giving you useless info you didn't ask for. *blush*
 
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