Zed’s dead, baby

2 comments on “Zed’s dead, baby”

1. Franklin Carter says:
   May 25th, 2006 at 6:10 pm

   The literati may sneer at pulp fiction, but I would rather read Ray Bradbury than any recent Giller Prize winner. In fact, last month I enjoyed reading Fahrenheit 451 for the first time. This past week, a friend urged me to read David Bergen’s The Time in Between; I’m having difficulty working up any interest.

2. Josh says:
   May 26th, 2006 at 1:50 am

   The only people I encounter who “sneer at pulp fiction” are a few upwardly-mobile teachers who fear appearing déclassé. In 1950, one saw things like Baldwin’s denunciation of James M. Cain for manifesting the Immaturity and Perversity of American Society, but by the Seventies, when you had literary authors (Pynchon, Coover, Reed, Borges) celebrating “pop culture” icons, and certainly the Eighties, by which time the likes of Hammett and Chandler were pretty canonical, there was just no great feeling that one had to take sides. Cain did nice things that Dos Passos couldn’t do and wasn’t interested in, and vice versa. Ditto Jim Thompson and Ralph Ellison. Big whoop.

Discuss