“Lust, plain and simple—if lust were ever simple.”

September 18, 2019 3:03 AM

...these books are artifacts. There is every sort of forbidden subject in forbidden books, what was then illicit sex, but also, all things taboo—drugs, various subcultures, descriptions of parts of cities there was no reason to go to otherwise. There is an honesty that rises from there being little reason for lying: emotional states, cultural criticism about art and politics at the time of the writing, blind items, gossip, maps—the stuff we call today “creative nonfiction” ... These books served as community. My First Library Was a Library of Porn by Brian Bouldrey [NSFW text]

More pulp: Pop Sensation, Pulp International [Collections of vintage pulp covers, with NSFW-ish images]

posted by chavenet (6 comments total)

I buried and exhumed the bag of porn three times, just as many times as Heathcliff dug up Catherine in Wuthering Heights.

Brontë has a lot to answer for, but I’d say that anyone who hasn’t had this feeling (not necessarily about porn, but that’s a good one) has never really been alive.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:14 AM on September 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

One of my favorite Twitter feeds is Pulp Librarian. Wonderful.
posted by hwestiii at 5:50 AM on September 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

I loved this essay so much. I do think it would be fair to say that the trashy experimentation that the author is missing is happening in fan fiction now. I know that that’s outside of the scope of published novels and maybe also different from pulp in some particular way, but it’s weird not to mention it at all.
posted by velebita at 6:47 AM on September 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

I hope he finds the self published queer romance and erotica on Amazon Kindle sometime. I think it has a lot of the qualities he talks about from pulp, including a massive range of skill.
posted by Margalo Epps at 8:42 AM on September 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

Was going to say the same thing, velebita. You can find alllllll kinds of weird things in there.
posted by praemunire at 8:49 AM on September 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Brontë has a lot to answer for, but I’d say that anyone who hasn’t had this feeling (not necessarily about porn, but that’s a good one) has never really been alive.

I've never read any Brontë, nor have I exhumed anything, nor buried anything other than a beloved pet. I have run a backhoe before, though, so I feel like I'm good.

However I've never read porn while operating a backhoe, so now I'm not sure where that leaves me.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:13 AM on September 18, 2019 [3 favorites]