One of the greatest pleasures of my teens was a monthly visit to Parker’s News Stand in High Point, North Carolina, the mill town I was born in. In addition to newspapers from all over the South, Parker’s also sold many of the most prestigious publications, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and even The London Times.

But the news didn’t interest me. In the front corner stood a revolving metal rack filled with paperbacks by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Erle Stanley Gardner, and others. When I turned that creaking rack, I saw exciting covers for cheap books that promised and delivered adventure and wondrous, captivating characters.  

I didn’t think about the broader themes and worldviews of those books at the time, though perhaps I kept returning to them due to their subliminal appeal to the values I’d grown up with. The pulps, after all, were mass produced for a growing, increasingly literate middle class, and reflected their readers’ values. Indeed, working-class sensibilities underlay many pulps, particularly the Western, crime, and sword and sorcery stories, where murder, corruption, and deceit are found out and punished.

Which is why we need those tales today more than ever.

Plus ça change, so they say, and that saying still rings true. The greed, corruption, and celebrity scandals of 1930s Los Angeles that inspired many of Raymond Chandler’s novels still dominate the news. Similarly, the squalor and depravity of oil boomtowns that Robert E. Howard witnessed growing up in Texas are matched by sprawling homeless colonies in our major cities. Like the boomtowns Howard railed against, today’s cities are awash in both extreme wretchedness and luxury.

In “The Scarlet Citadel,” King Conan, betrayed by former allies, seethes at his captors, who are dressed in “silks and gold, gleaming with jewels, naked slave-boys beside them pouring wine into cups carved of a single sapphire.” Conan refuses to surrender his crown, and damns his enemies for their greed: “You sit on satin and guzzle wine the people sweat for, and talk of divine rights of sovereignty—bah!”

Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, while not as verbally bombastic as Conan, often made sharp observations about the gilded class in Los Angeles. In The Big Sleep, the family of Philip Marlowe’s client is chin-deep in blackmail, pornography, and murder. Marlowe gazes down the hill from his wealthy client’s mansion:

“On this lower level faint and far off I could just barely see some of the old wooden derricks of the oilfield from which the Sternwoods had made their money. … The Sternwoods, having moved up the hill, could no longer smell the stale sump water or the oil, but they still look out of their front windows and see what had made them rich. If they wanted to.”  

The family’s wealth infects others, including the institutions that supposedly check corruption. The police turn a blind eye to the Sternwoods’ dirt, and the local newspaper, supposedly the guardian of truth and democracy, refuses to report their many misdeeds.

Pulp heroes often confront unearned wealth and power, and expose their enemies as cheaters and charlatans who are not as formidable as they appear. In Mickey Spillane’s One Lonely Night, the protagonist, Mike Hammer, infiltrates a Communist Party meeting in Manhattan. He’s both disgusted and amused that the daughter of a rich socialite family is a member. Hammer quickly realizes the party members, though a threat, are not as competent as they imagine:

“I walked right into a nest of Commies because I flashed a green card and they didn’t say a word, not one word. They played damn fool kid’s games with me that any jerk could have caught, and bowed and scraped like I was king.

They’re supposed to be clever, bright as hell. They were dumb as horse manure as far as I was concerned.”

In “The Scarlet Citadel,” King Conan, deceived and captured by his enemies, still dares to lash them with the truth:

“How did you come to your crown, you and that black-faced pig beside you? Your fathers did the fighting and the suffering, and handed their crowns to you on golden platters. What you inherited without lifting a finger – except to poison a few brothers – I fought for.” 

The robber barons have their fancy lawyers, criminals have their gangs, and wizards wield their dark magic, but pulp heroes know they can be beaten. In Howard’s “The Vale of Lost Women,” Conan assures the kidnapped Livia that courage and discipline can overcome evil:

“A devil from the Outer Dark,” he grunted. “Oh they’re nothing uncommon. They lurk thick as fleas outside the belt of light which surrounds this world. I’ve heard the wise men of Zamora talk of them. Some find their way to Earth, but when they do, they have to take on earthly form and flesh of some sort. A man like myself, with a sword, is a match for any amount of fangs and talons, infernal or terrestrial.” 

James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo served as the model for many pulp heroes. Like Natty Bumppo, the pulp hero is a loner who lives in the margins between civilization and nature, who conducts his life by a code that defines and guides him. Like Jack Schaefer’s Shane, the pulp hero is dangerous, but good. As a loner, he recognizes and condemns civilization’s excesses, particularly its greed and corruption, and resorts to barbarianism to bring justice to those who violate the basic laws of both nature and civilization.

Part of that code is loyalty to one’s friends, no matter the price. While kings and robber barons might betray both friends and family for profit and power, men like Mike Hammer, Conan, and Sam Spade stick with their friends no matter what. In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade refuses to be bought by money and beauty:

“When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it.” 

In I, The Jury, Mike Hammer defies the police to bring justice to his murdered friend:

“In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle.”

“This was no ordinary murder, Pat. It’s as cold-blooded and as deliberate as I ever saw one. I’m going to get the one that did this.” 

In “Queen of the Black Coast,” Conan explains to the captain of the ship he hijacked why he killed a judge and had to escape the local authorities:

“Well, last night in a tavern, a captain in the king’s guard offered violence to the sweetheart of a young soldier, who naturally ran him through. But it seems there is some cursed law against killing guardsmen, and the boy and his girl fled away. It was bruited about that I was seen with them, and so today I was haled into court, and a judge asked me where the lad had gone. I replied that since he was a friend of mine, I could not betray him.” 

As David Smith said of Robert E. Howard, the pulp hero has “little patience with the superficialities of modern, artificial life.” Pulp, though mass produced on cheap paper, gives us tales of good guys who dare to break the mold, who stand up for the real things in life, including loyalty, honor, and justice. In an age that seeks to transform individuals into Homo economicus, a rootless consumer whose heart beats only when there’s a sale on useless junk, pulp fiction remains a rebel yell against mass conformity.

M. C. Tuggle lives and writes in Charlotte, North Carolina. His fantasy, science fiction, and mystery short stories have appeared in several publications, including Mystery Weekly, Metaphorosis, and Little Blue Marble. He blogs on all things literary at https://mctuggle.com/