(Louis Menand’s New Yorker article on “ The Birth of Pulp Fiction” gives a nice overview of that history in the context of reviewing Paula Rabinowitz’s American Pulp, which I’ve just taken out from the library.)ĭefining my terms, which in turn will define my boundaries, is clearly one of the first thing I have to do. While they certainly overlap, they aren’t necessarily the same, are they? defines “pulp fiction” as “ fiction dealing with lurid or sensational subjects, often printed on rough, low-quality paper manufactured from wood pulp,” which I think better reflects the connotations of the term, along with its historical origins. The calendar description for this course says that it “provides an entry point to the discussion of literature through ‘pulp’ genres such as romance, mystery/crime, the Western, sci-fi/fantasy, horror, sports literature, and comic books.” I can’t remember when we approved this description, but it strikes me now as an odd and somewhat elitist conflation of “pulp fiction” with genre fiction. I was interested in reading True Grit because I’m thinking about what to assign for Pulp Fiction next year. But True Grit is the first novel I’ve read that definitely qualifies as a classic of the genre. I have thought a little about Westerns in the context of American crime fiction, especially hard-boiled detective fiction, which is often linked to a “frontier mentality” and the appeal of vigilante justice, and which is often written in a terse, demotic style appropriate for tough guys and cowboys with no words to waste. I don’t know the tropes it relies on, or revises I don’t know the history it incorporates, or appropriates I don’t know the landscape its story moves across I don’t know what other literary characters, if any, keep company with Mattie Ross or Rooster Cogburn or Lucky Ned Pepper. When I tell you that the closest thing to a Western I’d read before True Grit was No Country for Old Men, you’ll understand how unprepared I was for Portis’s strange, surprising, action-packed yet character-driven novel. I can get all the talk I need and more at the Monarch boarding house.”

They told me you had grit and that is why I came to you. I know you can drink whiskey and I have seen you kill a gray rat. All I have heard out of you so far is talk. I aim to get Tom Chaney and if you are not game I will find somebody who is game. You told me what your price for the job was and I have come up with it. I said, “I have left off crying, and giggling as well.

Charles portis novels