What I like about the Pulps.
I guess I have a short attention span, or maybe it's because I read slowly. But I tend to prefer short stories to novel-length books. That was, I did until I started reading the pulps. What makes them different? I supposed it has to do with the fat to lean meat content. I like a story that keeps a good quick pace and doesn't get bogged down in too much character self-reflection or tangential, non-necessary literary masturbation. Character devlopement is essential, but keep it to the stories' focus and don't try to flesh out the characters so much with non-relative back story that it becomes hopelessly boring.
Eh... maybe that means I'm low-brow. But I know what I like, and it isn't reading literary lard. Even some of the pulps suffer from it. Like with The Shadow, there can wind up being so much emphasis on atmosphere or unnecessary plot tangents as to bog down the storyline itself.
I think maybe when my time was more free to read leisurly this wasn't such an issue and I could take in the value of all the extrainious description and random lines of thought. But nowadays I work 55-60 hours a week as a standard, and even more when it's crunch time. So I've gotten to where the stories I read need to cut to the chase or I wind up getting frustrated.
So I've lurked in the domain of short stories for the past 14 years or so. Now that I'm reading pulps for the past year, I've come to the realization I just typed out above. That it isn't really the length, it's the strength of the narrative throughput. The signal to noise ratio.
Why am I telling you this? I suppose because I just realized this in the past week.
The SPIDER has no time for tangents or plot branches, he's too busy ventilating bad guys.
Eh... maybe that means I'm low-brow. But I know what I like, and it isn't reading literary lard. Even some of the pulps suffer from it. Like with The Shadow, there can wind up being so much emphasis on atmosphere or unnecessary plot tangents as to bog down the storyline itself.
I think maybe when my time was more free to read leisurly this wasn't such an issue and I could take in the value of all the extrainious description and random lines of thought. But nowadays I work 55-60 hours a week as a standard, and even more when it's crunch time. So I've gotten to where the stories I read need to cut to the chase or I wind up getting frustrated.
So I've lurked in the domain of short stories for the past 14 years or so. Now that I'm reading pulps for the past year, I've come to the realization I just typed out above. That it isn't really the length, it's the strength of the narrative throughput. The signal to noise ratio.
Why am I telling you this? I suppose because I just realized this in the past week.
The SPIDER has no time for tangents or plot branches, he's too busy ventilating bad guys.
So let's see what happens next in THE CHOLERA KING, Chapter TEN; Nita's Choice
CLICK TO LISTEN to Chapter TEN
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The SPIDER IS (C) 2006 Argosy Communications, Inc
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