Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps - Softcover

Bronski, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312252676 ISBN 13: 9780312252670

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2003

Synopsis

A collection of gay erotic writings tracing the development of a gay identity from the late 19th century to just before the Stonewall Inn riots

Long before the rise of the modern gay movement, an unnoticed literary revolution was occurring, mostly between the covers of the cheaply produced pulp paperbacks of the post-World War II era. Cultural critic Michael Bronski collects a sampling of these now little-known gay erotic writings―some by writers long forgotten, some never known and a few now famous. Through them, Bronski challenges many long-held views of American postwar fiction and the rise of gay literature, as well as of the culture at large.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Bronksi is Professor of Practice in Media and Activism in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University, USA. His last book, You Can Tell Just by Looking and 20 Other Myths about LGBT Life and People (2013; co-authored with Ann Pelligrini and Michael Amico) was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Best Non-Fiction. He is also the author of A Queer History of the United States (2011), which was awarded the Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award for best LGBT book of 2010 by the American Library Association, as well as the Lambda Literary Award for the Best Non-Fiction Book of 2012. His other works include Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility (1984),The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash and the Making of Gay Freedom (1998), and Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps (2003), which won a Lambda Literary Award for Best Anthology in 2004. Professor Bronski's 1996 anthology, Taking Liberties: Gay Men's Essays on Politics, Culture and Sex, won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Anthology in 1997. His work is included in over fifty anthologies and he currently edits the Queer Action / Queer Ideas series for Beacon Press.

Bronski has been awarded the 1995 AIDS Action Committee Community Recognition Award for 20 years of journalism on gay and AIDS-related topics; the 1996 Cambridge Lavender Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award for journalism and political organizing; the 1999 The Martin Duberman Fellowship for scholarly research in LGBT studies, awarded by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, City University of New York, USA; the 1999 Stonewall Award, in recognition for 'helping improve the lives and LGBT people in the United States' granted by the Anderson Prize Foundation; the 2004 Leadership Award from the D-GALA (Dartmouth Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association); and the 2008 Distinguished Lecturer Award granted by Dean of Faculty of Dartmouth College, USA.

Reviews

Noting research that included reading "just over 225 novels," cultural critic Bronski (The Pleasure Principle) delightfully chronicles gay pulp novels from their emergence in the late 1940s through the post-Stonewall era in this expansive, exhaustively researched amalgam of fiction and gay history. In the earliest novels, homosexual characters were often drawn as angst-ridden men living hideaway lives. These mild tales gave way to the more outrageous and sexually intrepid plot lines of the 1950s and early '60s as gay male pulps gained momentum-typical is a locker-room fantasy scene from Jay Little's Maybe-Tomorrow. As the 1960s progressed, fiction grew bolder in form and content. Richard Amory's lush The Song of the Loon was a landmark title, its literary aspirations plain, while other titles of the era-racy fictions like Jack Love's Gay Whore, a melodrama set on Fire Island, and the pseudonymous Memoirs of Jeff X-were willing to settle for being "extraordinarily profitable." The gay revolution unleashed by the Stonewall riots is boldly evident in excerpts by Marcus Miller (from Gay Revolution), and a selection from Bruce Benderson's 1975 erotic potboiler, Kyle. Prefacing each section with thoughtful background on the period, Bronski then steps back to let the generous novel excerpts speak for themselves. Bronski has searched thoroughly and thought-provokingly, and this book should pop up on required reading lists for gay studies courses (the extensive appendix is invaluable). This is obviously a labor of love, and an absolute must for gay historians and those interested in stimulating gay fiction from years gone by.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312252676
• ISBN 13: 9780312252670
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384