Tue 2 Aug 2011
CON REPORT: PulpFest 2011, by Walker Martin.
Posted by Steve under Collecting , Conventions , Pulp Fiction[20] Comments
by Walker Martin
Over the past 40 years I guess I’ve attended 40 pulp conventions and I’ve always traveled by car either alone or with another collector. This is the first year that five of us rented a van and it was quite an experience. Between the five collectors there must of been at least 200 years of collecting books, pulps, digests, and vintage paperbacks. Three of us even collect original pulp cover paintings, not to mention slicks and other old magazines such as literary magazines, men’s adventure magazines, etc.
We kept each other amused by recalling strange book adventures and bizarre topics like The Craziest Pulp Collector I Have Known. Needless to say, some of the people in the van qualify for this title! I might as well mention the names of these demented souls who spend their lives dreaming of pulps and books. In addition to myself, the collectors cooped up in this van were Nick Certo, Steve Kennedy, Digges La Touche, and last and not least, Ed Hulse, who was our driver.
Somehow, this overloaded van arrived safely a little over eight hours later. Even more surprising was the fact that we had not killed each other and were still on speaking terms. After checking into the Ramada Plaza, we all headed for the dealer’s room to set up our tables.
It was the same large room as last year and held over 100 tables. Because the large unloading doors were open to the 95 degree heat, there appeared to be very little air conditioning in effect.
We were not amused to find out at dinner that the restaurant was also very warm. Not only that but they were out of certain items on the menu, including hamburger at one meal. When I ordered beer, practically every brand I tried to get was not available. Frankly, the restaurant did not seem set up to handle a convention weekend.
Next day when the dealer’s room opened officially, it was obvious that this was another rousing success due to the hard work of the PulpFest committee: Mike Chomko, Jack Cullers, Ed Hulse, and Barry Traylor. Jack Cullers also seemed to have an army of support from his family and friends.
I really must say these people deserve the thanks of pulp collectors for putting on such an excellent show. The attendance was the highest yet of any Pulpcon or PulpFest, over 425 attendees, which is a nice 10% increase over last year’s figure.
At my table, I sold far more than I thought I would, selling DVDs, cancelled checks from the files of Popular Publications and Munsey, and all 39 duplicate Manhunt’s.
The biggest sale I noticed involved a 1929 Black Mask with white paper, in fine condition. The seller asked me what I thought it was worth and I said over $500, perhaps closer to a $1000. The first collector I told ran over and paid $900 for the issue. The unusual thing is that the reason the magazine sold was not because of the fine condition or because it was a 1929 Black Mask with a Hammett story. It sold because the collector was a rabid collector of Erle Stanley Gardner.
Another big sale I witnessed was the Ace Double original cover painting for Mrs. Homicide by Norman Saunders. After much haggling, this went for over $8,000.
Several pulp reprints made their debut including Ed Hulse’s new issue of Blood n Thunder; Savages by Gordon Young; and The Best of Blood n Thunder. I bought all three publications and Ed said he sold just about all the copies that he brought to the convention.
Laurie Powers also had good sales on her new book, a collection of Paul Power’s stories, titled Riding the Pulp Trail. Tom Roberts of Black Dog Books also had several new books for sale, including Pulp Vault 14, the best single issue of a pulp fanzine ever published.
Matt Moring of Altus Press has an ambitious reprint schedule, including collections of Fred Nebel’s Tough Dick Donahue, Kennedy and McBride, and Cardigan. These are major publications and well worth buying because the original Black Mask and Dime Detective pulps are so expensive.
The 20th issue of The Pulpster also made its debut and looked like one of the best issues yet. The editor is Tony Davis and he included 10 articles, including an unpublished story by H. Russell Wakefield. There were articles on William Cox and H. Bedford Jones and Don Hutchison’s memories John Fleming Gould. He appeared at Pulpcon 19 in Wayne, NJ and I remember his visit vividly. I was high bidder on one of his sketches showing G-8’s Herr Doktor Krueger. John Locke is also present with an interesting piece on “Hunting Pulpsters In Graveyards”
I heard later that John Locke and John Wooley visited the gravesite of D.L. Champion, who wrote such crazy series starring Inspector Allhoff for Dime Detective, and Rex Sackler for Black Mask. The grave is evidently near the convention hotel and I would have liked to visit it but then again I get very emotional about pulp writers and probably would have made a fool of myself, not to mention getting arrested for trying to sell the remains at PulpFest.
One of the big surprises of the convention was the visit of former Pulpcon chairman and organizer, Rusty Hevelin. In the early years, Rusty single handedly kept Pulpcon going and deserves our thanks for his efforts, without which there might not be a convention all these years later.
He received a round of applause as he entered the dealer’s room and because he is in his late 80’s, I figured he would just visit for a short time and then leave. However, he evidently enjoyed himself and stayed all three days. He even attended the evening programming with his friend, Gay Haldeman. Welcome back Rusty.
Another collector I was glad to see, was Gordon Huber, the only person to actually attend every Pulpcon and Pulpfest since the first one in 1972. Unfortunately there were several collectors who could not attend this year, including such long time attendees as Al Tonik, Steve Lewis, and Dave Kurzman.
The evening programming was some of the best I’ve ever seen. Some of the highlights were the three “Shadow” shorts from 1931-1932; the speech given by David Saunders on three pulp artists; the grandaughters of the pulps panel featuring Laurie Powers, Karen Cunningham, and Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson; Stephen Haffner’s talk on C. L. Moore; Garyn Roberts discussion of steampunk in the pulps and dime novels: and the panel on Walter Gibson and The Shadow.
The auction was disappointing to me but I imagine some collectors found some good items. Tony Tollin won the Munsey Award for his extensive project which reprints the pulp novels featuring The Shadow and Doc Savage.
The daytime programming consisted of readings and panels featuring contemporary authors discussing the new pulp fiction. The Pulpster also had an article about this recent movement and I have to admit I like the old pulp fiction from the original magazines. But evidently there are some fans of this new pulp fiction.
Finally, I would like to thank the people responsible for stocking the Hospitality Room with beer, soda, and snacks. I also noticed a couple pizzas floating around and whoever ordered them let me have a piece. Each year, I notice Rusty Burke in the room and he is one of the collectors responsible for the beer and locking up the room. Thank you Rusty.
I hope to see even more collectors in attendance next year because it is so important to support this convention.
After all, book and pulp collectors are my favorite people…
August 2nd, 2011 at 5:19 pm
So, out of this cornucopia, I’ll ask…what makes PULP VAULT 14 the reigning champ?
August 2nd, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Nice report. It is important to remember the history of mystery fiction includes the readers and fans.
I don’t have the history of reading pulps that others here have. My entry drug to the world were the paperback reprints of Hammett’s “Big Knockover” and Paul Ernst’s “The Avenger – The Yellow Horde”.
I too have been disappointed by modern pulp. I think it is because the writers are trying to recreate the magic rather than create something new. Its not as if pulp has disappeared, movies, television, and books from publishers such as Hard Case Crime keep the style alive today.
August 2nd, 2011 at 7:51 pm
Todd, I’m glad you asked about what makes PULP VAULT 14 the best pulp fanzine ever. I’ve decided to do a report on the magazine and will submit it to Mystery File for publication.
August 2nd, 2011 at 8:01 pm
Michael…pulp isn’t really a style. It’s a delivery system, that featured all kinds of styles of fiction. Neopulp is basically meaningless, unless it’s published on something like rougher blotter paper. (Of course, certain modes were pioneered in pulps, but nothing was true of all pulps…except that they were magazines on pulpwood paper…)
August 2nd, 2011 at 8:02 pm
Cool, Walker. Looking forward to it.
August 2nd, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Michael and Todd: The new pulp fiction or neo pulp movement just cannot compare to the real old stuff from the original pulp magazines. There are thousands of pulp stories available from the old magazines either in the original format or reprint format.
These stories were written by professional writers who submitted their work to editors. The new pulp fiction often reads like fan fiction and I would rather read the real thing.
August 2nd, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Todd, back up in Comment #4.
I think that “pulp” today means both the format (the old magazines printed on pulp paper) and the type of writing that people think of when referring to the pulp magazines, essentially escapist fiction for the entertainment of a vast reading audience.
In that sense I agree with Michael that the term “pulp fiction” can refer to movies and TV, not just the fiction that appeared years ago in the pulp magazines.
And the same way that “noir” films have been followed by those that have been dubbed “neo-noir” — deliberate attempts to update and reproduce the flavor of old noir films for modern audiences — there is indeed an entire body of work that can easily be called “neo-pulp.”
Fan fiction, mostly, attempts by the authors to recapture the essence of the old pulp magazine stories, often using the old series characters. Neo-pulp seems to have its own fandom, with its own annual awards and so on, but the quality of the stories (to me) seems to vary greatly. To say the least.
August 2nd, 2011 at 8:33 pm
I wrote my comment above before seeing Walker’s. Obviously he and I agree on the merits of the new pulp fiction!
August 2nd, 2011 at 9:32 pm
And I think it’s misleading, at best, to attempt to make “pulp” stand in for infra-dig, preferably retro, escapist fiction or drama…since not even all pulp when they were pulp magazines could reasonably be described that way. But I’ll agree it’s popular to do so. Noir, at least, does describe both a style of cinematography and content.
August 2nd, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Script/story content, that is.
August 2nd, 2011 at 10:30 pm
Walker and the rest. So collecting “pulps” is similar to collectors of first editions or illuminated manuscripts? I did not know that.
I was aware of the difference between “pulps” and “slicks” (if that is the right term). I have read about Norbert Davis’ suicide blamed in part by his failure to escape the pulp world. I know Paul Ernst in his final days refused to discuss his days writing for the “pulps” but today is remembered for little else. So I can see what you are getting at, and how format can be as important as content.
Learn something everyday.
August 2nd, 2011 at 11:07 pm
I was just thinking about how many MYSTERY FILE readers did I see at PulpFest. I remember Dan Stumpf, Walter Albert, Mike Nevins, Paul Herman. Who else was there?
August 2nd, 2011 at 11:54 pm
And, Michael, pulps (real pulps) mostly differed at the high-budget end from the lower-budget slicks in the paper and sometimes the luridness of the covers…and then there were little magazines, the larger of which (such as STORY and even THE YALE REVIEW) rather resembled the pulps in production, though they usually used better paper…and paid less. The top of the slick market, THE SATURDAY EVENING POST and COLLIER’S, were paying astounding money in the Depression and before and after for the copious amounts of fiction they published in each weekly issue, while, say, THE SMART SET, the slick magazine that BLACK MASK was founded to help fund, paid probably considerably less than even the emerging mid-market pulps, much less such huge-selling pulps as ARGOSY and ADVENTURE. Little magazines led in snob appeal, of course, but you could only pay so much rent on what THE SMART SET’s successor, also initially edited by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, AMERICAN MERCURY, could pay for short fiction…and to help keep the MERCURY afloat, such side projects as ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE and MERCURY MYSTERY (both the book reprint series and the subsequent more formal magazine) and THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION were launched, though shortly after the latter was first issued, Mercury Press honcho Lawrence Spivak sold off AMERICAN MERCURY to rather Nazi-esque folks who reveled in reprinting every slur against Jews Mencken ever wrote, while Spivak got increasingly busy with hosting duties on what was called for a few years AMERICAN MERCURY PRESENTS: MEET THE PRESS.
Pulp stories did tend toward the perfervid, at their worst, as did the worst slick stories toward the bland, and little stories at their weakest toward the precious, and all could be deadly dull. But even as with little magazine or the few surviving slick markets for short fiction or the digests and the likes of THE STRAND, the differences in the fiction in the magazines then aren’t much greater than they are now, taken in aggregate…though the average quality of writing is better now, among the less fan-fictionesque markets (which certainly had their correspondents back when, even Harry Stephen Keeler wasn’t involved).
August 2nd, 2011 at 11:56 pm
or, even when Keeler wasn’t involved…
August 3rd, 2011 at 10:57 am
Thanks for the additional information, Todd.
August 3rd, 2011 at 10:59 am
And among the time jumps in that last comment, the one that’s bothering me at the moment is the potential to read an implication that MERCURY MYSTERY BOOK-MAGAZINE (as it was called when it was remade into a no-bones-about-it magazine, rather than a periodical paperback in digest-sized magazine format) was reformulated as such to prop up AMERICAN MERCURY…that actually happened long after Mercury Press sold AM, and in fact as they were selling EQMM to B. G. Davis in the late ’50s, as he was leaving Ziff-Davis and starting his own Davis Publications. Sibling BESTSELLER MYSTERY underwent a similar transformation at the same time, and in fact lasted a few months longer into the early ’60s than did MERCURY MYSTERY the magazine.
August 3rd, 2011 at 11:54 am
You’re quite welcome, Michael.
August 3rd, 2011 at 1:27 pm
What I noticed about Pulpfest was how everyone kept asking, “Where’s Steve Lewis?” “I wish Steve was here!” and “Damn, I really wish Steve was here–he owes me money!”
August 3rd, 2011 at 3:31 pm
All I can say is that it’s nice to have been missed, no matter the circumstances. Of course it would have been nicer to have been able to go, but alas, not this year.
August 4th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
[…] while discussing PulpFest 2011 I made the claim that Pulp Vault 14 was the best ever issue of a pulp fanzine. I was immediately […]