Pulp Books

I was flying into Calgary for a couple days and this book really came in handy for someone seeking out the unique parts of the city. I have Toronto: The Unknown City and really enjoy all the adventures. The Calgary version is a little outdated though, some of the clubs mentioned have since shut down and at times was more of a history textbook than guide to discovery, but there was enough to keep me fulfilled. And for $2, who wouldn't love to check out a taxidermied rodent museum!

If you like reading writer's bios or share my fascination with the old pulp writers, you will thoroughly enjoy this well-written and well-researched biography of pulp writer Hugo Cave. Although I had never heard of Cave until I bought this book, I'm glad I did: his life had many parallels with other prolific pulp writers, like Robert Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and that the facts about Cave are less well known than Howard and Burroughs made the book even more entertaining.

Goulart modestly subtitles this book "an informal history," however it's fairly overarching in its treatment of pulp magazines. It serves as a primer for pulp fiction/magazine/author research. Goulart focuses on authors and genres other than mere cutting and pasting of original pulp writings as some others have done. He also knows how to write, making this an entertaining as well as important book.

"Soup can sometimes take the place of language..." Marusya Bociurkiw writes in Comfort Food for Breakups, and as the aroma of my mother's broth, sipped to ease sickness, floods my tongue, I too hunger for my mother's absent touch, for my young daughter knees, for my queer body.

Born in Canada to Ukrainian exiles, Bociurkiw weaves stories interspersed with recipes, travels, and tales of other refugees. Food is the conduit that allows her to traverse centuries and continents, a movement that turns meals and particular dishes into landmarks. Between two or more people, the preparation and ingestion of food becomes for her a conversation, one that revolves around fullness and emptiness, absence and presence.

In Bociurkiw's hunger-propelled memoirs, food, entwined with the senses, connects her to blood, to her body, to stories and memory. Eating and cooking are central to rituals of celebration, mourning, and gossip that engage her family, friends and lovers. During a romantic break-up she loses her appetite, yet the death of her brother makes her hungry.

It is through the landscape of the kitchen that Bociurkiw explores her connection to her mother's body, her grandmother's body and a matriarchal lineage in which she finds herself entangled. Her relationship to food allows her to break apart her own constructed femininities, against which her queerness acts as a transformative catalyst, informing how she inhabits her desire.

As Bociurkiw repeatedly returns to Ukraine and Vancouver, both in journey and in memory, she searches for the precise ingredients that feed her hunger. Whether opening her door to a stranger or taking care of a loved one, food becomes her language, a form of communication that stands in for what she finds difficult to say. Between immigration, silence and belonging, she hungers to taste something familiar in a strange place. She eats to get back home.

This was a nice break from the usual gay fiction anthology, but some writers were familiar: best Stephen Beachy's "torque", David Dakar, Richard Schimpf and Jim Provenzano, whose collage style shows a haunting future. robert Patrick's "The War Over Jane Fonda" reveals family disagreements that lead to more. Some of the stories fulfill the goal of providing dissident voices (Provenzano's the strongest among that category) others are sweet in their prose stylings (Charles Derry's "Keeping Track"). the Jack-in-the-Box cover is odd, but what can you expect from those wacky Canadians!

Cornell Woolrich From Pulp Noir To Film Noir is an in-depth examination of pulp writer Cornell Woolrich, who wildly popular in the 1930s and 1940s and the single most adapted writer for films of the noir period. Featuring a detailed analysis of twenty-two of Woolrich's novels and short stories, as well as thirty films adapted from these stories, a discussion of how Woolrich's style and themes influenced the noir genre, as well as a biographical sketch of Woolrich and a handful of black-and-white stills from Woolrich's noir classics, Cornell Woolrich From Pulp Noir is a "must-read" for anyone interested in the evolution of the film noir concept in pulp and film. An excellent presented, meticulously researched, and highly readable scrutiny of the enormous impact one man had on a writing and film genre, Cornell Woolrich From Pulp Noir is a recommended addition to academic Cinema History and Literary studies collections.

From The Cover Jacket:
Claudine's thoughts have a strange power over her former lover. He is out of control. Claudine walks through her New York studio tracing her way back to the hot Arizona summer when she and Marcus met. Her memories and dreams send Marcus spilling through time and space.

Reviews Include:
"Smith is damn near visionary." --San Francisco Weekly
"Serious and intriguing." --Rolling Stone

"Closely attuned to the reality of women's rage." --Village Voice

"Mecca Nomral has inspired a largeer movement of feminists in their teens and early 20s who call themselves Riot Grrrls." --New York Times

First of all, the writing here is spectacular . . . and funny. The Dan Turner stories were clearly written to be over the top "Her gat spat liquid death . . . " or "Her gams could halt an out-of-control city bus". The writing is crisp, punchy and very colorful (and sometimes hyperbolic). Nothing here is meant to be taken seriously and it's a lot of fun to read. On a more historical note, these stories were part of the on-going evolution of the hard-boiled detective genre which started earlier in the 1930s with the novels of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain which would later be taken over my Mickey Spillane. It's an era that's gone now and can only be taken seriously for its escapist value. But, oh, what writing!

The book opens in a coffee house where Death is sitting, reading newspapers & contemplating. He then sees an old composition book for children to practice their writing. He decides to write in it & he does - using the AAaa page (subjects that start with A) to think & talk about subjects, with, of course, death as the main thought. He weaves today, ancient history & interesting facts all through the alphabet. In 50 years it is one of the 5 books I have re-read several times. I plan to get some for my friends.

Thank you so much for your nice service. Happy new year.