| This dissertation explores the mutual constitution of pulp fiction and modernist literature at their parallel positions on the radical fringes of twentieth-century culture. Although pulp and modernist art would appear to occupy opposite extremes of the divide between high and low culture, the crossover between these two formations undermines the notion of rigid separation between cultural spheres. American modernist writers Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, and William Faulkner all turned to pulp writing during a period in their careers when they were anxious that their aesthetic would be compromised by any attempt to make it sellable to middlebrow readers. Pulp writing was attractive to these artists because it was nurtured in magazines that were sympathetic to unknown talents with fresh ideas. The distinctiveness of the generic experiments these writers undertook argues for the existence of a pulp modernism which, in synthesizing the pleasures of pulp sensationalism with the innovations of modernism, can be categorized as neither high nor low art. While modernist writers were attracted to the popular appeal and radical subject matter of pulp fiction, pulp writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dashiell Hammett, and John H. Knox brought innovations to their work that were comparable to modernist experimentation. Examining the work of these writers in their original contexts, I demonstrate how, much like modernist little magazines, the pulps offered an apprentice venue sympathetic to emerging artists. By uncovering the shared arena of pulp and modernist literature, I show not only their mutual pursuit of innovation, but their joint negotiation of cultural issues that were central to the era of pulp modernism.;In chapter one, I examine Barnes's dual career as pulp and modernist writer alongside Burroughs's early pulp successes, revealing the interrelatedness of their aesthetics. Chapter two explores how Black Mask facilitated Hammett's refinement of the hard-boiled genre and how Stein later experimented with this same style in her novel Blood on the Dining-Room Floor. Through a detailed reading of Sanctuary alongside the weird menace stories of Knox, chapter three demonstrates the ways in which both horror fiction and Faulkner's novel combine sensationalism with a radical subversion of heteronormativity. |
