Cult fiction
Subtitle: popular readings and pulp theory
By: Clive Bloom.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 262
Subjects: American fiction -- History and criticism.; Popular literature -- United States -- History and criticism.; Popular literature -- Great Britain -- History and criticism.; English fiction -- History and criticism.; Authors and readers.; Canon (Literature)
Description: Here is an exploration of pulp literature and pulp mentalities: an investigation into the nature and theory of the contemporary mind in art and in life. Here too, the violent, the sensational and the erotic signify different facets of the modern experience played out in the gaudy pages of kitsch literature.

Clive Bloom offers the reader a chance to investigate the underworld of literary production and from it find a new set of co-ordinates for questions regarding publishing and reading practices in America and Britain, ideas of genre, problems related to commercial production, concerns regarding high and low culture, the canon and censorship, as well as a discussion of the rhetoric of current critical debate.

Concentrating on remembered authors as well as many long disregarded or forgotten, Cult Fiction provides a theory of kitsch art that radically alters our perceptions of literature and literary values while providing a panorama of an almost forgotten history: the history of pulp.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.