Pulp Pride

One day last fortnight the New York Times decided to consider the pulp fiction press on its editorial page. Adjusting its pince-nez for a downward glance, the lordly Times contemplated "another publishing world, little known and certainly officially unrecognized, in which volume of production is more important than literary quality."

Observed the Times: "Fiction writers . . . are harried and spurred to turn in their thousands of words a month. They receive, perhaps, an order for a novelette of 20,000 words involving a scene 'illustrated by front cover enclosed herewith.' Invention and industry come into play. . . . If [the pulp writer] began his writing life with any feeling for style, it is washed out of him by the floods of words in a few years "

Many a Times-reader, who never looked inside a pulp magazine in his life, may have nodded equally lofty approval. One who did not was Aaron A. Wyn, a strapping six-footer who has been a newshawk on the Pacific Coast, a schoolteacher in Idaho, a cowhand in Wyoming, an able seaman on freighters, a hobo, a writer. For the last ten years he has been in the pulp magazine business. He publishes Sky Birds, Flying Aces, Western Aces, Western Trails, Red Seal Western, Gold Seal Detectives, Ten Detective Aces, Secret Agent X, Spy Stories, Love Fiction Monthly. The Times editorial made Publisher Wyn so mad that last week he sat down and wrote that newspaper an eminently newsworthy letter in defense of the pulp press. Excerpts:

''I am particularly amused by your characterization of this publishing world as 'little known and officially unrecognized.' . . . By whom? Certainly the 10,000,000 people who go to their newsstands each month to buy pulp magazines know and recognize this publishing world. . . . Monthly newsstand sales . . . demonstrate the preference of the American reading public, not that small coterie which is faintly amused and slightly incredulous of the existence of the pulps, and totally ignorant of their importance and purpose."

Publisher Wyn then itemized the materials bought every year by the 125 pulps published every month in the U. S.: 35,000 tons of paper for $1,500,000; $2,000,000 worth of printing; $250,000 worth of art work and a like sum for engraving; 100,000,000 words of copy for $1,500,000. The pulp industry helps the support of the Post Office by returning some 10,000,000,000 words of rejected manuscripts; it ships 2,000 carloads of paper and 2,000 carloads of magazines every year. Distributors, wholesalers, dealers, second-hand magazine stores, literary agents, typewriter and ink manufacturers, mail-order advertisers, wastepaper dealers and the Salvation Army all draw liberal support from the pulp press.

To the Times's prime point, low-grade writing. Publisher Wyn retorted: "The story's the thing. . . . Good writing never has spoiled a well-plotted pulp story, but it never made a bad one good. . . . We all know that plenty of bankers and brokers, lawyers and doctors, salesmen and Senators are addicted to reading pulps. How often have we heard them say 'Pulps? Um, yes--I read them myself once in a while--they help to put me to sleep.' The sly liars! . . . We disown such fainthearted friends--give us the honest pulp fan who writes 'Your mag's great! Wish it came out once a week.' "

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