What is meant by this title? I like the movie, but I don’t get how the title fits in. Ok, so I understand that it is a work of fiction, but pulp? It has nothing to do with ground up trees or orange juice. Thanks for your time.
“Pulp fiction” refers to a genre of writing popular in the first half of the 20th century. They were racy, hard-boiled detective/gangster/etcetera stories and the like printed on cheap, coarse paper (from which comes the “pulp” reference) in paperbacks and magazines. The movie was very reminiscent of these old stories in a groovy, updated way.
Back in the 1930s, a lot of hard-boiled, tough guy detective fiction was put out in magazines and in paperback novels by low-budget publishing houses. Because of the cheap-quality paper such publishers used, the resulting product was often jokingly called “pulp” fiction. The stories they published often revolved around the criminal underworld.
Now, much of this fiction was of very poor quality, but some very good writers (people like Raymond Chandler) got their start writing for pulp magazines. Some critics actually argue that literary existentialism originated in such pulp fiction; a common motif in such literature was a lone detective, a man of honor, trying to preseve his integrity in a dirty, corrupt world.
The interwoven stories Quentin Tarantino told in his film dealt with the same types of characters and themes as the old pulp novels and magazines, so “Pulp Fiction” seemed an appropriate title.
Pulp fiction refers to a type of paperback which is printed on very course, pulpy paper, usually involving a story on par with those Harlequinn romances my mom likes so much.
If you pay attention, you’ll notice John Travolta’s character carrying around/reading a paperback all through the movie.
As for how the title “fits in” with the movie, I dunno fer shur, but I think that if you understand everything Quentin Tarantino tries to do, you’re probably named Quentin Tarantino.
Hope this helps
Thanks guys, that does make a lot of sense. Come to think of it, I did know about that type of writing, I just never connected the name pulp fiction with it. I think I read about it somewhere, but never did that term come up. Strange.
If you should happen to view the movie again, it opens with a titlecard reading
None of you were there before I started searching! Anyway, here’s mine, along with some links.
Pulp is simply the name used in the printing and publishing trades for a cheap, heavy grade of paper. Most magazines today are printed on what’s called slick paper. If you’ve ever felt either you know the difference immediately.
The fiction comes from the thousands of magazines that (mostly) starting in the 1920s printed genre stories of wonderful luridness to match their covers. The major genres are the ones we know today - romance, mystery, science fiction, horror - but there were hundreds of other categories, from railroad to nurse to “spicy”. Pulps were intended as cheap reading for the lower classes, but had gems in them that we still read today.
The pulps are where Hugo Gernsback published the first science fiction magazines, where Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler (among many others) invented hard-boiled mysteries, where Doc Savage and the Shadow plied their trade.
There are many pulps sites on the web, of course. It helps to search using “pulps” rather than pulp fiction.
http://www.curiousbooks.com/pulps/pulps.html
http://thisispop.50megs.com/pulps.html
Pulpworld looks like it should be best, but only a couple of the links in the frame work. Maybe it’s just my browser. But the first couple of pages of its History of the Pulps has some great covers on them.
More good images: http://www.adventurehouse.com/