What is pulp fiction? Not the movie, but the writing in general. I have heard it used to describe the works of several authors including Stephen King. I have even recently heard “pulp psychology.” This is just as obscure as pulp fiction for me. Can someone please help?
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there is a dictionary-style definition at the beginning of the movie.
i am too lazy to go check.
just letting you know.
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
“Pulp” fiction used to describe tawdry, hard-boiled novels and magazines of the 1920s/30s/40s, usually in the action, horror or detective genre. At one time, there were numerous low-budget publishing houses that churned out such novels and magazines. “Pulp” referred to the cheap, low-quality paper such publications were printed on.
The quality of these works varied. A lot of them were sleazy, low quality stuff. On the other hand, some very good writers (Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler come to mind) got their start writing hard-boiled detective stories for pulp magazines… and many literary critics will tell you that these stories were at the root of existentialist literature!
Yeah astorian hit the nail on the head. That is exactly what pulp fiction means. The term “pulp” has been bridged to other things since, hence terms such as “pulp psychology” and even “pulp culture”. I am sure that these things refer to the same genre.
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“pulp culture”?
“pulp psychology”?
Now I’ve heard of pop culture, and pop psychology, but I’ve never heard of those two. Are you sure you got that right?
Pulp fiction is still written. You buy them at airports 
Actually they’re really good for writers who need the money, need the experience, but don’t yet have the skills or time to write their great novel. So they churn out standard crap every few weeks.
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If I can just add a bit to astorian’s excellent answer:
The pulp magazines of the 20’s and 30’s covered a wide variety of genres–detective, action, science fiction, horror, westerns, romance, adult (well, for the times)and so on. They paid their authors the bottom dollar rate, so they mostly got what they paid for. However, some authors managed to rise above the genre, like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler in the 'tec pulps, and Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamson, and Murray Leinster in SF, for example.
During WWII, a paper shortage drove up the price of all paper goods, including paper stock for magazines. The vast majority of the pulp mags went out of business due to the rising costs. TV finished off the rest.
What does pulp fiction have to do with the movie Pulp Fiction or vice versa?
I think Tarentino (?) was trying to envoke the gritty, amoral violence that was the hallmark of many pulp fiction tales. The word “fiction” in the title should clue viewers into the fact that he is not trying to depict reality, but a stylized homage to the potboilers of yore.
And I have to second Nu Vo Da Da- I’ve heard the term pop culture and pop psychology, but never the term ‘pulp’ psychology.
JMCJ
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BTW-I have about a hundred pulp mags rotting away in my den. Even in plastic they will almost completely self destruct in little more than 50 years after coming off the press. If anybody wants to read some good pulp fiction, here’s a list of some of the lesser known writers you may want to keep an eye out for:
Jim Thomson
Robert Garron
Mickey Spillane
Henry Kane
Lester Dent
Carroll John Daly
Maxwell Grant (Walter Gibson)
Erle Stanley Gardner
Murray Leinster
“Doc” E E Smith
Henry Kuttner
Frederic Brown
Ralph Milne Farley
Raymond Gallun
Some of these names are pen names used by “mainstream” authors, others are “house names” under which more than one writer published (esp. the “hero pulps” like Doc Savage and The Shadow). I just don’t remember which ones.
Mickey Spillane is a “lesser-known writer” ?
At one point (late '40s-early '50s), Spillane had written SEVEN out of the ten best-selling novels of all time!
Betcha if you asked your fathers (grandfathers, some of you) if they’d gone through the Spillane oeuvre, they’d answer affirmatively.
Not that they’d ever brag about it or anything.
Uke
You’re right, Uke. I don’t know why I put him on that list. He is the epitome of a pulp fiction writer, though.
Good list, though. LOVE Henry Kuttner.
a thread about pulp fiction? I can’t let this one pass me by. I love the stuff. Due to the nature of pulp fiction, though, I don’t think I could find the time to become particularly well read in it, but I love it anyway.
The stuff (particularly the more popular of it such as Tarzan and The Shadow) also spread to radio. Some web sites, such as http://www.shadowradio.org/ will let you listen to a new episode every week, just like the way it used to be 
there’s more like this in the Old Time Radio webring, which I am a member of, along with the above linked web site. So from either that place or my own site (linked in my sig) you can go looking for more. One of the Shadow sites I’ve seen (I’m not sure whether it’s a member of the ring, but it’s almost certainly linked to from one of the pages there) will have some of the old magazine stories too.
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ah, found it:
The Shadow PDF Files: complete Shadow pulp novels in PDF format!
Mayor of Snerdville, the home of Mortimer Snerd
“I’m just too much for human existence – I should be animated.”
–Wayne Knight
Some of the sources I’ve checked say that what really killed the pulps was the breakup of the American News Company in the mid-fifties. This company distributed about half of all magazines and paperbacks in the U.S. at that point. According to these sources, someone figured out that the warehouses and other real estate that the American News Company owned was worth more than the business that they produced, so they bought the company, sold off all the real estate, and folded the business. Suddenly there was room for at most half as many magazines and paperbacks as before.
However, it’s probably true that TV was replacing pulp fiction anyway.