"PULPS" AND TASTE

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22237, 30 October 1937, Page 18

"PULPS" AND TASTE

A New Zealand Literary Abuse

(3PKCIALLT WRITTEN FOB THE PRESS.) [By R. G. C. McNAB]

New Zealanders are, relatively, fabulous consumers of tea; they are even more fabulous consumers of pulp-paper magazines. These are the American magazines whose lurid covers shriek from the chain-store news stands, from almost every suburban shop window, and, in the cities, from bookstalls devoted to their sale. From time to time some church council deplores their obscenity, or a dealer is prosecuted for exposing for sale an issue that has offended some passer-by. From time to time we hear of their being held by the Customs Department while illegal advertisements are clipped out; or a magistrate bewails the sale of literature which incites adventurous youth to hooliganism or to crime. No one will deny that these questions of morality are grave; but the effect of this flood of bad writing on the standard of literacy and literary taste in New Zealand deserves some little attention. In America each month one “pulp” is sold for each group of 30 citizens. In New Zealand at least one “pulp” is sold monthly for every 15 citizens; this is an absurdly low estimate. Those in the trade believe that the number of monthly sales lies between 200,000 and 300,000. There is common agreement that 3,000,000 “pulps” are sold every year in New Zealand, which means, not one for every 15 citizens monthly, but one for every

six. Over the Counter There follow a few pieces of information personally gathered. It is hard, without the co-operation of the Customs Department, to ascertain the exact number imported. In a chain-store I watched 17 copies being sold in 10 minutes on a Saturday morning, perhaps a high-selling period; a back-street Dunedin book-stall-dealer sells 1500 each month; a Hamilton department store, not a chain-store, sells 1500 to 2000 each month. The smallest distributor in Dunedin sends out 2000 “pulps” each month to suburban shopkeepers. Last month the sales for New Zealand should be increased by one, the copy of “True Detective Mysteries” which I bought for sixpence. This was a March, 1937, issue costing 25 cents in the United States; and, if its New Zealand selling price bore any relation to the selling prices of standard English and American periodicals, it should have cost between Is 6d and 2s. Why are the “pulps” sold cheaply? They are sold to the agencies which send them to New Zealand for 3 cents a copy, Igd. By the time they reach the newsagent, their cost is between 3“d and 4£d. The public pays 6d a copy or, in the case of bad sellers and hanging stock, three may be bought for a shilling. They are scarcely ever worthy of being called out of date. Sometimes they are released for export within a month of issue, though the average period of delay is two months; but their delay for years would not> much affect the demand for them, as their only news value is the occasional publication of portraits of escaped convicts and wanted murderers, whom readers are encouraged to ' search fqr and denounce. The proprietors of the magazines offer rewards to those who succeed.

Profit by Loss Such cheapness is not uncalculated. The explanation is simple. The scores of thousands of New Zealand buyers represent so much guaranteed circulation, so that the proprietors can demand increased rates from their advertisers. It is profitable to overprint far beyond the American and Canadian requirements, to sell the surplus without consideration of cost, and to reap the reward of additional advertising receipts. ‘This expedient was first practised in years of depression, and ' is now firmly established. During the last few years their New Zealand sale has grown, and continues to grow, so much that though they come in in their hundreds of bales, each bale holding 550-560 copies, the dealers cry that they cannot gel enough. They are bought ’for other reasons than their cheapness. They sell for the same reason as the old “yellow back” sold, for the emphasis on sex or crime, on sex and crime, for revelations about private lives, for their wild adventure, rid, additionally, for film gossip and scandal. There are two chief classes: magazines which purport to include only true stories* the reconstruction of crimes, ancient and modern, and the autobiography or confession of eminent lovers, and, second, magazines filled with what is called fiction. They are also sold by their covers. Most often these display a woman who has removed most of her own clothes or who is having them removed by clutching hands. Many depict a scene of brutality or death, and others a moment of thrilling suspense involving an aeroplane or a motor-car, Ido not know how many different “pulps” there are; certainly more than 20. Buyers’ order of preference is as follows. First, sex, love stories, confessions, true romance. Second, the screen. Third, crime and detection. Fourth, adventure, nearly all being Western stories. Fifth, boxing. Sixth, the aeroplane. 1

Who Buys Them? ( One storekeeper selling 2000 monthly and not relishing the necessity of stocking “pulps” has some impressions about buyers. Seventyfive buyers of retail goods of all kinds out of 100 are women. The proportion of female buyers of “pulps” is somewhat higher. Young women between the ages of 17 and 24 outnumber any other class of buyers by three to one; but this means very little, as it is probable that the “pulps,” like other purchases, are used as much by men as by women. Doctors and lawyers are by no means rare customers, and many buyers are obviously reading “pulps” for other reasons than their cheapness. Their literary standards need no elaborate description. Pictures are lurid, often suggestive; the expression is crude, violent, and careless; characterisation is nonexistent, as it would slow up the action; effects are sensational; the graces of style are wise-crackipg and hard-boiled cynicism; constructive thought and moral reflections are not to be found; sexual matters are emphasised, and reticence is unknown. My “True Detective” is, as fnese things go, restrained and mild. It announces its next month’s feature in these words:

Simona and the Love-Mad Slayer. XAteless, tier clothing torn, the body of a pretty brunette, a bone-handled dagger protruding from her breast, lay beside a path in the outskirts of

Juarez. After months of unrelenting effort on the part of police a phantom love fiend was brought to justice.

Writing for the Pulps In minor tones, that is the key of the “pulps.” An anonymous writer in the “American Mercury,” March, 1936, wrote a pathetic article about the miserable degradation of a “pulp” writer. He spoke of “the day dreams dispersed to hordes of Americans too unimaginative to dream for themselves.” He spoke of one writer who reeled off 60,000 words between Friday afternoon and Monday morning, and he explained the publisher’s technique. Average print order is 125,000 copies, cost 5000 dollars. On a fairly good magazine the profit may be 4000 dollars a year, but as magazines of this kind easily die, the publisher has a string of half a dozen. Profits and losses almost cancel out; but there is a chance of one magazine reaching a monthly circulation of 200.000 and returning for the year 50.000 to 100,000 dollars. Wages for writers and editors are not high; competition is fierce; engagements are easily made and more easily broken. Worst of all is the mental and spiritual decrepitude into which the writers recognise themselves to be falling. But there is no chance of escape from the treadmill. Readers will escape not much more readily than writers. A Measure of Taste That literature of this kind should become more and more the favourite reading of New Zealanders will not be suspected without distress by any thinking person. If tons of food of poor quality were dumped in New Zealand and sold for much less than the cost of production, there would be cries of “Scandal!” The scandal is no less when mind and spirit, and not bodies, are being defiled. Censorship should not be invoked, tempting though it is to lay aside in this matter ordinary liberal principles. But such a censorship would be dangerous, and people cannot be dragooned to read wholesomely and well. “Give the public what it wants” is a slogan which, freely applied, has exposed the standard of taste in our community. One measure should be adopted: to impose on the “pulps” such a tariff aS would raise the New Zealand selling price to something like that forced upon competing periodicals. At present the publishers of reputable English and American magazines are greatly handicapped. None of these now pays duty or sales tax, nor should they. If the “pulps” were forced up to treble the present price, the public might read less, but would read better. t Thirty thousand pounds to £7o,ooo'is now spent annually on these publications. Libraries cry out for help, booksellers have a hard life, and the public turns from them to support American racketeers. Government controls more national activities than ever before. The “pulps” are a pie into which more than one finger should be thrust. There is, fortunately, no native “pulp.” This is not to say that the qualities of the “pulp” are not to be observed, at least in embryo, in New Zealand publications. The Saturday supplement of more than one New Zealand newspaper displays in almost exact order the most popular subjects of the “pulp”: sex, crime, film gossip, adventure, and these in an unnecessarily sensational form. Who shall cast the first stone?