I have been a fan of the noir novelists who were in their prime from the 1940s through the 1960s ever since discovering a dark closet treasure trove of cheap paperbacks that my then-teenaged uncle must have at some point hidden (and then left behind when he enlisted in the Navy) from my grandparents. The covers were just too good for a kid to ignore, and I had that same feeling when I spotted the cover of Loren D. Estleman's Paperback Jack in my local library. I had to bring it home, but unlike my uncle I didn't have to hide it from anyone.
Estleman set the novel in 1946, just when combat veteran Jacob Heppleman comes home hoping to publish his great American war novel. Heppleman had tried his hand at publishing a novel before the war, but he barely recognizes the publishing world he comes home to. The cheap paperbacks that were so loved by soldiers during the war are now the reading format of choice everywhere, and publishers are scrambling to be the first to publish a paperback original. The pulps are all dead or dying so publishers turn to unemployed pulp fiction writers, including Jacob Heppleman, to provide the stories they need.
Jacob (who will become novelist Jack Holly) wants to join the fun but needs to do a whole lot of research if he is to write a credible crime novel. He is prepared to do just that; he is not prepared, however, for the reaction he gets from one gangland boss who demands a cut of the resulting novel's royalties. And no one is prepared when in 1951 the House Select Committee on Pornography and Juvenile Delinquency decides that the most popular fiction genre on the American market needs to be shut down.
Paperback Jack is fun; that's the bottom line. But this is nostalgic fun all wrapped up inside an informative look at how publishing was forever changed by the introduction of cheap paperback copies of classics, author back catalogs, and new books. The fictional congressional committee that tried so hard to ban books like Paperback Jack is based on the very real House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials that tried to do exactly the same thing in 1952. This one is primarily for readers who enjoy noir fiction, but I found its historical fiction aspects to be the best takeaway from Paperback Jack. It is also my first experience with the prolific Loren D. Estleman's work, but not my last.
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| Loren D. Estleman jacket photo |
Hi Sam, Paperback Jack sounds really good and I love the cover. The covers really made the pulp books back in thec1940's, 1950's and some really talented illustrators worked for the pulps as I understand and they knew how to do covers. And so Loren Estelman exploring this world is a great idea for a novel. Lawrence Block wrote his memoir about a year or two ago talking about how he got started as a writer working for a somewhat shady publishing house. It could be a rough business.
ReplyDeleteThose covers were very special and they are highly collectible today as it turns out. I'll have to see about finding Block's memoir because I really like his books. Even Elmore Leonard got his start in pulps, although his pulp stories were mostly westerns. I suspect that the pulps made it possible for a lot of young writers to pay the rent for a long time.
DeleteI love the title of this one! My library has several of Estleman's books, including this one. So that's good. I think it would be fun to try one of his books sometime, read a little Noir fiction. And the whole publishing history of paperbacks that this one touches on is so fascinating. I've never thought about how cheap paperbacks changed the publishing world so much.
ReplyDeleteI just discovered this morning that I've actually read three Estleman novels in addition to this one, but that was back in 1987 and 1989. No idea why I quit reading him all those years ago, but I think he has something like 80 novels in his back catalog now. I think you'd like this one; it's around 230 pages, short enough to find out pretty quickly if it's for you.
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