PULP Literature – Spring 2016

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What I love about Pulp Literature is its melding of the literary with the genres. This issue took a long time to meld, however---the literary wasn't genre enough and the genre stuff wasn't literary enough. That said, three stories struck me as rather wonderful.

Soul Making by Sarina Bosco

I love fairy tale retellings. Another Beauty and the Beast I frequently use in my classes, and this one too flips the script (as people say) in interesting ways. Beauty seeks out the beast, beauty chooses the beast, beauty prefers the beast as a beast, and as he begins to change (which is gradual here), their implicit deal is cast in shadow. It's a lovely rendition.

Two Twenty-two by Stephen Case

What if moments were incarnate? What would they want? What would it mean to know one?

Black Blizzard by Emily Linstrom

This time, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty. Told by a girl as the origin story of her family during the Dust Bowl, this one too Flips! the Script! by changing what the story's basic assumptions are. Who, for instance, says that Beauty is the greatest possible outcome for Prince Charming? Are we sure, for instance, that comfort and luxury are life's highest calling?