Burks of the Pulps
[Editor's note: More than a few pulp writers became the stuff of legends when it came to cranking out fiction on short notice. One anecdote I believe was first told by Frank Gruber in his quasi-autobiographical memoir, The Pulp Jungle (Los Angeles: Shelbourne Press, Inc., 1967), concerned that notable wordsmith Arthur J. Burks.
During the decade or so that Burks lived in New York, after founding the American Fiction Guild (also known as the "Fictioneers") and acting as its national president, he frequented a midtown bar, when he wasn't working on a deadline, and exchanged bull stories with fellow fictioneers. On one occasion someone challenged Burks' ability to sit down and write a saleable story no matter where he was, and he accepted.
The bar owner brought out a typewriter, set it on a table with a sheaf of papers, and Burks went to work. He was periodically refreshed with drink, and he participated in the conversational threads while he wrote. At the end of several hours he gathered up the pages and, without rereading or correcting what he had written, walked a few blocks to the offices of one of his publishers. He thrust the story under the editor's nose. Half an hour later he returned to the bar with a check in his pocket.
The following item, "Burks of the Pulps," which appeared in a New Yorker magazine column for February 15, 1936 (pp. 12-13), lends credence to this anecdote.]
As if in a trance, we found ourselves in a suite in the Hotel Knickerbocker talking with an ace pulp writer. A pulp writer is one who writes for those numerous magazines printed on unfinished paper (Horror Stories, Detective Tales, Livid Tales, Ace Sports, and whatnot). The writer we were talking with was a Mr. Arthur J. Burks. "And is it true," we were saying, "that you write a million and a half words a year?" "Of course," Mr. Burks said, adding with contempt, "A million and a half is so unusual. Lots of pulp writers do more than that." Mr. Burks, it seems, isn't the most prolific pulp writer around, but the most versatile; turns out with equal facility stuff classifiable, he said, as "detective, animal, Western, mystery, fantastic, terror, airplane, World War, adventure, pseudo-science." He paused for breath. "And weird," he added. He estimates that he has written about twelve hundred stories, for a hundred and forty magazines, since he sold his first one, in 1924. Examining the current pulps on a newsstand, you'd find about a dozen of his stories, under his own name or one of his pseudonyms: Estil Critchfield, Burke MacArthur, Lieutenant Frank Johnson, Scott Morgan, Spencer Whitney. He's proud of his work, too. "I don't feel like apologizing for writing to an audience of twenty-five millions people," he says.
Mr. Burks is thirty-eight, heavy-set, and black-haired. He lives at the Knickerbocker with his wife and an old Underwood typewriter, moving them both into Connecticut for the summer. Mrs. Burks acts as his literary agent, and you can imagine that she keeps busy, too. Mr. Burks was a Marine from 1917 to 1927, rising from private to lieutenant, and spending an unforgettable time as aide to General Smedley Butler. They even collaborated on a book, "Walter Garvin in Mexico." General Butler told Lieutenant Burks the story in two hours, and Burks wrote it in two weeks. "Understand it wasn't lousy writing, either," he told us. We asked how he made out financially since he left the Marines for writing, and he said, "A pulp writer who can't make four hundred a week isn't worth his salt." He doesn't read many other pulp writers; prefers Hemingway and Faulkner and (in translation) Gautier and Anatole France. We asked Mr. Burks' opinion of Arnold Bennett, who we have always considered pretty prolific. "Damned lazy," said Mr. Burks.
Average daily output of the Burks Underwood is four thousand words. In emergencies Burks can do three or four times this amount. Once, for example, Sky Fighters called him at ten in the morning and ordered three stories, a total of some twelve thousand words. It got them by six in the evening, and Mr. Burks made two hundred and fifty dollars for his day's work. He never rereads his writings, either in manuscript or after they are published, and doesn't care what editors do to them. His challenge is that he can get an idea for a story from any word, object, or person. We tried him out on a lampshade in the room. "It's the shape of a coolie hat," he said, "and there's a little nick that looks like a bullet hole..." "All right," we said, handing him an ashtray. "Reminds me of a machine-gun part," he said. "I'll just put a crew of three men in No Man's Land..." We pointed at a picture in a gold oval frame. "A wound of that shape with a gold edge around it," he muttered. "By George," he said suddenly, slipping a piece of paper into his typewriter. "THE GOLD KISS, by Arthur J. Burks," he wrote, as we watched. "The body was half in and half out of the shadow cast by a huge samovar. The detective stooped over the corpse and gasped in amazement. The gaping oval wound had not bled at all. More than that, it was surrounded by a thin film of what, at first glance, looked to be gold dust..." As we tiptoed away, we heard the hum of the Underwood rise in a fierce, white-hot crescendo.
Copyright by Peter Ruber
Posted by ds at December 9, 2002 02:43 PM
