October 04, 2008
The Trail of Whitened Skulls: The Cole Lavery Saga
Blackburn lends a nice sense of history and authenticity to his tales by including appropriate details along with the characters’ awareness of their place as players in a larger tide of life. - Read this articleOctober 04, 2008
The Trail of Whitened Skulls: The Cole Lavery Saga
Blackburn lends a nice sense of history and authenticity to his tales by including appropriate details along with the characters’ awareness of their place as players in a larger tide of life. - Read this articleMay 04, 2007
“Summer Kill”--a Story by Lewis B. Patten
A group reading experience of The Woodstove Whittlers and Wrangling Association -- Some members of the reading group are partial to the writing of Lewis B. Patten, in particular his action-driven narratives and hard-nosed characters. Those in the group who hold a differing opinion argue that Patten is a plot-dependent hack who couldn’t vary his characterizations if his Stetson depended on it. The WWWA decided to try some short stories by Patten to see if anyone might be swayed to another opinion. - Read this articleMay 04, 2007
Readings of The Woodstove Whittlers and Wrangling Association
The Woodstove Whittlers and Wrangling Association is the reading group of Spur & Lock Mercantile and Sundries Emporium. Discussion is lively, members are opinionated, and the snacks are tasty. - Read this articleApril 13, 2007
The Cheyenne Pool & The Youngerman Guns: Two Novels by Lewis B. Patten
Welcome to the Spur & Lock Mercantile and Sundries Emporium. Have a seat and pick up a stick for whittlin’. Please remember to bring your own whetstones, and don’t spit on the floor, but aim for the cuspidors, located ubiquitously about the store. And before you decide on a course of action or speech directed toward a fellow store-sitter that may result in strong words or fisticuffs, please ask yourself, “What would Roy Rogers do?” - Read this articleMarch 17, 2007
Following the "Traitor of the Natchez Trace"
"Traitor of the Natchez Trace" is actually not a north-western. Instead, it's a frontier story — not a western, really, because it's set along the Natchez Trace (thus the title) when the Mississippi River was considered The West. I enjoy tales like this, which take place outside the typical western formula and include a bit of history or cultural information as additional narrative color to create a stronger verisimilitude. - Read this articleFebruary 08, 2007
A Look at B.M. Bower's "Chip, of the Flying U"
Chip is one of that group of early westerns that founded the literary genre that's come to us today. Owen Wister's The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains was published in 1902. Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage was published in 1912. Chip was published solidly between these two literary benchmarks in 1906. - Read this articleJanuary 31, 2007
Manly Wade Wellman's Sergeant Jaeger Stories
Contrary to how the Black Mask style as practiced by Dashiell Hammett and his hard-boiled confreres seemed to influence so pervasively popular fiction writing in the United States — Hammett's staccato, fast-moving style became common in the hero pulps, among some western and science fiction writers, and nearly the de facto style of Gold Medal authors and others during the paperback original novel boom — the horror tale and weird tale typically kept a more lush style because of the Weird Tales genre's reliance on atmosphere and building up of sensation. - Read this articleJanuary 29, 2007
"Wood on the Snow" -- a Review
Burrowing into a story by Ryerson Johnson is usually a comforting experience—"Johnny" was a solid storyteller who could seemingly weave a tale from the smallest incidents, tell it with style in such a way to capture a reader, and wrap it up with a satisfying ending. So it is with "Wood on the Snow." - Read this articleJuly 15, 2006
“The Avalanche Maker” and “River Round Up”
A Look at Two North-Westerns by W. Ryerson Johnson. In Johnson’s westerns -- frequently North-Westerns -- his enthusiasm and skill at writing a full-tilt action story are clearly apparent. - Read this articleJanuary 28, 2006
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Influence on the Wilderness Series
In "The Wilderness Series Launch," a brief review of the first six novels in the Wilderness series by David Thompson (aka David Robbins) elsewhere on The Pulp Rack, I mentioned that I think Robbins learned a few tricks from Edgar Rice Burroughs on how to end a chapter with a cliffhanger. This time around, let's take a look at some other points Robbins picked up from Burroughs. - Read this articleJanuary 28, 2006
The Wilderness Series by David Thompson
David Robbins, writing under the name David Thompson, has created a modern pulp frontier adventure series in Wilderness, published by Leisure Books. These novels about trapper/frontiersman Nate King and his family ring with historical detail, marvelous adventure, and elements we all recognize from the finest pulp storytelling traditions. - Read this articleJuly 22, 2005
Texas Rangers Magazine Collection Goes To New Home At Texas Ranger Hall Of Fame And Museum In Waco, Texas
Frequent Pulp Rack contributor Jim Griffin provides this article about his efforts to collect Texas Rangers magazine, and his subsequent donation of that collection to a special museum in Texas. - Read this articleMarch 02, 2005
The Wilderness Series Launch
I remember how thrilling and wonderful I thought the Robert Redford film, Jeremiah Johnson, was when I saw it in the theatre many moons ago. (And I suspect that fictionalized account about Liver-Eating Johnson was cleaned up by Hollywood.)... - Read this articleJuly 23, 2004
Finnish Westerns: A Brief Survey into a Genre
By Juri Nummelin. Many western novels and short stories have been written in Finnish by Finnish writers. This may seem an anomaly, but some critics have said that western myth is clearly a European myth. - Read this articleJune 16, 2004
The American Westerns in Finland: From Pulps to Paperbacks
By Juri Nummelin. The Western has been widely read and published in Finland for a long time. It has been a popular genre with the working classes and, even though it has not always been accepted by the literary elite, it has been a popular genre with young readers. Many classics have been translated into Finnish, and they have influenced many Finnish writers. - Read this articleDecember 19, 2003
Continuing Characters in Texas Rangers Magazine
The Pulp Racks contributing equine expert and pulp collector, Jim Griffin, provides this succinct description of the various continuing characters that populated the Texas Rangers pulp magazine. - Read this articleFebruary 11, 2003
Horses in the West: Reality vs. Fiction
The images and perceptions of the horse in most media are as far removed from reality as the image of every cowboy as a two-fisted, Colt-throwing gunslinger. An article by The Pulp Rack's horse expert, Jim Griffin. - Read this articleNovember 12, 2002
Kirby Jonas
Our busy horse-riding contributor Jim Griffin joins us with another article from the trail. Take it away, Jim: Kirby Jonas: Contemporary Western Writer Kirby Jonas is one of a very rare breed -- a person born well after the interest... - Read this articleNovember 11, 2002
Riding The Pulp Range
Author and fanzine publisher Howard Hopkins provides this article about the survival of the pulp western in our contemporary world: Black Horse Westerns. - Read this articleOctober 29, 2002
Cowboy Music
Fans of Western Pulps might like information on where Cowboy or Western Music is still available. I'm not talking about what passes for so-called "Country" on most of today's homogenized FM stations, but genuine Western music, by Western artists. There's nothing better than sitting back with a Western story while cowboy songs play in the background. - Read this articleOctober 28, 2002
The Comanche's Ghost: Western Pulp Lives
If you like the sort of western stories that hark to the days of fast-action pulp magazines; to the solidly entertaining B movies in which heroes were heroes, no matter what sort of crises they faced; then the western novels of Howard Hopkins are for you. - Read this articleOctober 23, 2002
"Team Work"
It's a light but fun piece of reading -- don't be turned off just because it appeared in a romance magazine. - Read this articleOctober 15, 2002
Seltzer's Take on Tom Horn
The popularity of Owen Wister's The Virginian opened up the western story field as a viable literary market for writers. For its contemporary readers and critics, it raised the level of the western from the adolescent western fantasies presented in... - Read this articleOctober 09, 2002
Man From Wyoming
The great value of this volume is in the marvelous Foreword by editor Jon Tuska that provides a short critical biography of author Coolidge (1873-1940) and serves as an excellent introduction to this writer and his work. - Read this articleSeptember 27, 2002
Texas Rangers Magazine
Texas Rangers Magazine was published monthly from October 1936 to April 1938, with the exception of January 1937, when no issue was published... - Read this articleSeptember 04, 2002
