Wild West Weekly, December 26 1926 / Paul Powers, Pulp Writer

 

Cover image at Flickr.

 Wild West Weekly v107 n04 (1936-12-26.Street & Smith) (missing pages) (Darwin).cbr

Full scan here. Or you can read it at the Internet Archive and download alternate formats here.

Howdy, pardners.  It's been a while.  And here I am with a late Christmas present, consider it one of those parcels that didn't quite make it your doorstep by the big day. It's a present not only from yours truly but from the good people at pulpscans, as this book is part of one of the *many* group buys we've put together there where members throw in a little cash to buy books that the scanners digitize for posterity, community radio, yo.  For pulp lovers without a collection and who can't scan, contributing to these buys is a perfect way to do your part in preserving pulp.

The artist here is the most excellent Robert G. Harris, who began his career in mostly western pulps and who later "graduated" to the slicks working in magazines like Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Liberty, and The Saturday Evening Post.  I've worked the cover image from what I assume to be the artist's copy of the proof that sold along with the original painting back in 2020.

Though my parcel is arriving late, I've got to credit the first story in this issue for first giving this old grinch the first glimpse of the Christmas Spirit this year, always desperately needed, as I hate crowds, commerce, and a whole month of Christmas tunes -humbug! :D.  

Credited to Ward M. Stevens, the story is written by Paul Powers, a stalwart of Wild West Weekly in the 30s, featuring his outlaw with a heart of gold, Sonny Tabor.

Illustration likely by Lorence Bjorkland.

The Tabor stories are in the tradition of Billy the Kid in a way, usually set in ranges of Arizona with Tabor as a beloved outlaw. But Sonny is no Billy (who'd backshoot you in a second). He has a heart of gold, and his efforts to do good are what propels the story even as the law invariably closes in behind.  I don't want to give any specifics of the story away (read it! read the other stories, too!), but I'll just say I found it very sweet and only had to suspend disbelief just a wee bit here and there :D I can't recall if I've written about pulp westerns here before or not, but I'll just say I thoroughly recommend their reading.  There's so many sub-genres in any given issue that keep it interesting - from the historical to the mythical to the comedic to straight blood and thunder.  Is it the nuanced modern Western we might be used to or the anti-hero of Clint Eastwood type? Not too often, but there's more poetry than you might imagine, and they're incredibly fun to read (all those millions upon millions upon millions of magazines sold, one dime after another - the people were pleased).  I've scanned a a couple of other 3W issues in recent weeks (one includes a story from another Powers' other well-known hero, Kid Wolf) which you can get to by clicking the link to my Internet Archive shelf (still slowly populating it with older scans) at the right.  But right now I want to pivot to a short book review, as I've read (or actually re-read) this tome since reading Law Guns:

I can't recall where I bought the book (though I do have a signed copy), but it is still in stock in places and leave it you to find at the bookseller of your choice if you're interested.  This is a most excellent pulp writer's memoir, a different individual experience but just as informative as Frank Gruber's Pulp Jungle, the most oft-cited example of the form.  

Powers is a fellow Kansan, from where us conceited easterners would call Western Kansas, a town I had to look up, though I've no doubt driven through the vicinity, Little River, Kansas, north of Hutchinson (my wife's hometown) and between McPherson and Lyons.  Those of us from Kansas know a catalog of small and tiny towns, but I wasn't familiar with this one :D 

The book follows his granddaughter Laurie's journey in learning about the world of pulp and Paul's life and work and includes his memoir from 1943 which is probably fair to assess as near the end of the successful portion of his career in the pulps which mirrored the success and downturn of the western titles of his main employer, Street & Smith.  Powers ponders his childhood as the son of successful doctor, who he seems to have always remained in the shadow of in his own mind at least, who was poor student with middling ambition.  Along the way, Powers does discover that he wants to be a magazine writer, very much so, and sets about it haphazardly starting as a joke or gag writer for magazines like Judge or Life and lesser magazines at a dollar or few a joke.  There was no instruction manual for breaking into the pulps (and I suspect Pulp Writer is meant to be as such) and he meets rejection slip after rejection slip as he's married and has his first child.  Forced into working in the salt mines (yep, we've got plenty of salt mines in Kansas) for subsistence, Powers is seemingly saved by the acceptance of his first story for Weird Tales, Monsters of the Pit, which would grace the cover in June of 1925.

 

Cover by Andrew Brosnatch.  What a funky phenomenon this cover is.  Heritage calls it classic, and it is indeed iconic in a fashion (like his cover for The Wicked Flea issue), but I daresay it's a bit primitive or even hideous :D

Powers would sell more stories to Weird Tales (half-cent payment up printing, if I recall correctly), a story to Action Stories, a story to 10-Story Book (an issue I happen to have and will add to the scan pile), but only really struck constant work in the fiction department (prior most of his earnings had come from joke sales) when he sold to editor Ronald Oliphant at Wild West Weekly in late 1928.  Once he figured out what Oliphant wanted exactly in stories for the magazine, he was able to sell as much as he could write (which was a lot).  Spurred by his success (and very high income for the day, including during the depths of the depression), Powers and his second wife were able to pick up and move as the whim hit (and it hit Powers often), exploring the locales that he'd use as fuel for his stories. Powers gives a great explanation as to what the pulps were and has a simultaneous pride in the fact that he was able to please so many mixed with the notion he might be doing more with his talent in terms of depth and poetry, a feeling common to many a commercial artist.  Alas, the demon rum might have kept Powers from a longer career, and he spent his later decades as a bookseller/book picker living a shell of his former life.  

But, you know, these hundreds of stories he left behind remain good reading, and the arc of an artist's private life doesn't diminish the goldmine of works they leave behind.

Anyways, an excellent memoir by Paul and an excellent examination by Laurie.  Her next book on pulp, on Love Story editor Daisy Bacon, which I'm sure to write about someday is - well - let's just say for now I consider it one of best books on pulp ever written, and Pulp Writer is a worthy warm-up.

One last excerpt from the 1936 Wild West Weekly Christmas edition, a heart-warming poem of yore, Santa Claus Stops A Lynchin' by Arthur R. Rafter:

 

Back sooner than later, pardners, so many pulps and mags to get to as well as some long-standing subjects...