Good evening, colleagues and fellow lovers of the most enjoyable kind of literature available!
I’d like to begin by saying that some years ago I learned a slang term used by the English to indicate delight: chuffed. I am incredibly honored and chuffed to be this year’s honoree for the Munsey Award. I’m chuffed to the max.
I’d like to continue by thanking Michael Chomko for repeatedly reaching out to me and for very kindly reading this speech. When I asked how long it should be and suggested six hours, he politely responded less than that.
I have attempted to oblige.
I’d also like to apologize for not being present this evening. I had seriously hoped to attend, but my wife’s plans had to take precedence. I must emphasize right now that I am not attempting to blame my wife for anything. What happened was this: she has a degree in something that culminated with her growing artificial crystals in laboratory settings. Not long after we met, she decided that another degree in geology and scientific pedagogy might be more relevant, so she earned one of those. When she joined me here in America, she thought that getting a Master’s Degree in Human Genomics would be kind of enjoyable, and after that, she determined that Biology was where her heart lay. She got a number of scholarships along the way and has just finished her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology. She has accepted a Postdoc position at the University of Michigan, for which move I am helping her prepare. I cheerfully admit that I don’t understand her dissertation, except that it involves genetic engineering and a protein that seems to have cancer-treatment properties. I am enormously proud and thrilled for her.
Having said all of that, I’m going to share a secret: once she is out of the house and a thousand miles away, I can guarantee you that magazine creep will occur. In this case, the day she leaves I’ll be reading magazines and keeping them in my office. But by the end of the week, I can pretty much guarantee you that the magazines will have spread and crept throughout the house. Of course, there will be magazines in the kitchen, and of course, there will be magazines in the living room, and of course, there will be magazines in the bedroom – and on both sides of the bed. Indeed, the only place magazines won’t be found is the bathroom, which is simply too humid despite an exhaust fan that sounds like a jet engine on steroids. The magazines will be sharing space with the books, for like all of us here tonight, I’m a bibliophile. I once asked my wife if she could find a cure for my bibliophilia, and she thought long and hard and said that she could more easily find a cure for me. This was not an area of research that I thought needed to be pursued.
Onwards, and perhaps a bit more seriously. Everybody here knows that the pulps – and I am speaking metonymically – owe their existence to Frank Munsey. Tiresome pedants – and I am one of these – like to argue that the pulps have their roots in the dime novels, the Gothic chapbooks, the English shilling shockers, and the penny dreadfuls, as well as in the French feuilletons, but we tiresome pedants also like to argue that there is something unique and special and wonderful about the pulps.
I believe that this something is what Munsey, and editors as diverse as Davis, Hoffman, Wright, Bacon, Campbell, Shaw, and Hersey – to name but a few — were able to recognize and develop: they re-established a literature that is written to an older aesthetic. It is an aesthetic rooted in recognizing the value and absolute centrality of the story, an aesthetic in which action revealed characterization, rather than the other way around, an aesthetic which had room to celebrate and incorporate new ideas. This is the oldest and purest form of literature in the world, brought back into existence in the pulp magazines. Celebrating this is the reason behind Pulpfest.
Which is to say, everybody here is gathered to celebrate the story and delights in its forms, variations, and glories – and yes, also those times it fell short of its aspirations. People who do not know better have hijacked the term pulp to refer to – well, they are unclear – but they are using it in a pejorative sense, blaming it for things that weren’t and aren’t its purview. It is easy to dump on something for failing, but surely an attempt and failure are better than a complacent and repetitive stasis. We are honoring, celebrating, and delighting.
But wait, as they say, there’s more, and I am going to, with difficulty, pull myself back to the idea of story. And it is this: if one shares stories, one creates community, and from community one creates society and establishes culture. It is shared stories that stand behind so much of what we have done and so much of what we hope to do. I’d thus like to close by thanking those who permitted me to share stories and be a part of this wonderful society, a culture that includes so many giants and scholars and that celebrates the best, oldest, and purest form of literature out there.
I am so incredibly honored. Thank you all.
