Staff Pick: Pulp

Completed just before Bukowski’s death, Pulp is a low-life / high-smarts detective novel dedicated to bad writing. It’s full of short declarative sentences, ridiculous tough guy banter, and the typical dogpile of cases with contrived interconnection. In other words it checks all the boxes established by Raymond Chandler and its pulp magazine roots. As the laureate of American lowlife, Bukowski grabs hold of these tropes and wrings them until something new squishes out, making scene after scene dance with grimy elegance.

Before you go in, know that like most stereotypical hardboiled detectives, Belane is a bully. He literally wants to be the biggest dick in the history of detectives. He stumbles around trying to be a seven-inch hard on. It’s sad. The book knows it’s sad. It lets you watch Belane go on being sad. It makes a big joke out of it, like we’re staring at a buffoon on display in the Ape House. And all around that? Lady Death is in charge. A string of femme fatales call the shots. The world is at odds with the detective, sure, but in the end no compromise is required on either side. When Pulp's focus pulls all the way out to its final revelation, moralism is out the window and the best we can hope for is an optimistic sort of pessimism that has sprouted out of a really good book.

Perfect for: Turning the pulp detective template upside down and shaking until the MacGuffin falls out.

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