Wild Westerns: Stories from the Grand Old Pulps

By: Bill Pronzini

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• Format: Hardcover
• Large Print: Yes
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816144567
• ISBN13: 9780816144563
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: G. K. Hall & Company
• Length: 355 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A GOOD WAY TO BECOME A LITTLE BOY AGAIN

For someone my age, pulp fiction was the stuff that dreams were made of. Between the years of 1920 and 1950 thousands upon thousands of stories were turned out in specialty magazines by a crew of very, very underrated authors. There was something for everyone but my favorite were the Science Fiction writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan and John Carter), Kenneth Robeson (Doc Savage), Robert E. Howard (Conan), Otis Albert Kline (Mars and Venus series) and their ilk. My second favorite were the Westerns (I was never much of a crime and detective fan). This offering, Wild Westerns, is a collection of those old westerns taken from several sources and well edited by Bill Pronzini. In this work we find the writings of Max Brand, Clarence E. Mulford, William MacLeod Raine, Luke Short, W. Ryerson Johnson, Dan Cushman, H.A. DeRosso, Thomas Thompson, Frank Bonham, Les Savage, and Elmore Leonard. This is like a who's who of the dime novel thriller. These stories are gaudy, overly melodramatic, quite unbelievable to a certain extent, and the bad guy always got their just deserts and the good guy always rode off into the sunset on his faithful nag. Or, in the better ones, the bad guy always go shot or hung and the good guy always got the girl! During certain periods in our history, social do-gooders have tried to suppress these stories and the publications they were featured in as they were a perfect whipping boy for all the social ills that were perceived at the time. The big heyday of these publication came to a screeching halt during World War II due to the paper shortage and things went down hill from there - alas, to our great loss! Now there was not much I could say or do about the paper shortage but I have always felt, quite strongly as a matter of fact, that the social do-gooders more or less shot themselves in the foot in this area. I know for myself and all of my friends who devoured these stories by the ton, all turned out to be quite productive citizens and to my knowledge not one of us has ever committed murder, mayhem, or for that matter been in much more trouble than an occasional speeding ticket now and then. Anyway, this is a wonderful collection of twelve of these wonderful old westerns, which when you think about it, were the for runners of literally hundreds of movies and T.V. shows throughout the years. They are a part of our heritage and I for one am grateful that some effort has been made to preserve some of these great old stories and authors. This volume is sheer reading pleasure. It is also in large print which is sort of helpful at my age. I pick it up every so often, read a story, and become a little boy under the blanket with my flashlight again. Don Blankenship The Ozarks