The Voice of the Fiction Factory in Dime and Pulp Westerns

Abstract

Dime and pulp writers were always hacks, in Walter Benjamin's terms, because, from the beginning of the dime novel in 1860 to the end of the pulp magazine around 1950, they consistently subscribed to the conditions of labour in the ‘fiction factories’. These writers came into being when mass literature began in the United States. Their main product was Western fiction, since enthusiasm for the West coincided with the technological innovations which made these forms of commercial publishing possible. Hacks were hired by dime novel and, later, pulp magazine firms to churn out formulaic Westerns to their employers' stipulations. This they did without protest: in interviews and biographies, hack writers talk of the advantages of regimented production and they emphasize the financial rewards. One Beadle and Adams author says, ‘The only men, as a class, in America today, who are able to live by pure literary labor, are the writers of what you call ‘dime novels’, that is to say, of books written for the largest possible market in this country.’ In their fiction, they invariably complied with publishers' directives, writing popular imitations of James Fenimore Cooperand Robert Montgomery Bird.