David Talbot, former editor-in-chief of Salon.com, came into Red Hill Books recently to drop off his latest creation, Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story Of The Man Who Saved America, one of the first installments in the Pulp History series — a series that will blow minds left and right now and in the coming months.
At The Book Bench, Eileen Reynolds talks about the brilliance of the series: “The idea here, of course, is that the stories of history’s real heroes are as wild as anything a fiction writer—pulp or otherwise—could dream up. In ‘Shadow Knights,’ there are references to ‘Lord of the Rings,’ Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond, and the comparisons seem warranted: these stories also feature epic struggles, clever detective work, and plenty of gory violence.”
My knowledge of history is uneven at best and limited to minor incidents and marginal uprisings that most history professors would find profoundly insignificant. (Blame it on Santa Cruz history profs.: disseminators of the marginalized.) But the beauty of Pulp History is that such moments can be resurrected in vivid and blood-drenched detail.
On that note, and if the series editors are reading this, I would like to suggest a few incidents and instigators from history that deserve to be immortalized in pulp glory:
1. The Lawless Saga Of Nestor Makhno: the Vodka- Swilling Peasant Anarchist of Ukraine who fought Communists, Royalists and Everyone Else with his machine gun hidden under a hay bale!
2. The Paradoxical Adventures Of Spaggiari: the French Bank Robber who Robbed the Nice General Bank by sewer raft, escaped, was caught, escaped again and went to South America to undergo plastic surgery and become an operative for Pinochet’s secret police!
3. The Lives and Loves Of Krystyna Skarbek, the Polish spy who worked for the English in World War 2, was the real-life inspiration for two Bond Girls and saved the lives of two other agents about to be executed by the Gestapo and was later killed by a jealous lover in a flophouse!
Who from history do you think needs to be pulpified?
