Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980

From Civil Rights and Black Power to the New Left and Gay Liberation, the 1960s and 1970s saw a host of movements shake the status quo. The impact of feminism, anti-colonial struggles, wildcat industrial strikes, and anti-war agitation were all felt globally. With social strictures and political structures challenged at every level, pulp and popular fiction could hardly remain unaffected. Feminist, gay, lesbian, Black and other previously marginalised authors broke into crime, thrillers, erotica, and other paperback genres previously dominated by conservative, straight, white males. For their part pulp hacks struck back with bizarre takes on the revolutionary times creating vigilante driven fiction that echoed the Nixonian backlash and the coming conservatism of Thatcherism and Reaganism. From the late 1950s onwards, Sticking It to The Man tracks the changing politics and culture of the period and how it was reflected in pulp and popular fiction in the US, UK, and Australia. Featuring 400 full-colour covers, the book includes in-depth author interviews, illustrated biographies, articles, and reviews from more than 30 popular culture critics and scholars. Works by street level hustlers turned best-selling Black writers Iceberg Slim, Nathan Heard and Donald Goines, crime heavyweights Chester Himes, Ernest Tidyman and Brian Garfield, Yippies Anita Hoffman and Ed Sanders, and best-selling authors such as Alice Walker, Patricia Nell Warren and Rita Mae-Brown, plus a myriad of lesser-known novelists ripe for rediscovery, are explored, celebrated, and analysed.