Pulp diction

Abstract

This chapter will first consider the terms ‘Freedom’ and ‘Oppression’ and see that, though they might be applied to any era, the terms have particular application to the Sixties. We will then compare and contrast the literary scene in London and the Provinces, and see that the stereotypes of fiction (not only in popular fiction) are much older than the decade and are often still with us today. Finally, we will argue that these stereotypes are part of a general commodification of society, which began to break down working-class solidarity in the Sixties: a process which continued in the Eighties, under the Thatcher governments, the results of which we can see today in the devastation of manufacturing industry and concomitant fragmentation of society. In fiction, the stereotypes themselves may be seen to oppress by luring the reader into a closed system, in which freedom of interpretation is severely limited; thus the closure has a further, political dimension in that it tends to reinforce the status quo.