Why do people think that if they call something Pulp they can get away with murder? The tag line on the cover of Whirligig reads “Pulp With a Pulse”. That’s a redundancy, of course; pulp always has a pulse. If not, it’s not pulp, it’s just bad writing. With the exception of one recycled story by Jim Munroe – which originally appeared in the winter 2000 edition of the Chicago based zine “2nd Hand” – the stories and poetry in Whirligig most definitely do not pulsate, beat, flutter, palpitate, quiver, throb, tremble, vibrate nor behave in any other manner described by the verbs under “pulse” in the thesaurus. In fact, they flounder, stumble, stagger, grope, bumble, falter and waffle (see “blunder” in the thesaurus). In short, this is the sort of hackneyed, self-indulgent and wholly amateur stuff you have to painfully endure in writing workshops. Is it Pulp? No way. Is it murder? Oh yeah! (Shaun Smith)
litzine, Issue 3, Spring 2001, $3 U.S., Frank J. Markopolos, 56 pages, 4809 Avenue N #117, Brooklyn, NY 11234, [email protected]