"Adventure," and Max Brand

"Pulp Culture" contains fascinating stories about the pulps.  Here are two.

"Adventure," one of the earliest and best known pulps specializing in ... wait for it ... adventure stories, was more a phenomenon than a story magazine.  First were its many interesting departments, including:

• A letter column "The Camp-Fire" where readers extensively critiqued the stories for accuracy and detail. ("Adventure" was serious about accuracy - one reason Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories weren't accepted is that he erroneously put tigers in Africa in "Tarzan.")
• "Lost Trails" helped readers find lost loved ones. 
• "Wanted--Men and Adventurers" positions wanted and adventurers needed for the "riskier side of life." (According to "Pulp Culture," "Adventure" had a serious soldier-of-fortune following!)
• "Ask Adventure" allowed readers to ask for and receive expert advice on practically anything. 
• "Various Practical Services Free to Any Reader" told readers where they could send to for information to have their own adventures.

Readers could apply for identity cards with unique serial numbers.  If the reader was hurt or killed, anyone who came across them could call "Adventure" and they would contact the next-of-kin.  This was very popular. (The Soldiers-of-Fortune found this especially useful.)

"Adventure" was also largely responsible for the creation of the American Legion.  Many people were worried about America's lack of preparedness should they get involved in The Great War, so "Adventure" started the Legion.  When readers joined, their membership cards listed their specialties and abilities, and those were also forwarded on to the War Department after America entered the war.  Two regiments of aviation mechanics were formed based on that information.  After the war it became a Legion of veterans - the American Legion.

The editor suggested that readers form Camp Fire Stations, clubs where they could meet other readers.  By the middle of the 1920s hundreds of Camp Fire Stations had been formed all over the world. 

"Adventure was no longer just a magazine; it had become a way of life.  It was, as Richard Bleiler states in his "Index to Adventure Magazine,  "the most important pulp magazine in the world." (Pulp Culture, p.33-36)

The other really interesting tidbit I've picked up so far is about Max Brand.  I'm just going to quote the bit from the book.

"The most famous writer of westerns was a man who wasn't particularly proud of them, who lived lavishly in a rented Italian villa overlooking the city of Florence, and whom readers and editors alike loved:  readers, for his narrative flow and ability to handle plot and action; editors, for his ability to turn out a needed short story overnight or a novel in a week.

""Max Brand" was the best known pen name out of the 22 he used, of Frederick Faust, a would-be classical poet and reluctant fiction factory.  Faust was the true "King of the Pulps," a man who wrote for pulps and slicks alike but, all by himself, very nearly was "Western Story Magazine."  He appeared in 622 issues from 1920 through 1935 under 11 pen names.  He wrote 13 million words for this one magazine alone, at their top rate of five cents a word, for a total of nearly $15 million in 1998 dollars.

"No other writer of westerns - or any other genre, for that matter - even came close.

... "At his peak he wrote more than a million words a year and sold every one of them." (Pulp Culture, p.79,81)

Official Max Brand website:
http://www.maxbrandonline.com/

You can find public domain Max Brand - ebooks at Project Gutenberg and audiobooks at LibriVox.