ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the pulp magazines that dominated early American popular culture and evaluates the profound influence they had in the shaping of Irish-American identity. Several notable types of pulp hero (cowboy, detective, G-Man, soldier, athlete, masked hero, fantasy adventurer) were defined in large part by Irish stereotypes and counter-stereotypes. Famous pulp characters like Hopalong Cassidy, Lance Kilkenny, Race Williams, Sailor Steve Costigan, and Super Detective Jim Anthony have roots in the Irish-American experience of the era. These characters played upon notions of the Irish as figures straddling the border between civilization and savagery to evoke an image of a new kind of American who was well equipped for the rapidly changing and chaotic century. Irish-American pulp stories often lack explicitly Irish cultural or historical references and instead focus on describing Irishness as a more generic Americanness. Similarly, the Irish-American character moved further from ethnic stereotype to become a generic masculine ideal. In several ways, the pulp magazines chronicle the formation of an assimilated Irish identity in the United States. This chapter presents a detailed case study of one of the most famous Irish-American pulp writers, Robert E. Howard, and his most famous pulp character, Conan the Barbarian.
