"I started off at the high level, in the slick magazines, but they didn't use my name, they used house names. Anyway, then I went downhill to the pulps, then downhill further to the comics"
About this Quote
There is a wicked little pride hiding inside Spillane's supposed descent. He frames his early career as a literal downgrade in prestige - slick magazines to pulps to comics - but the punchline is that each step also strips away the polite machinery of literary respectability. In the "slicks", he's ghosted behind "house names", a reminder that high culture often runs on anonymity, branding, and editors who want product more than personality. It's not just that they didn't print his name; they didn't need it. The institution was the author.
By contrast, the pulps and comics are presented as the basement floors of the art world, yet Spillane's tone suggests liberation rather than defeat. Those markets were fast, blunt, shamelessly commercial - and they rewarded what Spillane became famous for: velocity, violence, moral clarity sharpened into a blade. The line "Anyway" is doing a lot of work: a shrug that dismisses the snob hierarchy, like he's already bored with the idea that "downhill" automatically means worse.
Context matters. Spillane rose in mid-century America when crime fiction was both wildly popular and aggressively policed by taste-makers. His narrator-like cadence turns autobiography into a Mike Hammer monologue: hardboiled, self-mocking, and allergic to permission. The subtext is a critique of cultural gatekeeping: the "lower" forms at least tell the truth about what they are - entertainment with a pulse - while the "higher" ones quietly commodify writers and call it class.
By contrast, the pulps and comics are presented as the basement floors of the art world, yet Spillane's tone suggests liberation rather than defeat. Those markets were fast, blunt, shamelessly commercial - and they rewarded what Spillane became famous for: velocity, violence, moral clarity sharpened into a blade. The line "Anyway" is doing a lot of work: a shrug that dismisses the snob hierarchy, like he's already bored with the idea that "downhill" automatically means worse.
Context matters. Spillane rose in mid-century America when crime fiction was both wildly popular and aggressively policed by taste-makers. His narrator-like cadence turns autobiography into a Mike Hammer monologue: hardboiled, self-mocking, and allergic to permission. The subtext is a critique of cultural gatekeeping: the "lower" forms at least tell the truth about what they are - entertainment with a pulse - while the "higher" ones quietly commodify writers and call it class.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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