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Conrad Under Wraps: Reputation, Pulp Indeterminacy, and the 1950 Signet Edition of Heart of Darkness

The label “pulp” denotes that which is sensational, formulaic, and cheap, its connotations long dissociated from its historical and material foundations in the all-fiction, wood-pulp magazines which proliferated on American newsstands in the early twentieth century. Recently, however, the term has enjoyed a resurgence within critical theory as a means of deconstructing the unhelpful logic of cultural polarization. Drawing on these developments, this essay uses the sensationally marketed paperback edition of Heart of Darkness issued by Signet in 1950 as a way of recovering the larger history of Conrad's writings in American pulp magazines. In so doing, it offers “pulp” as a critical tool for questioning Conrad's reputation in relation to Modernism and genre. Comparison of Signet's marketing of this edition with those of mid-century race novels, it will be seen, offers a historically revealing parallel between the ambiguity of its cover image and that of Conrad's own narrative.