Popular Culture
The most valuable book in the collection, according to George Kelley, is an original copy of Junkie by William S. Burroughs, with a value estimated at around $500 USD. Junkie is often cited as the seminal literature on heroin addiction in America.
According to Dr. George Kelley, his passion for collecting pulp fiction emerged in his adolescence after his mother had disposed of his personal collection of over 1000 comic books. Dr. George Kelley admits that he decided to donate the collection to University at Buffalo, after receiving an ultimatum from his wife. The weight from the collection had reportedly begun to damage the floors of his residence. Every work in the collection continues to be housed in the original Ziploc bag it was placed in when Dr. George Kelley added them to the collection.
A work from the collection, entitled 'The Guilty Are Afraid' by James Hadley Chase, had the honor of being the 37th million record to the WorldCat database, in June 1997.
The collection is currently located in a closed stacks area of the Lockwood Memorial Library at the University at Buffalo, awaiting space being made available for its future permanent home at the Special Collections Unit at Capen Libraries. The collection is available for access to the general public.
A discovery seminar, instructed by Judy Adams-Volpe, the former Director of Communications for the UB Libraries, offered UB students the opportunity to explore the pulp fiction collection in depth. Through the functions of the seminar, many of the pulp fiction works' plots have been summarized into an online database (plot summary database), as well as cover-art scans of several of the collections' more notable covers.
Read more about this topic: George Kelley Paperback And Pulp Fiction Collection
Famous quotes related to popular culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)