Behind The Ink

Contemporary Press is many things. It's modern, yet classic. It's world-weary, yet particularly American in its outlook. Most of all, it's an attempt to bring books back to a point where you'd want to read them. And you know who you are.

When did it become so damn difficult to find a book with a plot that isn't a memoir, isn't written from the perspective of an 18th-century waif and isn't festooned with footnotes that denote nothing but the post-modern cleverness of the author?

Not so long ago, great literature - or at least interesting pulp literature - wasn't a niche market, it was pop culture.

But now, with few exceptions (people like Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy and Carl Hiassen), we've lost much of what made pulp fiction great. We loved pulp for its irreverence, its dark (sometimes bitter, sometimes funny) mirror of society, its tittering embrace of the kink and defiance of the pious conventions of society. These attitudes can be found throughout the media, yet are conspicuously buried in modern literature.

So we say, 'Fuck Literature.' Of course, we mean it both as a statement of contempt and a descriptive designation of our books. Again, at least that's our attempt.

But it's a long way before you'll see that section at the Barnes and Noble. So in the meantime, get to know us. Give us feedback. Call us names (but be clever about it). And most of all, enjoy Contemporary Press.

Thanks,

Jay Brida

Publisher