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Potboiler
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{{short description|Work of dubious artistic merit, to pay the creator's daily expenses}} {{for|a type of boiler|pot boiler}} A '''potboiler''' or '''pot-boiler''' is a [[novel]], [[Play (theatre)|play]], [[opera]], [[film]], or other creative work of dubious literary or artistic merit, whose main purpose was to pay for the creator's daily expenses—thus the imagery of "boil the pot",<ref>{{cite web |url=http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=potboiler&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o8=1&o1=1&o7=&o5=&o9=&o6=&o3=&o4=&h= |title=WordNet Search - 3.1 |accessdate=2011-04-05 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://archive.today/20131104183237/http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=potboiler&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o8=1&o1=1&o7=&o5=&o9=&o6=&o3=&o4=&h= |archivedate=2013-11-04 }} </ref> which means "to provide one's livelihood."<ref>{{cite book |title=The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language |edition=Fourth |year=2000 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |location=Boston |isbn=0-395-82517-2 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/americanheritage0000unse_a1o7 }}</ref> Authors who create potboiler novels or [[screenplay]]s are sometimes called [[hack writer]]s or hacks. Novels deemed to be potboilers may also be called [[Pulp fiction (genre)|pulp fiction]], and potboiler films may be called "popcorn movies." ==Usage== If a serious playwright or novelist's creation is deemed a potboiler, this has a negative connotation that suggests that it is a mediocre or inferior work. ===Historical examples=== *In 1854 ''[[Putnam's Magazine]]'' used the term in the following sentence: "He has not carelessly dashed off his picture, with the remark that 'it will do for a pot-boiler'".<ref name=autogenerated1>{{cite web |date=5 January 2002 |title=Potboiler |url=http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pot1.htm |website=World Wide Words}}</ref> *[[Jane Scovell]]'s ''Oona:'' ''Living in the Shadows'' states that "...the play was a mixed blessing. Through it O'Neill latched on to a perennial source of income, but the promise of his youth was essentially squandered on a potboiler." *[[Lewis Carroll]], in a letter to illustrator [[A. B. Frost]] in 1880, advises Frost not to spend his advance pay for his work on ''Rhyme? & Reason?'' lest he be forced to "do a 'pot-boiler' for some magazine" to make ends meet.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Letters of Lewis Carroll |page=397 |editor1-last=Cohen |editor1-first=Morton |editor2-last=Green |editor2-first=Roger |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1979 |isbn=0-19-520090-X }}</ref> *A 1980s reviewer for ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' condemned the novel ''Thy Brother's Wife'', by [[Andrew Greeley]], as a "putrid, puerile, prurient, pulpy potboiler".<ref>{{cite news|last=Mohs|first=Mayo|title=Books: The Luck of Andrew Greeley|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,925567,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101015065844/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,925567,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=15 October 2010|accessdate=17 August 2012|newspaper=Time|date=12 July 1982|author2=J. Madeleine Nash}}</ref> *In the late 1990s, American author and newspaper reporter [[Stephen Kinzer]] wrote that reading a "potboiler" is "a fine form of relaxation but not exactly mind-expanding."<ref>{{cite news|last=Kinzer|first=Stephen|title=Traveling Companions|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/04/19/bookend/bookend.html|accessdate=17 August 2012|newspaper=New York Times|date=19 April 1998}}</ref> *In an interview with ''[[Publishers Weekly]]'', writer [[David Schow]] described potboilers as fiction that "stacks bricks of [[Plot (narrative)|plot]] into a nice, neat line".<ref>{{cite news|last=Dziemianowicz|first=Stefan|title=From Splatterpunk to Bullets: PW Talks with David Schow|url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/23165-from-splatterpunk-to-bullets.html|accessdate=17 August 2012|newspaper=Publishers Weekly|date=6 October 2003}}</ref> ==See also== *[[Airport novel]] * ''[[Pot-Bouille]]'', an 1882 novel by [[Émile Zola]] *[[Pulp magazine|Pulp fiction]] == References == {{reflist|2}} == Further reading == * [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pot1.htm "Potboiler" at World Wide Words] [[Category:Writing]] [[Category:Book terminology]]
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