Could not have grown up without him.
When I was a teen-ager, my parents gave me the third floor of our mansard-roofed house as my bedroom. I listened to Jean Shepherd late at night on my transistor radio up there.
So many thanks to Richard K. Barry, at The Reaction, for reminding me of him. The video is a pale shadow of those stories late at night. The audience dilutes them. The magic was in Shepherd's talking to himself and allowing me to listen in.
2 comments:
YES--his live performances pale before his studio work!
I've written 5 book-length manuscripts about him, one so far published, in 3/2005: EXCELSIOR, YOU FATHEAD! THE ART AND ENIGMA OF JEAN SHEPHERD.
A second and third book manuscripts are on the verge of publisdhing contracts. Are you aware of the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan, which did a tribute to Shep on 2/23/12? Seinfeld talked for an hour about Shep's influence on him. See the Paley Center website and scroll to 2/23/12 for a five minute excerpt of Seinfeld on shep.
Excelsior!
I probably read "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories" about 100 times when I was a kid. Great stuff...one of the very few American humorists with real emotional depth, IMO.
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