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PREFACE
Jean Shepherd told his stories
and riffed his themes in a vast, forty-year, many-media,
coherent artifact of sound and image. He spoke to each
listener individually, on the radio, between 1956 and 1977.
No one else in the media ever spoke to me or you or anyone else
as a single, separate, sentient being. (Radio had some music, a
few interesting dramas, a few well-done comedy shows, and some
little kid adventures back then. But everybody else merely
performs—for a mass, undifferentiated audience, and we don't
believe a word of it.) For Jean Shepherd listeners, each
of us out there in the dark is that one and only intimate one
engaged with him in the illusion of a dialogue. Jean
Shepherd is a real, reliable, giving-it-to-us-from-the-depths
voice in the night, who enters one's consciousness—one's own
inner world, by exploring a fully exposed realization of a life
and a sensibility in the process of living—and by entertaining
the finer parts of minds and emotions. This is not a biography
of Jean Shepherd (1921-1999). Such an ideal book might
have much interest and use for Shepherd fans, those interested
in the art of radio, and for all those who care about the lives
of creative individuals. But a biography of anyone, ever,
is probably only a grasping at an entertaining and probable
hunch. There is a bit of voyeurism in all of us, seeking
revelations regarding the lives of others, and biography might
illuminate some relevant information about an artist's
life—especially when trying to understand the slippery
relationship between "truth" and "fiction," as they interweave
in what Shepherd gives us as his life story. A biography
might reveal many things about Jean Parker Shepherd, who
frequently uses Parker as his last name to hide himself in
public—his short story persona is Ralph Wesley Parker. To
many of his radio listeners most of the time, he is simply
referred to as Shep. Shep is at least three people. First
there is a real Jean Shepherd that objective biography might
depict—a biographically accurate, ideally historical Jean
Shepherd, not found in this book or, possibly, anywhere, in part
because throughout his professional life he has hidden and
confounded attempts to discover, this first Shepherd. But the
art of the artist is the more interesting, important, and
lasting. The second person is the storyteller who artfully
conflates bits of the true Shep into the concocted biography of
his life ("I was this kid, see…"). Third is the Shep who speaks
on the radio, the perceived here-and-now Shep, whom his
listeners know and love, giving us real ideas and perceptions
through his on-air persona. These second and third Sheps,
crafted by Jean Shepherd, artist and fabulist, you will find and
know in Excelsior You Fathead.
WHAT DID JEAN SHEPHERD DO ON THE RADIO?
Shep's earliest New York programs range deep into the early
hours in extemporaneous, and thus unpredictable, vast and
entertaining forays into streams of consciousness. People
describe Shep as a storyteller—he gives us hundreds of finely
nuanced, strikingly detailed stories that we have no doubt are
true—and he devotes even more of his on-air time elaborating
with insight and metaphor, the range of his perceptions.
Entertainer, observer of quirky humanity, commentator on the
world around us, extremely funny guy, humorist who understands
what foible-filled mortals we are, Shep's turn of mind
encompasses many themes, and his talks can be categorized in a
variety of ways—he segues from one to the other, blending ideas
to such an extent that many times one can't easily pin down a
particular riff. He has endless variations on his themes,
repeating himself less than one might expect in such a long
career. There is a continual elaboration and enrichment
with new detail. There is a continuing, entertaining
funniness as well as wit, and the deeper, intellectual pleasures
of apprehending his mind at work.
Later he broadcasts Saturday mornings, Saturday night live at
the Limelight Café, and for over sixteen years, in forty-five
minute week-nightly soundings of his inexhaustible creative fund
of stories, anecdotes, and commentary. Each of his broadcasts,
with one theme or many interwoven themes, is part of a complex
collage, that when placed within a gigantic frame, acts as
a self-contained fragment participating in the overall picture
of what Jean Shepherd is. Because we have only a small
portion of his broadcast work, and only a portion could be
contained in a book, the picture has some white spaces. If
the pieces have been well chosen and placed to greatest
advantage, within the limited reality and the limitless
possibilities, the overall collage represents the totality.
SHEP'S CAREER AS AN ARTISTIC WHOLE, IN CHAPTERS
Using transcriptions of Jean Shepherd radio broadcasts and
material from other media, I describe his artistic career as a
whole, attempting to grasp the unique artifice of Shepherd's
constructed persona in a biographical framework, using the range
of his stories, ideas, observations, and themes in chapters
arranged within that chronology.
PART 1 in three chapters, illustrates Shep's formative years (as
he chooses to present them to us, through what he has us
believing is his mere remembering of them). He tells
of his childhood in the Midwest—the world of childhood he
remembers and invents so richly in such detail—wonderful, and
yet overlaid with the struggles, crises, and disillusionment he
goads us into recognizing. His army life is full of
humorous adult situations, sometimes with threatening
consequences. His early radio days are fraught with the
tribulations of apprenticeship. Always he speaks with
humor, and with deeper, often simultaneously funny and
discordant effect.
PART 2 in two chapters, describes Shepherd's continuing interest
in the nature of humor and the history of radio—his roots—and
the intensity of observation which he brings to his art.
Observation that can reveal the significance of what we might
otherwise dismiss as unimportant minutia—like looking at a drop
of pond water in a microscope and finding it to be teeming with
life—fascinating to observe because of the shape and movement
revealed, some specks of which might keep you well or make you
awfully sick. Here is the foundation—the heritage and
endowment—he uses to such forceful and entertaining effect
throughout his career.
PART 3 illustrates the first great burgeoning of this power as
he begins his New York radio broadcasts—the free-form
improvisational compositions of jazz in words. The
creative force of jazz dominates his early style as he explores
for himself and us, the wide world open to him. The power
and effectiveness of his personal, intimate style and
commentary, lead some to refer to his early listeners as an
underground cult of Night People—with whom Shepherd concocts one
of the great literary hoaxes of our time.
PART 4. How does Jean Shepherd create this entrancing
concoction that keeps generations of listeners awake way past
their bedtime with radios to their ears? On the radio he
has only sounds and words—the tools he revels in—he is the
supreme master of the medium, intriguing and entertaining the
more sophisticated parts of our minds.
PART 5. Beyond the stories,
to what purpose does he use radio? Chapters delve into his
view of his world (cynical/joyous, pessimistic/ life affirming),
his wide-ranging observations, his critique of America, his
often confrontational attitude toward others, and his encounters
with the money changers in the temple of his art.
PART 6. The pursuit of greater respect, renown,
dough, and other outlets for his art, produces a broadening of
his professional endeavors (an effort begun even in the earlier
parts of his career), including a wide range of writing, such as
the astonishing I, Libertine literary hoax, and his "novel," In
God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. He writes articles and
stories for many diverse publications, extensively for Car and
Driver, and Playboy, which several years honors him with its
best humor award. Most prominently for many of his fans, Shep
continues talking on the radio, giving us throughout the 1960s,
and up to 1977, mostly 45 minute nightly excursions into his
world, the form becoming tighter, the level of artistry and
enjoyment remaining exceedingly high. Gems from this
period include a Shep "lesson" regarding human limits
illustrated with forays into Mark Twain and Morse code, and, in
a radio essay demonstrating his concerns for American society
and his powers of observation, his eulogy occasioned by the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In other media,
Shepherd makes recordings, creates several television dramas and
series (Including what may be the Great American TV Documentary,
"Jean Shepherd's America."), and makes movies based on his
published fiction (The best known of which is the popular film
of the kid who nearly shoots his eye out with his BB gun
present, "A Christmas Story.")
PART 7. The final chapter of a unique career is a festive
wake—a celebration, told to a funky jug band tune. By the
time of his death in 1999, Jean Shepherd has created a
wide-ranging world, still visited by thousands through
re-broadcasts, recorded broadcasts on cassettes and CDs, radio
and written tributes, an email group, and on web sites.
Toward what great unachievable goal does Jean Shepherd's
creative life point? Understanding Shep's art unfolds the
all-too-common American tragedy of the innovative artist not
sufficiently appreciated in his time. Of a creator who
knows how good he is, and who, it is reported, toward the end
repudiates his most glorious creations. As the title of
one of his records puts it, "Will Failure Spoil Jean Shepherd?"
Shep's fictional life consists of story parts collaged
whenever—and with everything—that crosses his mind—put together
with exuberance and joy. Lawrence Durrell, author of The
Alexandria Quartet, wrote that he wished he could do a plot
description in the first chapter of a story, and then be free of
narrative obligations for the rest of the book. I have
tried to understand the fabricated autobiography of the art,
mind, and life of Jean Shepherd, as an organized arrangement by
subject matter, pegged to a rough narrative of his life,
providing a form that locates his stories in a logical manner.
copyright 2001 Eugene B.
Bergmann - All rights Reserved
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