(un)civilized ku # 697 ~ excelsior, you fathead

Stop sign / bullet hole people ~ Bog River/Lows Lake - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenOne of America's greatest storytellers / humorists was Jean Shepherd. His writing has been ranked right up there with Mark Twain, James Thurber, and his idiol, the now little-known but once wildly popular, George Ade. Jean Shepherd is hardly a household name but many know his work, if not his name, from the now classic movie, A Christmas Story - movie based upon many of his short stories including My Old Man And The Lascivious Special Award That Heralded The Birth Of Pop Art.

In any event, I mention Jean Shepherd as an intro of sorts to this entry's picture, bullet hole people, the accompanying Shepherd short story (which addresses the same topic), and the following Shepherd quote, re: picturing:

Of all the world’s photographers, the lowliest and least honored is the simple householder who desires only to “have a camera around the house” and to “get a picture of Dolores in her graduation gown.” He lugs his primitive equipment with him on vacation trips, picnics, and family outings of all sorts. His knowledge of photography is about that of your average chipmunk. He often has trouble loading his camera, even after owning it for twenty years. Emulsion speeds, f-stops, meter readings, shutter speeds have absolutely no meaning to him, except as a language he hears spoken when, by mistake, he wanders into a real camera store to buy film instead of his usual drugstore. His product is almost always people- or possession-oriented. It rarely occurs to such a photographer to take a picture of something, say a Venetian fountain, without a loved one standing directly in front of it and smiling into the lens. What artistic results he obtains are almost inevitably accidental and totally without self-consciousness. Perhaps because of his very artlessness, and his very numbers, the nameless picture maker may in the end be the truest and most valuable recorder of our times. He never edits; he never editorializes; he just snaps away and sends the film off to be developed, all the while innocently freezing forever the plain people of his time in all their lumpishness, their humanity, and their universality. Introduction ~ American Snapshots”, The Scrimshaw Press, Oakland 1977

Shepherd published 4 books - In God We Trust - All Others Pay Cash, Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: and Other Disasters, The Ferrari in the Bedroom, and A Fistful of Fig Newtons - all of which are collections of his various short stories. Virtually all of his short stories were originally published separately in a wide variety of publications. Playboy, Car & Driver (where I discovered him), Mad Magazine, the Village Voice, to name just a few.
Jean Shepherd / Bullet Hole People • click to embiggen Unfortunately, unless one has a copy of the various issues in which his stuff was published, many of his essays are nearly impossible to find.

However, one individual, who identifies himself with only the name Jim, has undertaken the effort to preserve the works of Jean Shepherd and as much material as possible regarding his life and career. Jim's website, flicklives.com, is quite obviously a labor of love and I, for one, am quite pleased and appreciative that it exists. Especially the fact that Jim has scanned all of Shepherd's Car & Driver columns / short stories. As mentioned, Car & Driver was the pub in which I discovered Shepherd's writing and rereading the stories is like connecting with an old friend.

Jean Shepherd's books are still available and I would hardily recommend them. Start with In God We Trust - All Others Pay Cash and/or Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: and Other Disasters and I'm sure you'll be hooked. As an additional endorsement, I have witnessed tears of laughter streaming down the wife's face as she reads many of stories.

FYI, All of Shepherd's stories are uniquely American as apple pie. Most, although not all, are about growing up during the late 40s/early 50s in the fictitious steel-town of Hohman, Indiana, about which he wrote:

Ours was not a genteel neighborhood, by any stretch of the imagination. Nestled picturesquely between the looming steel mills and the verminously aromatic oil refineries and encircled by a colorful conglomerate of city dumps and fetid rivers, our northern Indiana town was and is the very essence of the Midwestern industrial heartland of the nation.

Those who did not experience that era may find some the anecdotes difficult to relate to. Stories with titles such as; Leopold Doppler And The Orpheum Gravy Boat Riot - centered around 50's movie theater giveaways, Ludlow Kissel and the Dago Bomb that Struck Back - centered around a 4th of July fireworks display, may require at least a modicum of American experience. However, most of his writings are, as one reviewer opined, based upon "fine eye for absurdity, for the madness and idiocy in all of us".

Comments

[John]

Some privileged minority of those of us of a certain age who grew up somewhere within the signal reach of New York City radio station WOR (note three letter call sign) still have fond memories of listening to Jean Shepherd's nightly 45 minute monologues. Or for a time, his two hour live performance from the Village Limelight every Saturday night. The art of improvisational story-telling today carried on by the saccharine-toothed Garrison Keillor was never funnier, with more satirical bite, nor with a deeper appreciation of absurdity. That movie about the Red Rider BB gun does not even come close. Flick lives in the hearts of all of us. Excelsior, you dimwit! I, libertine!

[Eugene B. Bergmann]

Hi, the flicklives.com website is maintained by Jim Clavin (you can indeed find his entire name on the site). The site has volumes of info on all aspects of Jean Shepherd's art and life. There is also a 496 page book (with illustrations) about Shepherd's creative career and life--my EXCELSIOR YOU FATHEAD! THE ART AND ENIGMA OF JEAN SHEPHERD, published by Applause Books in March, 2005 (see info about it on the flicklives site). Shepherd was a many-media genius. EXCELSIOR!