Excelsior, You Fathead!: The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd

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Synopsis
Comprehensive biography of Jean Shepherd, radio personality and raconteur.
Copyright:
2005

Book Details

Book Quality:
Excellent
Book Size:
491 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781557836007
Publisher:
N/A
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Eugene B. Bergmann
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Entertainment, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Music
Submitted By:
Jay Leventhal
Proofread By:
Tracy Carcione
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

Reviews

5 out of 5

By on

I did not have money to throw around when I joined Bookshare. I joined it for one expressed purpose--to get this book, and after that any other good ones the NLS program doesn't have. I am and was a Shepherd fanatic. My dad told me about him around 1975 or '76, and for some wonderful nights I had the radio under my pillow, trying not to laugh because laughing would mean the end of my listening for that night, since bedtime was long past when the show started. Even today the subjects are memorable-a show about Shep betting on race horses as a boy, a show about TV advertising where a car company did "The egg thing," trying to show that an egg wouldn't break if it hit the car's dashboard--oops! a show about Uncle Carl's homemade beer, and on and on-until the awful night I heard Shep was leaving radio forever. I didn't know that all was not lost. At some point after he left radio, I discovered 3 books-then a fourth was written in 1981, "A Fistful of Fig Newtons." All are bulwarks of my collection. When a friend took his own life, I turned to "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." When my dad died, I found comfort in "Fistful of Fig Newtons." And when the obits cried mortal news that Shepherd himself had left this world of sorrows, that caused a four-book marathon, which has been repeated nearly annually since. and of course, over my wife's howls of protest, every Christmas Eve, nothing on Earth stops me watching "A Christmas Story." This book, as far as possible, reveals the man behind the laughs-the man you had to read with a dictionary close at hand, the man you either loved or hated. One of my sisters laughs at his stuff, as I do. two of them say "huh?" at what I see as obvious humor. That's Jean Shepherd. His fans, like me, will love this book-though most of them bought it in print and didn't have to wait through the years, as I have. This one should have been a bestseller, and Shepherd should have been thought of, as I thought of him, as the funniest man alive in his lifetime.

5 out of 5

By on

Jean Shepherd was a genius of improvised talk radio. His commentaries, stories, and other antics, gave him a fanatical cult-following in the 1950s-1970s. He created the greatest literary hoax of the 20th century--having his listeners ask for a non-existent book, I, LIBERTINE, by a non-existent author, Frederick R. Ewing. He then wrote the book with Theodore Sturgeon and it became a best-seller. Twenty-three of his stories and his interview with The Beatles were published in Playboy. He inspired the lyrics of the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue." Inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2005, his best-known work now is the movie about the kid who wants a BB gun and nearly shoots his eye out, A CHRISTMAS STORY. He wrote it and narrates it. In Seinfeld Season 6, "The Gymnast" episode commentary, Seinfeld says, "He really formed my entire comedic sensibility--I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd."