My poor old copy of In God We Trust . . .
by Ken
Last week in "Jean Shepherd Tonight" we heard the master in his own voice, as it went out over the airwaves to those of us lucky enough to live within radio earshot. (Now, there's a corucopia of Shepherd online, so that all these years later, everyone can be part of Shep's radio audience.) I advanced the proposition that his story-telling art translated surprisingly well to the printed page, and thanks to a helpful comment from Eugene B. Bergmann, author of Excelsior, You Fathead! The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd, we know that Shep himself was extremely conscious of the difference between a story told in talk form in real time and a story told on the printed page. The stories spun in In God We Trust -- All Others Pay Cash are in fact cast in the form of a novel of sorts.
Tonight we have the opening chapter, "We Meet Flick, the Friendly Bartender," which sets the stage for the first story, "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid." We're going to continue on with that, and given the length of that chapter, I'm guessing it's likely to keep us occupied the rest of the "Shepherd Tonight" week.
TO JOIN "RALPH" ON HIS RETURN TRIP TO
HIS NATIVE "HOHMAN," INDIANA, CLICK HERE
THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, and JEAN SHEPHERD TONIGHT): Check out the series to date
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