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JEAN SHEPHERD –and others–true/fiction (2 of several)
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I began The Pomegranate Conspiracy, my tribute to my love/hate relationship with Spain and Granada, with this true opening:
This is a true story. I stand in my house in New York backed against a wall in a corner by my Spanish wife who holds a kitchen carving knife pointed at my chest.
“Pegame ahora si no eres un cobarde,” she says. I translate as best I can. Pegame: Hit me. Ahora: now. Si no eres: if you (familiar form) are not. Un cobarde: a coward. Paraiso: paradise. Cerrado: closed. Para muchos: for many.
I protect myself with an aluminum folding chair in one hand and rolled up arts section of the Sunday Times in the other. I am surrounded by walls. My problem is to get out of the corner. Hemingway would insist on courage: grace under stress. Spain has been my dream, my paradise of the imagination for so many years and things like this don’t happen to people such as I, they only happen in novels and movies.
Pomegranate is the symbol of Granada, and a granada is both the name of the city and the word for hand grenade (See my projected cover design). The fictional parts involve an American lover of all things Spanish (fictitious me) and the terrorist group from Granada to which he has become affiliated. They plan to assassinate Spanish Prince Juan Carlos with granadas, but the American’s better nature intercedes–he foils the plot and escapes to America. I end the true sections with commentary on my illusions, with reference to Boabdil, last Moorish ruler of Spain, defeated and forced by Ferdinand and Isabella to bid farewell to Granada::
Espana. Espana. Granada, your conspiracy will always be a lure and I will always be a tourist and a dreamer in the Alhambra land of Moors and Christians. sol y sombra. Boabdil, exile, we are brothers.
With these thoughts (wrote Washington Irving in the terminating paragraph of his Tales of the Alhambra) I pursued my way among the mountains. A little further and Granada, the Vega and the Alhambra, were shut from my view and thus ended one of the pleasantest dreams of a life which the reader perhaps may think has been but too much made up of dreams.
Much more to come
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JEAN SHEPHERD –and others–true/fiction (1 of several)
Fore-note: In the comments below, I’m not suggesting that I consider myself on an artistic par with the creative artists to whom I refer, but merely (!) that I’ve invented a form that hasn’t been done before to my knowledge.
Toward the end of this essay in several parts, I tie it all in to
Jean Shepherd’s style of improvised radio storytelling.
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Have I told you about the new new form of novel writing I created? The idea germinated while reading Carlos Baker’s Ernest Hemingway—The Writer as Artist.
Although dozens of critical volumes on Hemingway have followed this seminal 1952 book, Baker, with his insightful analysis of Hemingway’s creative works, deals with the particular real-life experiences and interests Hemingway had that provided influences regarding the forming of his art.
In the introduction, Baker comments that Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon, a serious discussion of bullfighting, (with its rather lightweight interludes of comic irrelevancies), provides a strong focus on themes that Hemingway pursued throughout his life and literary career—courage, enacted in the very formalized esthetic ritual of the matador’s pursuit through knowledge, skill, bravery, and art: grace under stress.
Baker devotes two chapters to Hemingway’s obsession with and love of Spain. He describes several seemingly minor aspects about Spain that he sees as having been incorporated into several short stories, his only play, a good part of The Sun Also Rises, and his other major novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, as well as Death in the Afternoon.
As Baker comments, Hemingway found in the bullfight “the nature of tragedy, tragic catharsis, the tragic sense of life, and the feeling of doom….It was complex in the extreme, ritualized and stylized to the point of decadence.” Baker writes, “If one comes to a reading of For Whom the Bell Tolls after having laid down Death in the Afternoon, he will see how much of the old Spain has been transferred out of the manual and into the novel….”
My poor man’s first edition.
It’s said the Hemingway was infuriated to find that
the top of every page of the publisher’s proof sheets for the book
was titled “Hemingway’s Death.”
Baker comments that the book on the bulls “…serves as a kind of sourcebook for For Whom the Bell Tolls.” As an example, he notes that Hemingway had referred in Death in the Afternoon to the Spanish peasants’ wooden pitchforks, made for farming—then, sourcing the pitchforks from that book, Hemingway describes in For Whom the Bell Tolls, their use in a village population’s slaughtering of local fascists.
(Parenthetical Insert)
(Bruce Springsteen’s “Springsteen on Broadway” by Jesse Green 10/12 /2017 New York Times): There came a moment the other night, near the end of Bruce Springsteen’s overwhelming and uncategorizable Broadway show, when it seemed possible to see straight through his many masks to some core truth of his being…. “Springsteen on Broadway” is a painful if thrilling summing-up at 68: a major statement about a life’s work, but also a major revision of it.
Hannah Gadsby, the Australian comedian’s “Nanette” video, with its oh-so-serious riffs on her real-life struggles, is described in the New York Times as, “…the most important comedy of the year because it challenged the form, and in so doing, expanded the idea of its possibilities.”
Melville’s Moby Dick did this with its true descriptive chapters on whaling, and Dos Passos’ USA Trilogy did this with its true insertions of newsreel headlines, biographical clips, etc.
Much more to come
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JEAN SHEPHERD–At the heights (8)
Ever been to one of those joints where the people walk around tables and they sing to you? It’s a terribly embarrassing thing. I’m in this joint one night with this girl, we’re eating a plate of spaghetti, and there’s this guy who plays cheap guitar. And he comes over and he hangs over the table, see. He has been eating garlic and he’s playing this guitar, and he’s doing “La Paloma”—sort of a South Chicago–type “La Paloma.” And he’s playing the guitar and the spaghetti tasted terrible and the “La Paloma” was awful too—and you’re not again, I can see it—that interested in my—I don’t blame you. But can’t you just see—[Singer on the record interjects, “Oh, but you’re killing me!”]
It’s just the way I am, baby. [Laughs.]
[Singer: “Ohhh!”] Ohhh! You see what I mean? There’s a certain hairy vitality about this that all of us lack today.We’re kind of poured out of a plastic mold. Each of us. Let me say a polyethylene mold—it’s better than just plastic. Or styrene, for the low, lost types. [Someone once commented to me it should be transcribed as “low loss types.”]
Yes sir, that’s my baby. No sir, don’t mean maybe. Yes sir— that’s—my—baby—now. Baby! [Laughs.]
See—it doesn’t work—nothing. You got to wind it up. You got to have the key, you see—stick it in the side where the socket is and wind it just as tightly as you can. Not too tight!— you break the springs—wind it up [Singer gravelly, grating, with that earthy, serious, syncopated beat.] and—wouldn’t it be incredible if this world turned out to be actually only this big ball with a key sticking out the side of it—and they forgot to wind it? For the last ten thousand years, we’re running down?
That’s the last portion of the existing audio.
More stuff to come.
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JEAN SHEPHERD- A Christmas Story–interview bit
The following is just a small piece of the dialog/interview by Jay Douglas for his www.theoutofmymindblog.com dialog of Eugene B. Bergmann and Tom Lipscomb, publisher/editor of Shepherd and Leigh Brown and other important cultural activities. Listen to the complete 28 minute podcast.
* *
Eugene Bergmann: He was a mentor to many, many people because he engaged them in what seemed like an intellectual dialog and, of course, it was just an improvised monolog.
Tom Lipscomb: About what? Fishing? World politics? The nuclear bomb? What were the areas that a kid your age and where were you living at the time?
E B: I was living in Richmond Hill, Queens.
T.L. : So what specifically was it that you felt specifically that he was your guide into the world about:?
E. B.: Literally everything, which is saying almost nothing [laughs]. Literature. He would read occasionally from poetry. And even from Robert Service. He would talk about books, he would talk about films, he would talk about anything that crossed his mind. And that was the fascinating thing for me.
T. L.: Did he repeat these obsessions or were there new things coming up all the time that you weren’t aware of that he was introducing you to ?
E.B.: Mainly he improvised new stuff all the time. It was always something new and different. You never knew what he was gonna do.
This is just a small introductory segment. Much of the interview focuses on Shepherd’s creation of A CHRISTMAS STORY and the importance of Leigh Brown in his life–and their financial health regarding her insistence that they should pursue the BB gun story to create a film.
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JEAN SHEPHERD–At the heights (7)
Isn’t that a wonderful feeling, though? The June air? [Laughs.] It is, though. I came over the bridge there, by Yonkers? I don’t know what the name of that bridge is—and I was stopped for a moment—traffic was slowing up and the windows were open in the car—since it’s a Triumph TR3 it’s wonderful, you know—I’m sitting there with all this—this June air around me and—and—I could hear the muffled curses of the populace—just quiet, muffled—wonderful spring sound. And you could hear them lowing in the bushes once in a while. And it just gave me a feeling of warmth, a feeling of well—almost—it’s the feeling you get from reading Dostoyevsky—you know—a feeling of being one of this great mass of humankind—all marching to the brink—and it’s nice—it’s nice and warm—to know, you know, there’s this great crowd.
All—you know, jostling each other with their ill-fitting sports coats, all moving slowly toward the brink. Muttering muffled curses under their breath. In this quiet June atmosphere. Isn’t it wonderful to be alive? Take a deep breath. Long, deep breath—Ahhhh! Now, say after me, “It’s great to be me!” [Laughs.] I know. I know. [Laughs.] You see, it doesn’t work, does it? [Music, the same funk as before starts quietly, with a raspy trumpet.] Nothing works—well—I wouldn’t say nothing. Stay tuned for our magic phrase department—guaranteed to work—children cry for it, babies cry for it.
[A gravelly voiced woman begins scatting a slow blues with a bump-and-grind beat. One pictures her as a big, black, earthy, all-knowing woman crushing you to her ample bosom and smothering you with love in her embrace. Her voice is raspy like the trumpet’s.]
Ohhh—yeah, baby! Can’t you see this—can’t you see this queen leaning over your shoulder and saying this stuff in your ears, you know? Listen? Ohh—come on, baby, I got to finish this hamburger. [Laughs.]
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JEAN SHEPHERD –at the heights (6)
Ever tell you about the time that I wrote the message on the inside of a Baby Ruth candy wrapper? And floated it in a Castoria bottle down the Chicago River? Castoria. [Laughs.] Is there anyone out there who is willing to cry for us now—for it? No, you don’t float anything down the Chicago River—it flows up the Chicago River. They reversed the direction of the Chicago River—they really did—it’s one of the mammoth achievements of mankind. [Music fades to a close.] Ohhh— that’s great! Great! Great! Ohh! [Laughs.] That’s just the way I feel tonight!
Hey—play another cut on that side, will you? And hold it in abeyance. The one—the cut I want you to play is, “Blues I Love to Sing.”* Hold it in abeyance. We use this occasionally when things look the way things look tonight. I have this terrible, terrible, terrible, awful feeling. It’s not really frustration— it’s a kind of borderline—a case of immense disappointment or something. Here it is, June, it’s springtime— it’s almost summer, isn’t it? The sixteenth, isn’t it? Summer will be here in four days—five days. It’s June. All these people—everywhere, are stretched out for millions of miles— one after the other, bumper-to-bumper, sitting there with their radiators overheating.
* “Blues I Love to Sing.” Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall vocal 1927.
(Can be found on YouTube and on Jim Clavin’s http://www.flicklives.com.)
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JEAN SHEPHERD–more at the heights
[Back in a contemplative mood.] Isn’t it pitiful the way I sit here and spin these poor little glass dreams? [Song ends.] Oh! Play it over again, fellows! Once again! That’s it, play it over. We have nothing but time here. Spinning all those poor little idle dreams. You know? Sort of? It’s sort of like it’s a jigsaw puzzle. They took a couple of the pieces once—you know— and didn’t bring them back.
I have a friend who has—you’re not interested in my friends, are you? ’Course not. That is the secret of it all— you’re not interested and I’m not. I am not interested in my friends, nor are you. Ok? Fine. Now we’re on a good, solid, equitable basis. You don’t like me, and I don’t like you. And it’s just as well that I’m here in studioland, and you’re in radioland. [There is a tinkly piano going under all this.] So let us entertain no further notions. I am no good! The secret is—neither are you.
So let’s not have any of this business here. You know? You keep your opinions to yourself, I’ll keep mine to myself. And we’ll get this thing going here, baby. Heh—don’t you miss magic? Really? Weren’t those the great days when we used to have magic? Am I still insufferable? Huh! You people don’t know the meaning of the word— yet.
Isn’t this great? Listen to this crowd in the back—listen to that! Hear that? You don’t always have to say everything you mean, you know. Listen to this bass man—he’s great! You don’t always have to say everything you mean. That’s where you make your mistake—you always try to say things. Ahaa!—that’s great!—listen to that! [Piano, bass.]
Isn’t that great?—yeah— [Laughs.] Has a certain hairy vitality about this thing that most of us lack today. [Trumpet blows a nitty-gritty riff.] Yes sir, that’s my baby. No sir—no, that’s—sorry, that’s another program. [Hums along.]
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JEAN SHEPHERD at the heights (4)
More transcription from Shep at his best.
You’re out there in radioland, aren’t you? You see, that’s what I mean—all this is unreal—false—sterile! How can I escape—how can I become one of you? Out there? I’ve heard all kinds of stories about what goes on in the outside. All sorts of stories. I don’t believe any of them, though. I can’t. I can’t let myself believe them. If I do, everything I have here will crumble here in studioland. Gotta cling to something. To dreams—belief or two.
Jean Cocteau said, “Destroy the dream, you destroy the man.” So, you know—hang onto a few things. I have to think that nothing happens out there. But I know it does, little boxtop sender-inners. All you people out there in radioland. It’s too bad it’s the way it is. I’m here and you’re there. Ah, gladly would I, indeed—oh, but yes.
[There is a pause, and then Shep, apparently in an act of self-encouragement, continues.] Who’s for beach lotto tonight? [He speaks with mock enthusiasm.] This is a great beach lotto night! Who’s for beach lotto tonight? About four o’clock in the morning. Seven thousand, five hundred and eighty-two people—we might even make the sports pages. [Funky old jazz behind never stops.] Can’t you see yourself in the lineup? The lineup—sixteen columns long. There you are, you see. You scored two goals last night at Jones Beach in beach lotto. Ahooo!
More to come
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JEAN SHEPHERD at the heights (3)
Stay tuned, the lily-livered of the world. We’ll be here until one o’clock tomorrow morning, pursuing what mankind has always pursued. In the fashion that he best sees it at the moment. Now that, of course, has been the problem that many of us have pondered back and forth—this business of what mankind has always pursued… It seems to me that we can do something else tonight—we can—it’s summer, you know. It’s summer, really [old jazz has begun slowly, under], and it’s too bad that you’re listening to the radio. It is, really.
We can only extend our hand in quiet, sympathetic good will, to those of you who are forced to, you know—ahaaa— look at—all this wonderful time, all this wonderful weather, all this stuff all around and here we sit. I’m here and you’re there. I’m in studioland. Studioland has a peculiar kind of sterility about it—which we will discuss later on, after 11:15, when we touch upon the sterility portion of our program. And you’re out there in radioland, where things are lush and green, where things grow—out there where people do things—like send in box tops, answer questions, write letters of protest. You’re out there in radioland—the real world. The real world. Ever occurred to you that what you have out there is real? What we have here is—is all artificial! False! Ridiculous! All of this stuff! Don’t you believe any of it! Any of them!
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JEAN SHEPHERD-at the heights
In a series–the following essays on Shepquest–
I’m posting what I’ve written and transcribed before.
In short form, it’s the best indicator I know of Shepherd’s unique genius.
I introduce it first, then follow with my transcription
of his opening from his broadcast of June 16, 1957.
(photo by Roy Schatt)
This is what Jean Shepherd looked like when he
created his overnight programs in 1956.
This is what Jean Shepherd looked like when he
created the I, Libertine hoax.
This is what Jean Shepherd looked like when he
hurled the invectives we know of.
This is what Jean Shepherd looked like when
Lois Nettleton met him and first became enamored.
This is what Jean Shepherd looked like when he broadcast
on June 16, 1957
[Next, see intro and transcribed beginning.].
shepquest 