Jean Shepherd Tonight: Going home again -- the opening chapter of "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
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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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Labels: Jean Shepherd
posted by KenInNY @ 9:00 PM
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2 Comments:
Thanks for the reference to my comment regarding Shepherd's need to make editing changes between his radio stories and those he wrote and published in print form. One of the surprising aspects I've been noting is that on the radio he frequently and, to my mind, unconsciously, changed from past to present to past tense, sometimes even within the same sentence.
As for your correct comment that his IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH is "a novel of sorts," I agree and have always insisted that his interspersing the short segments about him talking in the bar with friend Flick do not at all make the book a "novel." The linking device is inadequate for attempting to tie together a group of different short stories, which were edited from his radio work. The stories themselves are great--good stuff and fun to read. I believe Shepherd felt the added prestige of a novel over the short story form. Even his publisher allowed the word novel to appear on the fron cover of the book. Publishers can be such nice people!
Thanks again for sharing your expertise, Eugene!
No, of course In God We Trust . . . isn't really a novel, and it's discouraging to learn how it took its curious form.
On the other hand, framing the old stories in the "reality" of the present added a whole dimension. And because both times were so well observed, they take on an added dimension now that we're farther removed in time from the "present" of 1966 than it was from the period when the stories took place. This is one of the things that makes writers who are so wonderfully observant so precious -- the writing doesn't get old.
And thanks for that great example of switching back and forth between tenses. In speech we listeners don't mind it, and can even take a cue from the speaker when he shifts into the present tense to relate past events. On the page, however, this drives me at least just nuts!
Again, thanks for stopping by and sharing!
Cheers,
Ken
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