[Swprograms] NY Daily News article about Eugene Bergmann's Jean Shepherd Book

[Joel Rubin <jmrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm apologize if any of the people to whom I've sent this are already
flooded with this article from other sources.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/316198p-270557c.html

Biography finds story Shepherd didn't air

Radio

By DAVID HINCKLEY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Shep, his fans called him.

Shep, the kind of familiar name you give to someone who's a pal,
someone who can walk in your front door without knocking. That's the
kind of pal Jean Shepherd felt like on the radio.

>From 1955 to 1977, Shep was the late-night host on WOR. He'd come on,
maybe banter a little, then tell a story.

It would sound like a personal reminiscence, usually built on some
trauma or crisis that was resolved by some convergence of larger life
forces.

It would also very likely evoke some similar moment, event or person
in the listener's own past, at which point the listener would nod and
say, yes, Shep understands. He understands, and he can put it in
words.

That's a good definition of a pal. It just wasn't the whole definition
of Jean Shepherd.

Yes, the Jean Shepherd on WOR every night was a pal. But the other
Jean Shepherd, off the microphone, was a far more elusive character
and often not much of a pal to anyone, including his own children.

Writer Eugene B. Bergmann draws that inescapable conclusion in a new
biography, "Excelsior, You Fathead: The Art and Enigma of Jean
Shepherd" (Applause, $27.95).

Bergmann, who discovered Shepherd on the radio in 1956, spent years
writing "Excelsior," and it shows. He also listened to hundreds of
tapes, transcriptions of which form the spine of his narrative.

Bergmann holds Shepherd's stories up to his life, finding where they
match and pointing out where Shepherd practiced misdirection that
could go both ways.

In the decades after he left WOR, Shepherd at times declared that
prominent characters from his stories, like his friend Flick or the
unattainable high school beauty Dawn Strickland, never existed. They
did. He also disparaged his radio work, a view that Bergmann suggests
sprang from bitterness at not receiving greater recognition, but which
also had the troubling effect of implying his listeners were dim bulbs
for enjoying it so much.

Not that Shepherd was overly sensitive to the feelings of others. His
son recalls how other kids thought he must have the greatest Dad in
the work, this fantastic raconteur, but that in reality Shepherd
usually didn't even come home after the radio show was over.

Maybe all this just makes Shepherd, who died in 1999, another of our
flawed geniuses, a man for whom the price of creative brilliance was
self-torment. Bergmann quotes a passage from a 1960 Shepherd monologue
in which he tries to explain the futility of trying to explain. We
always know more than we can ever put into words, he says, creating an
eternal state of frustration.

"Excelsior," as this might suggest, is not a beach read. It requires
time and attention.

But there's a payoff. The long passages from Shepherd's stories make
it clear that the man's skills were genuine. There has been no better
storyteller in our time.

Many Shepherd fans today may mostly know him as the author of the
perennial holiday film "A Christmas Story," which finally made him, in
his own mocking words, "filthy rich."

But he peaked on the radio, whatever he says, and Bergmann serves both
fans and scholars by explaining how and why.

Originally published on June 6, 2005

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