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Bummers, Blisters and Boondoggles
Opus Books
July 2013
On Sale: July 13, 2013
256 pages
ISBN: 162316012X
EAN: 9781623160128
Paperback
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Fiction
Disclaimer: No U.S. Military Personnel were harmed during
the making of these fictional reminiscences. No warrior is more forgotten than he who has been left
behind by the war department. Most men who have never tasted
combat beyond the occasional fistfight on poker night
quickly learn to lay low and zip the lip when battlefield
stories are unfurled by the Purple Hearters at the dinner
table. Except, of course, for our man Jean Shepherd.
Fearless in his uncombativeness, he manfully fought his
dearth of frontline duty with the weapons he wielded
unmatched by even the most decorated dogface: rapid-fire
griping and explosive laughter. Jean Shepherd was, and remains, a pervasive part of American
culture. His quirky individuality was portrayed for
posterity by Jason Robards in the play and film, A Thousand
Clowns, written by Shep's close pal, Herb Gardner. Jack
Nicholson embodied a Shepherd-like late-night radio talker
in The King of Marvin Gardens. While in Network, by Paddy
Chayefsky (another of Shep's comic cohorts), the television
newscaster beseeches his listeners to open their windows and
yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this
anymore," an unmistakable echo of Shepherd's radio habit of
"hurling an invective" like a hand grenade out into the
nation's air waves. Tens of thousands of rabid fans stayed up past their bedtime
with transistor radios stashed under their pillows to follow
Shep's always unpredictable, usually extemporaneous, verbal
forays into current events, social mores, idle thoughts,
stories about his childhood in northern Indiana ("I was this
kid, see..."), his army days, and his idiosyncratic take on
his world-wide travels. Shepherd once bamboozled an innocent
public, and gullible publishing world, by promoting a
non-existent book (I, Libertine ) and author (Frederick R.
Ewing), then co-writing it with sci-fi author Theodore
Sturgeon. It sold in best-seller numbers. Shepherd wrote nearly two dozen stories for Playboy and even
interviewed the Beatles for the magazine. He published
several best-selling books of his stories and articles; he
appeared at Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, and in hundreds of
jam-packed college auditoriums. Shep's Army is the first
volume of new Shepherd tales to be published in a quarter
century.
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