Kirjahaku

A beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana, reissued in a strikingly designed paperback edition.Before Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray there was Jean Shepherd: a master monologist and writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant--and utterly hilarious--works of comic art. In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations.In God We Trust, Shepherd's wildly witty reunion with his Indiana hometown, disproves the adage "You can never go back." Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the World's Fair, Shepherd's subjects speak with a universal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American Midwestern life, together rendering a wonderfully nostalgic impression of a more innocent era when life was good, fun was clean, and station wagons roamed the earth.A comic genius who bridged the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri. "Shepherd has a fine eye for absurdity, for the madness and idiocy in all of us."--Best Sellers

A bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana, reissued in a strikingly designed trade paperback edition.Before Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray there was Jean Shepherd: a master monologist and writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant--and utterly hilarious--works of comic art. Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories is a universal (and achingly funny) orchestration of Midwestern puberty rites, from the gut-wrenching playground antics of one Delbert Bumpus, to the supernal glow surrounding unapproachable high school beauty Daphne Bigelow, to the memorable disaster that was Shepherd's (and everyone else's) junior prom.A comic genius who bridges the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri. "Shepherd has a fine eye for absurdity, for the madness and idiocy in all of us." --Best Sellers

From the wild and wacky world of favorite funnyman Jean Shepherd, a dozen truer-than-life tales of tailgating on the Jersey Tumpike, infuriating infants, and other everyday catastrophes, defeats, and humiliations that are the familiar fate of Americans everywhere. Jean Shepherd was one of America's favorite humorists, his most notable achievement being the creation of the indefatigable Ralphie Parker and his quest for a BB gun in the holiday classic A Christmas Story. But he was so much more, a comic Garrison Keillor-like figure whose unique voice transcended the airwaves and affected a whole generation of nostalgic Americans. A Fistful of Fig Newtons is classic Jean Shepherd--sidesplittingly funny and sardonically irreverent. It is a brilliant comic assessment of American life--all of them delivered in Jean Shepherd's witty, classy, unforgettable style.

Jean Shepherd was one of America's favorite humorists, his most notable achievement being the creation of the indefatigable Ralphie Parker and his quest for a BB gun in the holiday classic "A Christmas Story. But he was so much more, a comic Garrison Keillor-like figure whose unique voice transcended the airwaves and affected a whole generation of nostalgic Americans. "The Ferrari in the Bedroom is Shepherd's wry, affectionate look at the hang-ups and delusions of Americans in the 1970s. From his sardonic assessment of fads such as the nostalgia craze ("Thinking that the old days were good is a terrible sickness. Everything was just as bad then as it is now.") to a modest proposal for the foundation of S.P.L.A.T. (The Society for the Prevention of the Leaving of Animal Turds), Jean Shepherd provides a generous measure of his special brand of wise and warm humor as an antidote for some of America's more ridiculous obsessions.

Only a truly hilarious film such as A Christmas Story could be played for 24 hours straight and still find an eager audience every holiday season. This edition of A Christmas Story gathers together in one volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. You’ll remember Ralphie Parker's shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine, his mother and father's pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp, the unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie's duel in the snow with the odious bullies Scut Farkas and Grover Dill, and Ralphie's unstoppable campaign to convince Santa to give him a Red Ryder air rifle while ignoring the whole adult world telling him, "You'll shoot your eye out." The pieces that comprise A Christmas Story were previously published in the larger collections In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories. This magical book is an irresistible piece of Americana, the equal of the film in its ability to warm the heart and tickle the funny bone.