![]() His stories first saw print in Playboy and The Village Voice in the 1960s, were adapted for public television in the 1970s, and finally in the 1980s, Hollywood. He is the author of arguably the quintessential modern American Christmas tale, but much of the bite of his work has been lost in the process of transcribing and adapting for viewing audiences the narratives that originated on late night radio in New York City in the 1950s. ![]() The association of nostalgia with Shepherd’s work has long puzzled but not surprised me, especially in the light of the 1983 film A Christmas Story, which is based on parts of his 1966 novel In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. ![]() The opening story from his 1971 book Wanda Hickey’s Night Of Golden Memories and Other Disasters describes a community “nestled picturesquely between the looming steel mills and the verminously aromatic oil refineries and encircled by a colorful conglomerate of city dumps and fetid rivers.” Whomever wrote the back cover copy for the 2000 Broadway Books trade paperback apparently didn’t read that part, describing the collection as a “beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana.” “Ours was not a genteel neighborhood,” Jean Shepherd wrote of Hohman, his fictional Northwest Indiana hometown. ![]() Jean Shepherd 2907 Cleveland Street Hammond, Indiana ![]()
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