Customer Reviews

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters

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If you only know Jean Shepherd from the television film that ebodies three or four of his stories (A Christmas Story), you know that his take on youth, the vagaries of circumstance, the whole process of growing up, supporting a family, simply living, is skewed, and occasionally skewered by a delicious sense of humor.

If you were lucky enough to be raised in the Greater New York City Metro area and its suburbs, then you will remember Shep's story telling, nightly, on Radio Station WOR, over whose airwaves he spun tale after tale of Ralphie, Randy, their beleagured parents, Schwartz, Flick, Scut Farkas, and the others who inhabited Depression-era middle America; you know his army experiences; you relived his skirmishes with arrogance and foolishness on the streets of New York City; above all, you knew Shep. And you loved him.

His apparently easy off-the-cuff style is, of course, anything but. His written words are fashioned with consummate skill and craft. His intuition into the building of a narrative fictional event is nonpareil. His brilliance with the carefully chosen metaphor, sentence, word, glints off every facet of his gemlike contributions to American letters. He was a terrific writer. It's that simple, but because he did not write gut-squeezing Major Literary Stuff, he will be, unfortunately, forgotten.

But not to his devotees. His stories in 'Wanda Hickey...' will force you to put down the book and laugh long, hard, and uncontrollably. His understanding of the gentleness and fragility of the human spirit comes through his stories like the sweet homey smell of your grandfather's pipe smoke wafting up to your bedroom when you are beginning to dream. Shep makes you appreciate what he was, what you were, what you are just because he chose to be a writer.

And yes, when he died a few years ago, I was immeasurably saddened. I was hoping for just one more book, one more story, one more sentence from Jean Shepherd. That's why Wanda Hickey and those who lived in her world, all told about to us from the first person point of Ralphie's view, are so necessary to me, to all of us. Even disaster has its funny and charming moments, so let's not take ourselves too seriously. Shep will never let us forget that.

Excelsior! old friend. I'm glad you're still around.

I have some advice for all you readers. With the dawn of the Internet sometimes we cast our books aside and spend more time playing around on the computer than we need to. I found myself neglecting books I wanted to read. Mr. Shepherd is a bit older than I am, so I can't relate to the years or events that he spoke of totally. He talks about childhood and teenage memories, and I found that with a little updating we can all relate to at least some of what he went through growing up. First, try turning off some of the brainless night-time shows and leaving the computer off a few evenings, so you can rediscover all books. Second, pick up this gem by Jean Shepherd. A few pages into it, and I laughed until I was almost in tears. I did this alot throughout the book. This book of memories left behind by Mr. Shepherd is a real treat! Thank you.

If you only know Jean Shepherd from the television film that ebodies three or four of his stories (A Christmas Story), you know that his take on youth, the vagaries of circumstance, the whole process of growing up, supporting a family, simply living, is skewed, and occasionally skewered by a delicious sense of humor.

If you were lucky enough to be raised in the Greater New York City Metro area and its suburbs, then you will remember Shep's story telling, nightly, on Radio Station WOR, over whose airwaves he spun tale after tale of Ralphie, Randy, their beleagured parents, Schwartz, Flick, Scut Farkas, and the others who inhabited Depression-era middle America; you know his army experiences; you relived his skirmishes with arrogance and foolishness on the streets of New York City; above all, you knew Shep. And you loved him.

His apparently easy off-the-cuff style is, of course, anything but. His written words are fashioned with consummate skill and craft. His intuition into the building of a narrative fictional event is nonpareil. His brilliance with the carefully chosen metaphor, sentence, word, glints off every facet of his gemlike contributions to American letters. He was a terrific writer. It's that simple, but because he did not write gut-squeezing Major Literary Stuff, he will be, unfortunately, forgotten.

But not to his devotees. His stories in 'Wanda Hickey...' will force you to put down the book and laugh long, hard, and uncontrollably. His understanding of the gentleness and fragility of the human spirit comes through his stories like the sweet homey smell of your grandfather's pipe smoke wafting up to your bedroom when you are beginning to dream. Shep makes you appreciate what he was, what you were, what you are just because he chose to be a writer.

And yes, when he died a few years ago, I was immeasurably saddened. I was hoping for just one more book, one more story, one more sentence from Jean Shepherd. That's why Wanda Hickey and those who lived in her world, all told about to us from the first person point of Ralphie's view, are so necessary to me, to all of us. Even disaster has its funny and charming moments, so let's not take ourselves too seriously. Shep will never let us forget that.

Excelsior! old friend. I'm glad you're still around.

When I was in college I used to read this book whenever I got depressed. It produced instant belly laughs when opened. My paper back copy actually wore out over the years. I had to keep taping it together or I would risk losing a page or two.

It relived depression better than Prozac.

I made the mistake of reading this on an airplane once. I almost had an aneurysm trying to stifle my laughter. This is a book that you'll read over and over. Only, be forewarned; you'll have to buy multiple copies--once you lend it to a friend, you'll never see it again.

For the person who asked where Jean Shepherd is, he passed away just recently this year. There is another thing about him that has been bothering me for years: there was a TV movie or presentation or play, I don't know what you'd call it, I guess a "slice of life" vignette, in the late 60's or early 70's, called "Phantom of the Open Hearth" written by Shepherd, that had my siblings and me on the floor holding our sides when we were kids and just happened to catch it on a Sunday morning. It made "A Christmas Story" seem sobering, and basically concerned a man whose family watches him order and receive an entire house in kit form, which he proceeds to unload willy-nilly from the railroad car, as it begins to rain. That is all I remember, and I have been unable to locate or even verify the existence of it. Please, does anyone remember this little movie, or am I mis-remembering?

Shepherd has an excellent flair for comedy. He uses outrageous exaggerations and detailed descriptions to have the reader in tears of laughter. The stories are very easy to relate to because of their dealings with common events. These include the county fair, the high school prom, and one's first love. The novel also offers insight on life in the 1930's and 1940's. Children play with tops and the family listens to the radio for entertainment. A turkey dinner at home is quite an expense. Overall, the book is quite entertaining and hard to put down.

This is one of the funniest books ever written. Jean Shepherd recounts his early years in a steelmill and oil refinery town in northern Indiana. The time is the late 1930's to 1940's. There is a sensible mother, a good-hearted father with an incredible vocabulary of cuss words, and a younger brother with an amazing ability to whine. We begin with the arrival next door of the Bumpus family, slovenly hillbillies with a million dogs that send our hero's father into explosions of outrage. We go through disaster after disaster until we reach the ultimate when our hero takes Wanda Hickey to the high school prom. I laughed so hard that I difficulty reading. Shepherd's mastery of description of small-town America in the 1940's is a pleasure to read, and it never stops being outrageously funny.

Girls from other towns are hot stuff, especially if they're Catholic and Polish, and you're not. A boy's great first love is his Ford. There's something for everyone at a county fair. When you get ready for a hot date, you're going to cut yourself shaving (whether you needed to or not) and there will be a giant zit where you don't want it. If you live in a town where there's a foundary or steel mill, you'll enjoy grey snow. The rich, knockout blonde will cut you and never even glance back, and the next time she sees you, she'll call you by the wrong name.

Jean Shepherd and Dan Wakefield both describe midwestern adolescence from the male perspective (from grade school to the draft board) better than anybody else I've run across, and Shepherd was there first. Interestingly, they both hale from Indiana.

I stumbled onto the Wanda Hickey story way back when it came out in Playboy, and I still enjoy reading it.

Thank you for confirming my recollections of the Phantom of the Open Hearth TV special. My mother and I also recall seeing it on PBS in the late 1970s. I, too, would love to see it available on video. The most memorable scene is the one in which the townspeople assemble at the train station to assist the man who ordered the house from the Sears catalog. As the folks are gleefully opening carton after carton, it starts pouring rain. Everyone scurries home. The poor guy is left standing alone with his half un-packed house. I also remember the famous Nehi lamp that is included in A Christmas Story. In Phantom the father orders it from the soda company and sets it up in the living room. He almost worships it as an idol. Ralph is high school-age and winds up taking Wanda Hickey to the prom. When cocktails are served before dinner, Ralph knows only how to order a "triple," just like his old man. Of course he becomes incapacitated soon after. There is also another movie entitled Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss. The family takes the Oldsmobile on a summer vacation to a resort in Michigan. The characters are about the ages of those in A Christmas Story. Ralph, Flick, and Schwarz get their first job moving appliances in a warehouse. The vacation is threatened when the family dog runs away and Mom announces she's not going until it's found. All the way to Michigan Ralph is haunted by the knowledge that he's forgotten to pack his old man's fishing tackle box. Randy (of course) is carsick the entire trip--absolutely hysterical. Mom insists on stopping at a roadside stand selling concrete mushrooms, plastic flamingos, etc. Anyone who's vacationed at a lake in Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Michigan will love this movie. I believe it was on Disney Channel about ten years ago.