Quote of the Day (Jean Shepherd, on His Prom-Night Disaster)

“Swiftly, I brought the bourbon to my lips, intending to down it in a single devil-may-care draught, the way Gary Cooper used to do in the Silver Dollar Saloon. I did, and Schwartz followed suit. Down it went — a screaming 90-proof rocket searing savagely down my gullet. For an instant, I sat stunned, unable to comprehend what had happened. Eyes watering copiously, I had a brief urge to sneeze, but my throat seemed to be paralyzed. Wanda and Clara Mae swam before my misted vision; and Schwartz seemed to have disappeared under the table. He popped up again—face beet-red, eyes bugging, jaw slack, tongue lolling.”—Jean Shepherd, Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters (1971)

This being prom season, I thought there couldn’t be a better way to think about it than through the eyes of humorist Jean Shepherd (1921-1999). Over the years, people were drawn to his work through a variety of media, including books (In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash), radio (his longtime beloved WOR show) and film (the now-classic 1983 A Christmas Story).

But I was first exposed to Shepherd through a different medium: television. Just before we graduated, my high-school English class watched The Phantom of the Open Hearth (1976), a made-for-TV special that had appeared only two years earlier on PBS stations. Eugene B. Bergmann’s warm appreciation of the man whose influence can be seen in, among others, deejay Vin Scelsa, Garrison Keillor and Jerry Seinfeld, Excelsior, You Fathead!, noted that this special was a set of “amusing short stories.”

But I can only recall one: the prom date of Shepherd’s fictional alter ego Ralph with Wanda Hickey, taken from Wanda Hickey‘s Night of Golden Memories. It’s possible that my memory fixated on this because, by the end of the month when I saw it, I was one of the millions who, over the years, participated in this teen tribal ritual.

(In case you’re wondering: my experience was not quite of the same variety as Shepherd’s. Had it been, I don’t think I’d be alive to write this post!)

The Phantom of the Open Hearth might not have been the type of work that enters the literary canon, but for our teacher, a nun shrewdly assessing a group then in the full grip of senior-itis, with our SATs taken and third-quarter grades sent off to the colleges of our choice, it was a shrewd way of steering us into the great beyond outside the walls of our school. It was not only a lot more fun to read than Middlemarch, but probably the most hilarious warning about the perils of drink that has ever come down the pike.

The Internet is replete with complaints from Shepherd fans about how difficult it is to find this terrific PBS program. To add insult to injury, one site I came across noted that the video it found had been trimmed from over 70 minutes down to 60, principally by cutting some scenes, including the one that stuck most vividly in my mind: the one where Ralph and his friends go to the bathroom to Kiss the Porcelain God.

One thing I miss about not having seen this since then is Shepherd’s rich voice. But, though not in audio form, you’ll surely sense it, in all its mock grandiloquence and high comedy, in the short quote above.

(Talking about “influences”--even of a more controversial sort--see my prior post about Shepherd’s surprising connection to the beloved comedy The Wonder Years.)