Wanda Hickey's night of golden memories : and other disasters
(Book)

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. These two reissues represent the peak of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations. In God We Trust disproves the adage "You can't go home again" as Shepherd bends the ear of his hometown-buddy-turned-bartender, Flick, with tales of his quest for a Red Ryder BB gun, a terrifying encounter with a school bully, the unlikely Indiana roots of Pop Art, and a struggle to land a fish to rival The Old Man and the Sea. 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.

07/05