Recommended reading - In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash (1966):

In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash

By Jean Shepherd.

Filmed as A Christmas Story (1983), directed by Bob Clark.

Published by Broadway Books.

Published 1966.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0385021747

ISBN-13: 978-0385021746

Description:

A collection of humorous and nostalgic Americana stories – the beloved, bestselling classic that inspired the movie A Christmas Story.

Before Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray there was Jean 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 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.