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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.
