The late radio raconteur Jean Shepherd and the master of his domain Jerry Seinfeld are obsessed with the minutiae of daily life. Nothing is too small in the detritus of human existence for contemplation. For Shepherd and Seinfeld, meaning is not found in pondering the huge metaphysical questions that have perplexed Plato onward; life is discovered in the lint, that small detail that informs us who we really are. On January 23 at the NY Paley Center, Seinfeld will discuss Shepherd, the man he recognized as forming “my entire comedic sensibility.” Shepherd’s mastery of storytelling is indeed ripe for rediscovery.

Although Jean Shepherd is remembered every December as writer and narrator of that perennial A Christmas Story, his art and passion was radio. He transfixed late-night listeners with his rapturous tales within tales of his often futile life and times. He was a modern day Homer, but not singing of gods and heroes, just ordinary pathetic mankind. His off-the-cuff monologues, emanating from WOR for twenty-one years (1956–77), were labeled by media scholar Marshall McLuhan as a “nightly novel.” Shepherd was much more: a jazz soloist improvising irreverently on treadmill America or a beat poet from the Midwest haranguing authority, especially his own station.

Shepherd knew that “the reality of what we really are is oftentimes found in the small snips way down at the bottom of things.” His realistic ramblings were littered with the overlooked trivia of the world. These exquisite details made the tales ring true, whether Shep was relating the vicissitudes of his turbulent adolescence in Indiana or the dark side of Army life. His younger listeners especially felt that Shepherd was transmitting hidden truths of adulthood, which no parent would dare to relate.

Shepherd’s ability to communicate should be analyzed in every university. With words alone, he was able to conjure up a three-dimensional world, vividly populated with all-too-human characters. He did not try to glorify the past, but understood it was a “crummy now,” just like the present. Just listen to the BB gun for Christmas saga, which is the spine of his iconic movie. The yarn was first spun in December 1964 and, a year later, evolved into a short story for Playboy, and still later anthologized in the book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. What began as an antiwar commentary, according to Eugene Bergmann’s highly informative Excelsior, You Fathead!, became a parable of boyhood desire, read by Shepherd every holiday. Is there any better description of a kid dressed for winter weather than “the faint glint of two eyes peering out of a mound of moving clothing?”

Shepherd BB gun Story

Jerry Seinfeld is equally obsessed with the absurdities and incongruities of everyday life. Like Shepherd, he possesses that gimlet eye for revelatory detail. I think the comic monologue that directly delineates his debt to Shepherd is his Halloween routine. Like his mentor, Seinfeld connects his audience to a holiday through the cravings of his inner kid. Childhood is about fixations, whether toy guns or candy. Two details help to sell this story: the crummy elastic band that inadequately holds the mask over the face and the mother insisting the child wear a coat over the Halloween costume. Shep would have been proud.

Seinfeld/Halloween