A long time ago, I read an interesting book called "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." by Washington Irving. It was a mix of both short stories and essays about England. The stories, such as "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," were pretty good, but the essays were kind of boring. In the case of "A Ferrari in the Bedroom," most everything is at least a little interesting. It has more to do with Americana than boring old England. Although I think that is due to the wonderful way that Jean Shepherd writes. If he had written about England, it would have probably been really enjoyable.
A lot of these chapters had a perspective from his view of the early 70's. It talks a lot about the silliness of commercialism at the time. Seriously, a bunch of the essays had to do with weird products you could buy. The titular "Ferrari" had to do with a bed you could get that was shaped like the car. Why would you even want that? In a lot of ways, this book was about Jean Shepherd looking at the world and wondering what was wrong with it, often equating it to some sort of mental disease.
Jean is more known for telling stories about his life growing up, but in this one most of it is about how he feels in the modern (70's) day. He's rich now, a TV and radio star. He hangs out with Playboy bunnies and flies first class. It is a little strange to see him talk about that stuff, but if he had not gotten famous in the first place, we might not have even heard those heart-warming stories from early books.
This book also has a full play in it intended for marionettes. It was about some losers who used to rebel against society, and now they are old men with no prospects. It was more sad than anything.
There were a few old stories in this book, such as when he went to the Indy 500 with his old man. That was nice, but there just are not a lot of these moments in the book. It's not bad. I found his opinions very charming. He even went into how he noticed women were sort of taking over the role of men, which was sort of the beginning of that movement that's left us a bit confused these days. He was there at the beginning of it.
What I am trying to say is this: The book is good and I do recommend it, but it does not quite have the same spirit as his other two previous books. They were the stories that made him famous. These are more about a sort of shock that happened once we all crashed into the 70's. It's an opinion worth telling, lest we forget.
This blog was written on October 17, 2025.
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It seems Jean Shepherd laughed at life rather than fret. He was actually inspired by the things that annoyed him. Instead of "stupid" he saw "silly" and laughed rather than cried.
ReplyDeleteIt's okay to laugh at bad things that have happened. They are over and done with. No point in spending your life as a self-proclaimed victim.
DeleteI remember when people were purchasing products like that. Since his life changed, the perspectives did. It is interesting to read someone's thoughts concerning the changes.
ReplyDelete