Very many of you (at least, in the US) are more than familiar with the cult favorite "Christmas Story" movie shown repeatedly on TBS cable over the 24-hour period starting at 8pm Christmas Eve.

Not so many may be aware of the story's creator, the late radio personality Jean Shepherd, who provided the voice-over narration for the movie. Only those of us "of a certain age," who grew up within range of the AM radio signal of WOR in New York City and who listened in late every weeknight (often after bedtime, with a tiny new transistor radio equipped with an earpiece) really understand the deep, rich saga of 20th century mid-American childhood that Shep created,a gigantic iceberg of which the famous screenplay is only the tiniest little tip.

A friend sent me this link yesterday, to a Christmas-day article published in the online magazine "Slate":

http://www.slate.com/id/2207058/

As the writer points out, Shep's true vision was somewhat darker and more complex than the lighthearted nostalgia presented in the film. In his world, childhood was a time of helpless subordination to a world full of authority figures, and therefore a pretty good metaphor for life ~ adult life in the modern world~ as we know it.

Shep was buddies with Jack Kerouac and Lenny Bruce, among others. And although his work was free of cusswords, and of any references to outright rebellion, he shared a very similar viewpoint and was very much the same kind of misfit in mainstream society.

Every weeknight, five nights a week for 20+ years, this man would sit in front of a microphone for 45 minutes and tell an absolutely spellbinding story, working from the most minimal notes. His improvisational "verbal jazz" was pretty unique, an artform no one else has practiced on such a public stage before or since.

The Slate article will probably disappear from the web within a short while, but it contains links to other, more permanent, Shep-related sites. I'm posting this now, but expect to return before too long to provide some of those links, and maybe a cut-and-paste excerpt or two, for those of you reading this in the future, who won't have access to the article.