The "real forms of our times" are television commercials, a group of writing students was told Friday at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
Jean Shepherd, a New York City radio talk show host, author and occasional TV and stage humorist, was speaking to the students by way of a telephone hookup from his office.
Commercials, better than just about anything else, show the "hopes and fears of our time," he said.
They will provide fascinating viewing 100 years hence, he added.
Shepherd spent an hour answering questions over the special telephone hookup from the class of Dr. Richard Doxtator, an English professor, and devoted much of the time to predictions on the kinds of literature, ideas and parts of Americana that will survive.
Not enough is being done he said, to save things of the present. Just about all of the emphasis is on items from the past. He suggested the saving of a "1964-style shopping center — it will be fascinating to visit in a hundred years."
Good humor will survive, but just whose he’s not sure. Maybe Jerry Lewis, who has a universal following because "his work is universal." Humor, he added is much more enduring than comedy because most of today’s comedy acts are built on poking fun of
politicians and their work, which he described as trivial.
A joke about former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew no longer is funny, he said.
In a few years, he predicted, there'll be trivia questions on, "Who was John Ehrlichman?" Ehrlichman is a principal defendant in the Watergate affair.
Meanwhile, the humor surrounding Mark Twain’s character, Huck Finn, will survive as it already has for more than a century.
Shepherd has been writing since he was in high school - one of his first works was an article for a school newspaper describing what it's like to sustain a broken nose in a football game and begin experiencing pain as fans cheer.
Perhaps his best known work is a recent book entitled "Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories."
Shepherd has a regular talk show on Radio Station WOR in New York City and appears occasionally on programs distributed by National Educational Television. |