Joe Frank
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| - | ''[[The Queen of Puerto Rico: And Other Stories]]'' (1993) by [[Joe Frank]] | ||
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| - | Joe Frank has been called "the apostle of radio noir." In this first collection of stories, he takes us on an obsessive, violent, and sexual odyssey in which individual lives become emblematic of a larger spiritual crisis. He also captures on paper the same eerie speculation and humor he delivers in his late-night monologues on National Public Radio. | ||
| - | We meet characters who have jobs, not careers, who lead lives of half-steps, of rootlessness without cause. Frank's narratives result in a kaleidoscopic sense of time, wherein entire lives pass with a few brief moments of inchoate realization. Moments of comic lunacy blend with scenes of great poignancy and terror. | ||
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| - | In the novella "Night," the protagonist wanders through a series of odd jobs, through prison, to Vietnam, to become the right-hand man of a television evangelist, and without any more purpose approaches his own death. In "Fat Man," a college student travels across the country stealing brownies from roadside Howard Johnsons and then spends the next year returning them. "Date" encapsulates a woman's entire life in her boyfriend's suggestions for her personal ad. "The Decline of the Spengler" is a wildly inventive radio play in which the narrative of a funeral is melded with the dreams of a playwright slowly slipping into madness. | ||
| - | In their desperation, the characters in Joe Frank's world, such as the "Fat Man," can only dream of meaningfulness: "You know, when I think about myself and the life I've led, I feel self-loathing, shame, and disgust. I'm a waste and a failure. But when I imagine myself as a character in a novel ... well, I think I'm pretty interesting, kind of off-beat, intriguing, entertaining." | ||
| - | For years, Joe Frank's broadcasts have invited millions of listeners to the strange world of his mesmerizing stories. In this, his first book, Frank effortlessly segues to the printed page and imparts a new resonance to his narrative inventions. | ||
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| '''Joe Frank''' (August 19, 1938 – January 15, 2018) was a French-born [[American writer]], teacher, and radio performer known best for his often philosophical, humorous, [[surrealism|surrealist]], and sometimes [[absurdism|absurd]] [[monologue]]s and [[radio drama]]s he recorded often in collaboration with friends, actors, and family members. | '''Joe Frank''' (August 19, 1938 – January 15, 2018) was a French-born [[American writer]], teacher, and radio performer known best for his often philosophical, humorous, [[surrealism|surrealist]], and sometimes [[absurdism|absurd]] [[monologue]]s and [[radio drama]]s he recorded often in collaboration with friends, actors, and family members. | ||
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| :"Joe's uncle drowns while fishing a week after retiring, urban animal criminals, voyeur complains about a nude woman, sex with nuns in a limo, an elderly marching band and homecoming parade has been lost for 40 years and is being chased by homecoming queen's fiance, creating life-size maps, to Jesus: why is there so much suffering, we're on the edge of chaos, it's great to feel a part of nature monologue with traffic background, monologue on sleep (repeated in other programs)." [http://www.jfwiki.org/index.php?title=That_Night] | :"Joe's uncle drowns while fishing a week after retiring, urban animal criminals, voyeur complains about a nude woman, sex with nuns in a limo, an elderly marching band and homecoming parade has been lost for 40 years and is being chased by homecoming queen's fiance, creating life-size maps, to Jesus: why is there so much suffering, we're on the edge of chaos, it's great to feel a part of nature monologue with traffic background, monologue on sleep (repeated in other programs)." [http://www.jfwiki.org/index.php?title=That_Night] | ||
| + | ==In print== | ||
| + | ''[[The Queen of Puerto Rico: And Other Stories]]'' (1993) by [[Joe Frank]] | ||
| ==See also== | ==See also== | ||
Revision as of 12:30, 16 April 2020
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"Thanks in large part to the National Endowment for the Arts, public radio continued to air a smattering of audio drama until the mid-1980s. From 1986 to 2002, NPR's most consistent producer of radio drama was the idiosyncratic Joe Frank, working out of KCRW in Santa Monica."--Sholem Stein "I'm sitting at a dinner party attended by Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and Mao."--"Bad Karma" (2000) by Joe Frank |
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Joe Frank (August 19, 1938 – January 15, 2018) was a French-born American writer, teacher, and radio performer known best for his often philosophical, humorous, surrealist, and sometimes absurd monologues and radio dramas he recorded often in collaboration with friends, actors, and family members.
Typical episodes include "Bad Karma" (2000) and "That Night" (1994).
Synopsis from "That Night":
- "Joe's uncle drowns while fishing a week after retiring, urban animal criminals, voyeur complains about a nude woman, sex with nuns in a limo, an elderly marching band and homecoming parade has been lost for 40 years and is being chased by homecoming queen's fiance, creating life-size maps, to Jesus: why is there so much suffering, we're on the edge of chaos, it's great to feel a part of nature monologue with traffic background, monologue on sleep (repeated in other programs)." [1]
In print
The Queen of Puerto Rico: And Other Stories (1993) by Joe Frank
See also
Blue Jam , Francis Ford Coppola , Radio drama , Benny Paret , Ira Glass , All Things Considered , After Hours (film) , Radio documentary , KCRW , WBAI , Third Coast International Audio Festival , Brother Theodore , Red Planet (film) , Julian Barratt , Joe Franklin , David Cross , Jack Kornfield , Ege Bamyası , Grace Zabriskie , Infernal Bridegroom Productions , Men in the Sun , Joseph Minion , Strange Cargo Hinterland , Debi Mae West , Jeff Crouse , Chel White , Larry Block , Brent Weinbach , Kristine McKenna , Dirt (1998 film) , Joseph Frank , Clement von Franckenstein
