Avi

word craft

blog

See you on the radio

Who Was That Masked Man Anyway?In ear­ly March, I had a Skype vis­it with a school in the Down East Maine town of Pow­nal. (They told me it was minus sev­en degrees that day, “and that’s not includ­ing the wind-chill fac­tor.”) A stu­dent asked which char­ac­ter in which of my books, was most like me when I was a kid. I answered that it was the char­ac­ter Frankie in Who Was That Masked Man Any­way?” 

Grow­ing up in the 1940s, before tele­vi­sion was an estab­lished enter­tain­ment medi­um, I was an avid lis­ten­er of adven­ture radio shows for kids, among them: Jack Arm­strong, Sky King, The Green Hor­net, Super­man, The Shad­ow, and the series that pro­vid­ed the title of the book, The Lone Ranger. 

Who Was That Masked Man Any­way? is my fond remem­brance of those lis­ten­ing days. It tells the sto­ry of Frankie, and his side­kick Mario, as they try to enact radio-like adven­tures in their own ordi­nary lives. The book is one hun­dred per­cent dia­logue, not one “he said,” or “she said,” in the whole book. Not only do I also think this is my most unusu­al nov­el, I also believe it is my funniest. 

radioThe way Frankie nar­rates (and directs) his impro­vised adven­tures with Mario—and oth­er characters—is very much like what I used to do with my cousin (and best friend) Michael who lived around the corner. 

I would say, “Now we creep around the cor­ner, and sur­prise the … “ or some such, and we would enact those invent­ed tales for hours on end. I believe that was my ear­li­est sto­ry­telling. I also believe that radio nar­ra­tive has great­ly influ­enced my writing. 

In the nov­el, there are a num­ber of excerpts from real radio shows of the day. One show however—for plot purposes—was some­thing I wrote. I remem­ber enjoy­ing writ­ing that seg­ment so much that I sud­den­ly had the thought: Radio shows. I’ve missed my true call­ing. I should have been a radio writer!

2 thoughts on “See you on the radio”

  1. I imag­ine this is how we will feel about oth­er phys­i­cal medi­ums of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in years to come. I per­son­al­ly miss in-the-mail let­ters and old school telephones.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.