#34 Man Against Himself – by Karl Menninger
Year: 1975 / Pages: 530/ softcover / Moderate markings
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His shows… There is was nothing like what he did. He just forged a new genre: his own.”
"[Joe Frank] is one of the great, original radio performers. He's created a sound and style for himself - a complete aesthetic that's entirely his own. I first heard him when I was 19 and it changed everything for me. His work demonstrated the intensity and emotion that the medium is capable of; ingenious…fantastic."
"To me, he's what radio is really for... his show makes me think he's getting to some great truth... so completely captivating and just unlike anything else."
"Although commonly categorized as radio drama, Frank's work bears very little resemblance to the stagy artifice of plays performed over air. Frank wanders deeply into the unconscious, producing Dionysian stories with a fairy-tale intensity whose effect is often funny, disturbing and deeply memorable."
"In an arena in which formats are sacrosanct, Joe Frank has charted new territory with his literate, frequently bizarre, wildly funny essays and parodies... He can be funny, poignant, serious and off the wall - sometimes within the framework of the same piece. Unique is one word to describe it. Brilliant is another."
"Joe Frank is a singular voice in radio. What he has done is hypnotic, psychotic, neurotic, sad, terrifying, and some of the funniest stuff I have ever heard anywhere. I can't think of another radio performer who has come close to achieving this kind of alchemy."
"Frank [is] the apostle of radio noir... His free-form radio dramas... are sometimes moving, often funny, but always manage to confound the listeners' expectations. A maestro of verité, Frank exploits the power of radio..."
"Joe Frank was guest-anchoring 'Weekend All Things Considered.' The last five minutes of the broadcast, they allowed Joe to do an essay of his own. And it was like a fistful of nihilism just shot through the speaker. "
"[Joe Frank is] the most imaginative, literate monologist in radio today... If a microphone could capture the nether recesses of the modern psyche, it would sound like Frank's absurd comical excursions: Radio Vertigo."
"Joe Frank is an original whose work has helped form some of the most eccentric, dark and interesting parts of public radio's personality. "
"The world of Joe Frank is a wildly entertaining surrealistic universe...hilarious, unsettling, zany, powerful, moving and perhaps the most unique, inventive and effective use of radio since Orson Welles convinced much of America there was a War of the Worlds."
"[Frank] travels in the emotional landscape of Bergman and Fellini; there's a tension and sense of mystery halfway between Kafka and Chandler... and a satiric edge worthy of Firesign Theatre and Woody Allen... No one else in radio is doing what Frank does."
"I came upon Joe Frank's work by accident a number of years ago while driving to my home in the Napa Valley late at night. I couldn't believe the originality and sheer brilliance of what I was hearing. From that moment on I became a dedicated Joe Frank fan. Joe Frank's shows raise the most interesting and enduring questions in new and original ways and are consistently thought-provoking and very funny."
"Joe Frank's often bizarre scenarios for the mind are decidedly offbeat radio fare...part surreal satire, part bizarre meditation, part fever dream."
"[Joe Frank] is more comparable to movie auteurs from the 1970s than to storytellers like Jean Shepherd and Garrison Keillor. Mr. Frank's tales throw listeners into a gritty world where it won't all come out so clean and the moral lines won't be clear. And it will be a little philosophical."
"Frank has created a series of dead-pan radio monologues so sharp and intelligent that during the quiet bits you can almost hear God taking notes."
“He once said in a program of his that he is afraid of nothing. And the counterpart says, ‘What do you... So, you’re fearless!’ He said, ‘No, No, that’s not what I mean. I’m afraid of——nothing.’”
"Radio's Prince of Darkness Rules the Freeways. [Frank is] alternately dark, bizarre and very funny - but always hard to turn off."
“You identify all of the vicissitudes and you start to realize that that’s normal. What people go through, the darkest thoughts you have, and the level of pain that it takes—to just be alive. That’s the kind of thing that he is the spokesman for.”
"You don't have to close your eyes to appreciate Joe Frank's dense audio universe cascading out of your radio. It helps, though, because there are so many layers - of sound, philosophy, of reality-coursing through his dramas... Come to think of it, after awhile, you won't want to close your eyes because in Frank's short stories for the radio, the tension and pathos are as enveloping as they are intriguing... "
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