The Reader's Shelf: Radio Heads Take Readers Behind the Microphone

Not so long ago, radio ruled the media landscape and helped create a sense of community in a rapidly changing world. Books about radio take us behind the microphone to relive the radio age. These titles bring the magic of radio to life and allow readers to explore the medium's early roles, its heyday, and current formats.

Standing in the Rainbow (Random. 2004. ISBN 978-0-345-45288-7. pap. $14.95) by Fannie Flagg is set in Elmwood Springs, MO, where Neighbor Dorothy (Mrs. Dorothy Smith) broadcasts her radio homemaker show. It is 1945, and with a smile in her voice and her mother-in-law at the organ, Dorothy offers recipes, advice, and tidbits of local news from her home. As the decades march on, the little stories of the doings around Elmwood Springs add up to a full picture of an endearing American town.

Circa 1975, radio is still king in Yellowknife, a two-stoplight town in the Canadian north where Elizabeth Hay sets her 2007 Giller Prize–winning novel, Late Nights on the Air (Counterpoint. 2008. ISBN 978-1-58243-408-7. $24). Nighttime broadcaster Harry Boyd hears a new voice, strikingly female and confident, come across the station's airwaves. It is that of Dido Paris, hired off the street. Harry is smitten, as is the station's technician. Soon after, the station manager disappears and into the mix steps Gwen Symon, an eager newcomer who wants to produce radio dramas. When a major gas pipeline project threatens the surrounding wilderness, Yellowknife citizens add their voices. Love, loneliness, and rivalry meet as staff and townspeople take their turns behind the mike.

Raised on Radio (Univ. of California. 2000. ISBN 978-0-520-22303-5. pap. $22.95) by Gerald Nachman is a social history of the Golden Age of radio (1920s–1940s), a veritable time machine of America's once common culture of stories and sound. Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Hope, Amos 'n' Andy, the Lone Ranger, Fibber McGee and Molly are all here. Characterizing radio as “yesterday's Internet,” Nachman conveys the medium's once powerful importance as a way of life, a national town hall, theater, and pulpit. Nostalgic yet analytical, this book reveals the richness of radio days gone by.

Garrison Keillor's humdinger of a novel about a Minneapolis radio station, WLT: A Radio Romance (Penguin. 1992. ISBN 978-0-14-010380-9. pap. $15), pulsates with zippy humor. In 1926, brothers Ray and Roy Soderbjerg add radio entertainment to their failing restaurant menu. Thus is born WLT (With Lettuce and Tomato), and it's a hit. Ever galloping through its lineup of serial stories, ersatz sports reporting, poetry, and jingles, the station thrives. Ray becomes addicted to the good fortune his station provides while listeners believe in it all, no matter that child star “Little Becky” has been around for two decades and is now a chain-smoker. Stepping into the zaniness is young Frank White, who becomes indispensable to Ray. Can WLT, “the Air Castle of the North,” last?

For a modern-day comedy of manners featuring radio, try Late Night Talking (Washington Square: Farrar. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7432-8825-5. pap. $14) by Leslie Schnur. Jeannie Sterling hosts late-night New York City talk show Sterling Behavior, where listeners call in to complain about the poor manners of their fellow citizens while Jeannie and her best friend/producer Luce provide advice and commentary. But when the new station owner pushes them to go further, e.g., on-the-street confrontations with rude people, suddenly, the show is crossing over to TV, and Luce is left behind. Jeannie's adventures multiply when her vagabond father drifts back into her life and romance comes to call. Wonderful “on the air” takes are an integral part of this fast-paced and funny novel.

Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation (Random. 2007. ISBN 978-0-375-50907-0. $27.95) by Marc Fisher is a lively review of the trends and personalities behind radio since the birth of the boomer generation. Cousin Brucie, deejay at WABC (New York City), is the fast-talking friend to the transistor radio crowd. Constantly tuned in, America's youth discover rock-'n'-roll. Then, along comes Beatlemania and, later, album-oriented FM sound. The one-on-one intimacy of radio was exemplified by Bob Fass at WBAI (New York City) whose Radio Unnameable show featured drop-in visits from counterculture celebrities. There is also a profile of Garrison Keillor, whose live Prairie Home Companion continues to thrive as one of NPR's biggest moneymakers. The effects of satellite technology and the Internet are also explored. Essential for radio aficionados.

The column was contributed by Keddy Ann Outlaw, West University Branch Librarian, Harris County Public Library, Houston, TX