The "it" in question being first turning himself in to the CIA for being a spying for some bugbear or other in a nuclear power plant and then, that accomplished, committing suicide: one must admit that he had a point.
If memory serves that takes place in The Road to Calvary. Although I have long been a fan of Joe Frank, I don't think I've listened to more than two of his shows since my first or second year of college, and not long after that, when KCRW fired him, they were no longer available for free on KCRW's site (wonder why) in glorious realaudio; now, although he does have a website to which one can give money for the privilege of hearing shows both old and new, well, he wants money, and even though I reckon him a capital-A Artist I've been oddly reluctant to fork it over. (It doesn't help that one really has to devote a full hour to listening to the shows; background listening they aren't.) And so aside "Escape from Paradise" and "An Enterprising Man", and the great segment on Joseph as a cuckold that appears on multiple shows (Joseph, hearing the last words of Christ, thinking: if I were your father, I wouldn't have forsaken you), most of my Frankian knowledge is fast fading. For that matter, I came a bit late to listening to him on the radio, though I do remember hearing many of his "Karma" radio veritë shows of a Sunday morning—"Bad Karma" and "Karma Don't Deny Me" in particular.
Hence I have been looking at the Joe Frank wiki a bit. The synopses of the shows are frequently excellent in themselves (though some are straight-up downers):
Working in a packing house, sex in the presence of death, the evil plant manager. Working in a nuclear plant, sex and electricity, plant disasters, spies. Getting rich by black mailing a spy. Working as a test subject on addictive substances. Running out of gas in the desert and having a meaningless encounter with an Indian. Jesus on the road to calvary - he considers alternatives, witnesses lovers with an audience, stops at a blues club. Praying in a godless world. Woman talks about a man's illness. (that's "The Road to Calvary".)
A German prisoner of war is comforted. Kierkegaard - despair that does not know it is despair compared with living in Glendale. The invisible man and what people see when they look at you. The lives of animals. Hole worshipers. Uncertainty and human knowledge. Naming things so as not to fear them. Being lost on an elevator, getting off at 39th street in the wrong city. Joe addresses cheering crowds. Discordant monolog against cello music: Joe's father is a famous physician who sues his patients. Joe hunts his father's killer. A church in honor of evolution. Honking at an apartment building. Meeting a ghost in a cemetery while dressed as a nun wearing an alarm clock. A rich man thought dead awakens, loses his memory and joins a religious sect. Joe is a king whose power is linked to the phases of the moon. A roman army attacks the sea. A factory owner who only discusses aesthetics. Scenes from the bible portrayed by actors dressed as concentration camp victims. Our reason for existence is to nurse parasites. "What the world needs now," sung in a exaggerated Indian accent. A human being is a pile of secrets. A jealous husband discovers that his wife has given birth. A child's sense of time. A Dutchman who sees people's skeletons. All the things my right hand does for me. The earth was created all at once. (Excerpted from the "At the Border" synopsis.)
Joe buys a classic car and tries to sell it years later. Joe working as a used car salesman buys a stolen car and then chases the guy who sold it to him. Joe buys whiskey for an Indian in a wheelchair. ("Green Cadillac".)
Joe is on a passenger boat on the Nile along with a gender reversed German couple, two identical monks, an Egyptian prefect. The German couple's dog disappears. The river makes you feeling a part of god, suicide in the shower, a man with a javelin in his back, missing an eye, a woman who speaks a nonsense language and the linguist who believes it's genuine. Joe is a guide in Africa attacked by animals. Mounting animal hind parts on walls. Being covered with watches. The burial of an anthropologist by the banks of a river. ("The River".)
Joe is a helicopter traffic man reporting on bizarre disaster scenes in Los Angeles. Checking into a hotel and overhearing phone conversations. A list of chores that spirals into psuedotechnical nonsense. Kornfield: life force, paying the toll for the car behind you. Joe survives a helicopter crash and has only one eye. Preparing for the end of the world. Joe reports on a police chase. Watching a ship sink. Empty roads after a chemical spill. A traffic report that degenerates into an endless stream of Los Angeles streets. ("Eye in the Sky".)
Though maybe you need to be familiar with the texture of the typical Joe Frank program to find these as compelling as I do. "Green Cadillac" was also published as a short story; that page is interesting not just because of the "stet comma" that erroneously made it into the Publisher's Weekly review, but also because of the way that "Fat Man" evidently begins:
"You know, when I think about myself and the life I've led, I feel self-loathing, shame, disgust," says the grossly obese main character of the story "Fat Man." "But when I imagine myself as a character in a novel... well, I think I'm pretty interesting, kind of offbeat, intriguing, entertaining."
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