Alan Jacobs


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Here’s how Shepherd would later describe the difference between Night and Day People—more than a half-century later, you’ll still recognize the types. The Day Person “believes in the world of the office; he really believes in file cabinets. … The time from 8 a.m. to 6 in the evening is the time he’s alive.” Whereas, for the night person, the world began the minute he stepped out off the office. The two types, in Shepherd’s view, were always battling, without even being aware of it. “So you’re sitting in this sales meeting and here is this guy sitting over here and he’s got this light of ecclesiastical fervor; he believes in Operation Dynamo that you’re about to foist on the public.”

Shepherd anointed his listeners as Night People, schooled them in what the term meant, and along the way transformed them from outsiders to insiders. The Day People didn’t reject you, Shepherd implied. You rejected them. “I’m talking about people with that wild tossing in the soul that somehow makes them stay up until three o’clock in the morning and brood,” he said. “They might get up at seven the next morning and go to work, but that isn’t what their life is about.”