The great Los Angeles-based radio artist Joe Frank has been struggling with health problems over the last few months.

If you’ve never heard of him, Joe is a completely original American storyteller whose shows have pioneered new forms of radio narrative over the last two decades. I’m most obsessed with his monologues, which are usually accompanied by eerie looped music, but his shows often incorporate other formats, including taped phone conversations, found sound, and improvised radio plays that Joe records with actors and then imposes a structure on in the editing room.

Joe’s work might best be described as a cross between Kafka, Nietzsche, Raymond Chandler, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and David Sedaris. He’s a short-story writer, a philosopher, a comedian, a raconteur, and one of the greatest-ever purveyors of the postmodern-noir sensibility. He’s spent his career grappling with all the grand topics: sex, love, morality, lust, greed, sin, fear, hatred, the search for meaning. Much of his best work is both utterly profound and completely hilarious. He often blurs the lines between real life and fiction, and his shows are sometimes explicitly about the creative process. At his core, he’s a tortured man who attempts to make sense of the world by telling stories about it. There is simply no one else like him. Can you tell that I’m completely obsessed?

And I have yet to even mention his voice, which is incredibly rich and expressive and spellbinding.

Much more about Joe after the jump, including details about his health, links to some of his work, and other info.

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Last night I went to P.S. 122 in the East Village to see All Stories Are Fiction, my friend Mike Daisey’s latest series of monologues. The show was FANTASTIC. He’s one hell of a talented storyteller. Here is a description of the format Mike is using for these shows:

Last spring monologuist Mike Daisey created 13 new shows in 13 weeks in a daring new series at P.S. 122 called All Stories Are Fiction. Plucking from events that befell him in the years, days, and sometimes minutes before he walked onstage, Daisey weaved together brand-new shows, creating one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-seen-again monologues before the eyes of the audience each and every time.

Now the creator of 21 Dog Years and the monologuist The New York Times has dubbed “the master storyteller” and The Seattle Times calls “a cross between Noam Chomsky and Jack Black” is back at P.S. 122, this time taking aim at nothing less than happiness itself.

The rules are deceptively simple: 45 minutes before show time, Mike goes into his dressing room with a legal pad and a Sharpie and creates an outline. At 7:30 sharp, Mike emerges and tells his tale for the assembled audience for the first and only time. Over two months these monologues will address the essential question of happiness: what role does it play—or should it play—in our lives?

Mike’s doing a new show at 7:30 p.m. every Monday through May 9. I will definitely be going back for more. Tickets and other details are here.

Mike also has a blog.