Garrison Keillor will die. That's an honest-to-God truth. And while that blunt statement on the surface is just factual, what it represents for many, including myself, is difficult to comprehend or even contemplate: that Garrison Keillor will die.
Keillor still helms Prairie Home Companion each week and shills his latest book, amongst other projects and appearances. It's an incredible schedule for a man whose stroke earlier this year was just the latest bout with a earthly vessel resolved to doing him in. And while he seems his normal, measured self, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that this radio season is his last.
Based in Minnesota and heard by nearly four million listeners each week, according to American Public Media, Prairie Home Companion first aired in 1974 to an audience of 12. A variety show in the mold of old regional broadcasts, there is really not anything like it left on radio. Its content maintains a regional flair that has been lost; while America's talent for global homogenization is both celebrated and bemoaned, its even greater ability to do so inside its own borders makes American sameness near-complete. Americans have even forgotten to lament that everywhere seems like everywhere else. As Keillor once said, "People will miss that it once meant something to be Southern or Midwestern. It doesn't mean much now, except for the climate. The question, 'Where are you from?' doesn't lead to anything odd or interesting. They live somewhere near a Gap store, and what else do you need to know."
Prairie Home Companion is just as local as Keillor, which is why, after he "resumed the life of a shy person," the New York-based version of the show, "American Radio Company of the Air," was unsuccessful. In fact, part of what makes the show so appealing is that it doesn't care about appealing to a wider audience.
Prairie Home Companion is also often subversive in a way many "liberal" shows are not. It lampoons both politics and religion, without grossly insulting personal affiliations to either. It's often characterized as a dumb show for hicks by those who have never heard an installment of The Professional Organization of English Majors, a running gag that makes The Daily Show look like it works in finger paints. And, it is probably the only Democratic-leaning show for white people where the word "faith" isn't used as a punch-line or a pander. As an alternative to how most shows work around God because it's "difficult," Prairie Home works God in while very much acknowledging that it is "difficult."
For those that profess to be offended by the bulk of his work-that seems, to me, irrational and misplaced. I understand the outrage over his statements about gay marriage (he apologized, but it was still, even tongue-in-cheek, an unwise essay). Other than that, he is largely a fiction writer, variety show host and (worsening) singer. Not your cup of tea? Well, okay.
I am almost exactly as old as A Prairie Home Companion. While there is no meaning in this bit of trivia, I have, over the years chosen to find some. Along with others who grew up in Wisconsin or Minnesota or Iowa and the Dakotas, the show was Saturday noise. Gospel and Keillor's voice sound-racking the evening... even when we weren't listening all that close. But often we were listening that close. I was. And it helped that I grew up in a place just as small and sincere as Lake Wobegon.
Over the last decade I lived and traveled a great deal, spending most of my youth in Beijing and Burma, New York and Narita, Haiti and Hungary, some places for weeks, some for years. And the one constant was Garrison's voice. My expat friends got excited over packages of VHS recordings of Friends and ER; my secret glee was bootleg Prairie Home Companion recordings from my brother.
Every Keillor fan has his or her favorite monologue. I can recite more than a dozen, verbatim (especially the Book of Guys story "God of Canton," the only tape to survive a tragic Beijing apartment flood). But if I had to (at this moment) make just three recommendations, I would select "Hog Slaughter" and "The Royal Family" from the Fall section and "Storm Home" from the Winter section of the four-seasoned News from Lake Wobegon collection. The first two for their sense of realism, loss, hope and Garrison's voice and the latter for its calm seasonal charm and childishness. (But it kills me to pick.)
Listening to Garrison's voice is what lulled me to sleep on more nights than I can remember. It continues to. It reminded me, and still does, that home was still an actual place to which I could go back, even if the years had faded the memories too pale to any longer proffer proper nostalgia. Certainly Keillor's works will survive him. And yes, a lot of that work is getting to be a little repetitive, even for hard-core fans. But that voice, we will never have again.
To truly be a fan of Garrison is to be a fan of sadness, sweet sadness, and loss. But it is also to be a fan of humanity. Garrison's youths are naïve; their perspectives are not seas but puddles, in which they are rudderless anyway. Adults are sinners but trying. Places are better in memory and imagination than in reality. And people are both more fragile and more robust than expected. To be familiar with Garrison is also to know of death. Death is an authentic Midwest small-town going-on. The weather is first. But death is second. To spend time with the kind of elderly that inhabit the Wobegon stories is to spend time hearing about death. Did you hear who died? He died too early. How did he die? Who drove from far away to the service? What did they serve? Hushed voices speak the details of the local dead as if not to offend them.
Anyone who listens regularly to Prairie Home, and especially those familiar with Keillor's non-radio works, (such as "The Book of Guys"), know the author is well aware of everything's impermanence, especially his own. The Altman film of Prairie Home Companion, written by Keillor, is centered on mortality. One exchange has Keillor looking into the camera and saying, "I will die." In July's PBS documentary The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes, Keillor says, "You die, there's a sort of decent grief, a few people really do suffer from your absence but the impact on the greater world is not that big. You do not leave a big hole. They dig a hole and they put you in it."
And it is exactly this humor with a shadow, these pithy takes on death (especially his own), that leave us chuckling at the abstract rather than quietly pondering the sincere. He will die. (As will we all.) And yet, just how will we react? I'm not sure.
I have seen three shows live. Prairie Home Companion is finishing its annual December run at New York's Town Hall Theatre this weekend (perhaps there are Craigslist tickets?). But starting in January 2010, the show will be traveling to a range of venues from San Francisco to Tucson to Detroit, Seattle, Newark, Cuyahoga Falls, Highland Park and Nashville, amongst others. I simply cannot recommend the experience enough, especially in consideration that the opportunity, obviously, becomes ever more limited.
Abe Sauer is a fan.
Bravo...a suitable pre-elegiac for a country gentleman of the highest order. If he only knew the power of his soothing tones, the plink and plunk of his banjo and the rush of the ever present Hammond organ.
I dont mind telling you that the strangeness of worlds colliding were often found while I recovered now and again from a gnarly crack run by focusing on his world and not mine at the time.
Tongue in cheek or no, that Salon essay does a disservice and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
^ IAWTC. And allowing that Lindsay Lohan in that film was an awful idea, too. I will bring this up for discussion next time I am in Brainerd.
Even if it was note entirely serious, using a (arguably) National platform to make light of a subject which has no direct effect on your emotional, financial, or social well being is at best disingenuous (and a lovely luxury), and at worst possibly a passive-aggressive way of masking positions you may actually have or providing ammunition to those who do actually have these positions and likely share your nostalgia for the American that may-or-may-never-have-been.
I am irked.
Again, I agree that essay was dumb. But if you look at his body of work (and I have) there are numerous examples that do not support a hidden agenda.
I'm sure he doesn't have a hidden agenda, but it feels like a slap in the face.
Maybe he should write a humorous essay about how things were better before the 'uppity' Civil Rights movement and see how that bowls over?
Oh, wow. I was serious when I agreed with you - his premise was based on some theme from 1970s religious gay-bashing that should have died out forty years ago. I just hate Lindsay Lohan, too, and wanted to throw that in there. Sorry if there was any confusion.
I got that you were serious. And yes, Lindsay Lohan
(oh, Lindsay - I know where you left your leather jacket that night... you know which one).
I just saw him speak at McNally Jackson bookstore in NYC last night. Until this piece I'd no idea he'd suffered a stroke a couple of months ago. He talked without notes for half an hour, and then improvised stories based on people's questions. Amazing - an incredibly sharp mind.
*sigh*
I did not know about his anti-gay marriage comments and it sucks to hear he feels that way.
BUT I can't not love Prairie Home Companion. It's family. It's home.
And I'll never forget the glow on my dad's face when I got him a Guy Noir t-shirt for Christmas....
I love A Prairie Home Companion.
That show is so freakin' proud of its own midwesternness, it really bugs. Sorry, but no.
This is a wonderful appreciation.
Still -- I grew up (in, I guess, the fake part of Real America) hating this guy. Smug, pretentious, selling a phony regionalism to fellow smug pricks out East, convincing them we're all, whatever, slightly befuddled Lutherans who fucking listen to jug band music or something.
Honestly I've never given his actual work that much of a chance, just because his whole schtick repelled me. And it's probably too late now.
I did always find it funny that he went out to become a Serious and Respected writer and was just relentlessly mocked and shamed for his little Paris excursion back home, in a total Gopher Prairie style.
I can understand this. And while it certainly doesn't characterize everyone from the region, I wouldn't call it phony at all. It certainly isn't more in-anyone's-face or "phony" about being Midwestern than, say, New Yorkers are about being New Yorkers. It's in the voice of Bill Holm and Robery Bly. I think part of the problem is that many think that PHC (and Keillor) is all (and only) about "jug" music and Lutheranism. This last weekend Yo Yo Ma was a guest performer. And, again, the English Majors thing is always sharp. The stereotype is all many people know and they dislike it, and him, based on that.
Well yeah I said I never gave it a shot! It just GRATED on me, what little of it I ever heard. (My small town friends only ever told stories about guns and booze and drugs.) (And my Little House-worshiping mom, who grew up in something slightly closer to Keillor's Minnesota, shares the hatred, which is more or less why I never gave him a fair shake.)
Ha. Yes. I also was surrounded by youth obsessed with guns and booze (drugs were for hippie scumbags). And thats just one more reason Keillor's stuff was interesting; he told stories about kids who deeply, secretly, yearned to get away from guns and booze etc.
Some of his monologues are really complex compact narratives with sneaky structures about mortal things. (Even if in my op they're more effective heard than read.) Does it make a lot of difference where he's from when he puts together that kind of stuff?
The only Minnesotan I know hates Keillor for this reason. It's a reasonable position. But I don't hear him as representative of an entire region. I hear him as nostalgia for something that never really existed and ironic sentimentality/sentimental irony. Whichever.
He's not going to die. He's going to head west with Angelika Fflame, and learn to throw pots, speak Mandarin Chinese, and walk an ocelot on a leash.
I read a couple of Keillors when younger, but ended up gravitating towards Stuart McLean, the Canadian iteration. At any rate, good stuff.
I still have a cassette tape somewhere from a PHC broadcast in (presumably) October 1981 during which Garrison Keillor wished me a happy first birthday from Uncle Rick and Aunt Sally. Growing up in Wisconsin, A Prairie Home Companion was the soundtrack of childhood Saturday nights at home with my family, back before my family self-destructed in an explosion of infidelity, mental illness, and addiction.
It will always be special to me, even if Keillor seems to have lost a little off his fastball at this point.
If we're talking about the things we'll never forgive Garrison Keillor for, I'd like to start with this essay:
http://mobile.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/08/01/keillor/index.html
About how The Youngs are too busy gussying up their blogs and YouTubes to understand that the economy is falling apart, and should just forget about dreams of writing or public radio glory and resign themselves to working hard for a company that will betray them.
You can almost hear him screaming at you to get off his lawn.
An impassioned essay. It made me realize that what I miss most about what it means to be Southern are the family all-baked-bean Sunday potlucks my Uncle Brother Bocephus and Aunt Nephew Mildred used to host.
Oh, this cracked me up.
I loved your piece; I'm not a devotee, but I get it.
I could offer a similar, though not nearly so well-composed, appreciation of Jean Shepherd, whose Midwesterness--broadcast from WOR--informed my youth.
Golly -- this was nice. All I have are Springsteen songs.
John Hughes movies.
Hee -- not for me, though! *Mr.* oudemia did go to New Trier, but he hated it like a poison.
Well, they're not spot on, but there's precious little else out there about growing up in Northern Virginia in the 80s.
Garrison, if you've dropped by to see what the hipster intelligencia is saying about you, go to the damn dentist. Your teeth whistling has rendered your radio broadcasts unlistenable in our household, which is to say our car if we happen to be on the road on Saturday afternoons.
'teeth whistling'! That's a better description than my 'mouth-breathing' - thanks.
I've really enjoyed some of Keillor's radio work and consider myself a critical fan who cheerfully turns on the radio on Saturday evenings if I'm around and I remember he's on; at times I wonder what would have happened if his brand of American conservatism - an American conservativism of nostalgia, suspicious of cosmopolitanism, of wry patriotism, and a narrative dialectic of individualism and belonging - hadn't been usurped by the corporatists and violent religious groups.
But, "And, it is probably the only Democratic-leaning show for white people where the word "faith" isn't used as a punch-line or a pander." Oh please, give me a break.
Really? I would gladly hear of another. ???
I'm objecting to the tired old meme about how religion is fundamentally disrespected in America outside of, well, "Republican-leaning" shows. A lot of what you hear as "punch-lines" in "Democratic-leaning shows" (to the extent that I understand what category this actually is) come from people who take faith very seriously and are in fact critically mocking how the Republican, "Conservative" American is but a spectacle of faith, indulging the false (like wars on Christmas), the partisan (Catholic bishops get high-and-mighty on abortion but not capital punishment) or the perverse (Bauer et al). So, for example, I'd said that the Daily Show scribes don't use "faith" as a punch-line; they use ""faith"" as a punch-line, and the distinction is important.
Or, you can just ignore the entire previous paragraph, and I'll give you an example: This American Life.
oops, edit, should be 'Republican, "Conservative" American faith'. . .
But that's just it. It IS only used as a punch line or a pander. No matter what the underlying feelings of the creators. I think I would be more clear if I said only show "regularly about faith." This Am Life is only about religion when the segment is. What I'm talking about is a show that incorporates religion as part of its DNA and does so sincerely.
I was going to say 'This American Life.'
Also Bishops: gays, bad; pedophiles, not-real.
Now don't make me go Ronbo on your ass, Comrade Abe! I have to disagree: the notion that a punchline is necessarily less devout than a spectacle of "sincere" or earnest religiosity is simply wrong, regardless of "underlying intentions", and, frankly, Keillor's regularly parodic take on Lutherans is a case in point. And, if PHC is sui generis, then by definition I won't be able to come up with a comparison that has enough similarity inscribed into its DNA.
Seriously, where has that guy been? I see we will disagree on this. so.... Ill just say it's not just the parodic take, but the whole thread of the show, from jokes to gospel to verse. It is unique i this regard. It doesn't make it better than other shows. Just unique.
Well, I will agree it is unique! Weird thing - I was walking in the park after this exchange and I suddenly remembered a paper I have been planning to write, which I had been thinking about in the park last week; it's called The Tragedy of America, in which I argue that the loss of American "conservativism" to the Republican party's corporatism and specific religious groups has been the modern tragedy of American politics, and that the heart and soul of American conservativism as something other than a cynical facade for corporate and, again, specific religious interests is to be found in the writings of one Garisson Keillor and one Abe Sauer. And then, wham, a week later, Abe Sauer is writing about Garisson Keillor and I'm disagreeing with him. Weird, huh? (Plus, this idea of mine, that Abe Sauer and Garisson Keillor represent the heart of American conservativism made your encounters with Ronbo that much more poignant).
I opted to not include a longer bit about what Keillor represents politically b/c it is wildly interesting and would have taken up to much. He's part lfree-wheeling libertarian, part old-world fiscal hawk, part artsy fartsy liberal. He hated Clinton. Hated Bush more. And has spoken very ill of the politics of many of the very people who listen to him (NPR liberals). He clearly believes in God but has often spoken about its inclusion in government being a travesty. Put my name in a paper AT YOUR OWN RISK.
There is also an insanely amazing article in this month's Harper's regarding infrastructure, manufacturing and the American economy - basically it iterates my thoughts, much more coherently, for the past year or so.
Hell, I wouldn't even put my own name to my paper! And I plan papers called The Tragedy of America in my head every night.
This was nice. I'll tune in to the show and be surprised to hear someone unexpected (like Lambchop for example), but his heavy mouth-breathing can make the monologues, etc. unlistenable sometimes.
I wonder how Garrison Keillor feels about mixed-media marriages.
http://futureupdate.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/california-supreme-court-overturns-law-barring-human-robot-marriage/
Although I can't agree with Future Update's prediction that gay marriage will be legalized by 2013. Not unless all the conservative over-50’s suddenly explode under strain of their inchoate tea-bagging rage, or the White House reveals that Lady Gaga is, in fact, Obama’s stage persona.
plz plz plz let the latter be true.
I think it's pretty hard to think of wide acceptance of gay marriage when there are still at least a dozen states that don't even have the most basic civil right discrimination protections for being gay.
It means Saturday evening in my house. We've spent the day rushing around to soccer, errands, chores, and by 6:00 it's time to open a beer, start cooking, and put on PHC. My daughters used to squeal in disdain, but over the years they remind me it's time to put it on because...it means Saturday evening.
Like Abe, I am roughly the same age as PHC and grew up with Keillor's voice soundtracking my childhood Saturdays in Iowa. As others have noted, his shtick can become grating and predictable, but the show is edgier than people give it credit for, and I remained fond of it into adulthood, perhaps out of nostalgia more than anything else.
So I was thrilled when I moved to the Twin Cities a few years ago and got the opportunity to work with him ... until I realized that he was an absolute nightmare to work for. The relationship ended prematurely, and badly, and I've talked to several others who've had similar experiences. I guess the lesson here is you're probably better off never meeting your idols.
It took me a few years to appreciate him again and detach his art from the person making it. I've been able to listen to the show again, even see the movie, and recognize that his work is very important and he's contributed a lot to our culture. And Abe's right--for midwesterners of our generation I think it's going to be especially hard to reckon with his death, because he is so strongly synonymous with an entire region and an era, both increasingly anachronistic.
I would never ever want to work for the show (not that it would have me) for this very reason. Huge bummer.
"you’re probably better off never meeting your idols."
This is VERY true.
Two notable exceptions:
- Crispin Glover (talked my EAR off!)
- Kenneth Anger (tried to fuck me)
This is the the Philly Station?
Oh god, so much to say about The Breather. It's pretty much known and accepted that he's a dick, right? Michael Feldman (as he likes to say, "Oh sure, Garrison can tell fart jokes and it's considered folklore!") said as much about meeting Keillor when he was young and if you've ever seen Michael Moore talking to Keillor about book tours in The Big One, he's a bit of a lech as well.
But it was a homesick sock in the gut when I sat in my room in NYC listening to a live broadcast from Kresge one summer.
You know, it's funny because so often when I bring up Keillor, many first reactions are "I heard he's a dick." or "You know he's been married, like, three times." And I simply don;t understand these reactions. Is it because people think he moralizes too much? I've read and listened to a ton of his stuff and I think it surprise many how seldom he does moralize (in fact, he's just as often talking about how people fail).
As for Feldman. Talented guy whose career has certainly been helped by Keillor's trailblazing but yet Feldman sincerely resents him for it. It's like (old) Britney hating on Madonna because people always bring her up when talking about Brit's career. Michael didn't seem to care on the way up when the comparison was introducing his show to a wider audience.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/28/arts/a-midwestern-radio-host-wears-keillor-s-shoes.html?n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FPeople%2FK%2FKeillor%2C%20Garrison
but things changed a decade later.
http://www.slate.com/id/21208/
So...
Abe,
I have long thought it would be a worthwhile thing to be Keillor's biographer; it seems you have something of a head start on the project. He is, like Shaft, a complicated man. When people dismiss him as an elitist snob, you can remind them of his wonderful response to seeing an art exhibit in NYC on The End of Civilization: "In Lake Wobegon, civilization isn't ending. Civilization is a job. It's what you do, sitting together over coffee before the sun comes up, putting the world back together." I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it. When people dismiss him as a hack making money off of sentiment, you can point them towards Happy to Be Here or The Book of Guys and suggest that maybe there's something more going on. I'll shut up now. But thank you for this.
Oh, and Storm Home is amazing.
Abe, have you read the weirdly angry syndicated column Keillor just wrote? On the unmitigated gall of non-Christians who dare to mess with Christmas music? http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped1216keillordec16,0,7302414.column
I too grew up on the news from Lake Wobegon. I'm also a big fan of Keillor's writing, though I prefer his early collections of short stories to the later maudlin stuff.
But that column upsets me. It sounds like he's been listening to a lot of talk radio lately. What ever happened to the Keillor who reveled in Episcopalian calm?
Keillor is an angry man sometimes, and that has always been true. His reputation as folklore storyteller of the midwest meek outweighs his often sharp-edged social views. And no target is in his cross hairs more often than the Unitarians. Those who he despises for their inability to cowboy-up and just admit they're atheists (or that they are terrible christians). The other group is pious politicians. Obama talking about God when it's convenient and abandoning his church when it's not. Bush (and his Rove's Right) distorting what "Christian" means). Just like his own storytelling and show, he does't see a reason to "appeal to a wider audience" and he sees the value in being stronger with a smaller audience. That's what that is all about.
Abe @ 148: I suspect you have Keillor's grounds for disliking Unitarians pegged, which does him no favors:
1) It's Unitarian Universalist, not Unitarian.
2) We don't claim to be Christian, just that we roots in Christian heresies dating nearly back to biblical time, with Arianism on one side and Clement and Origen on the other.
3) The most recent survey I've seen on the subject indicates atheism is a minority position among UUs. Among the atheist UUs I know, I am probably in a minority in being a straight-up materialist. My minister's wife, also a minister but for a different congregation, describes herself quite vividly as a "spiritual atheist" and makes it quite clear there's a nonmaterial aspect to what she believes.
4) I feel in good company to be singled out along with Jews and pagans in Keillor's essay. My kind of folks.
5) Garrison Keillor is entitled to whatever view of Jesus he cares to hold, but that doesn't make Jesus his property. Garrison Keillor can take my Jesus when he pries it out of my cold dead fingers.
(Okay, those last two points are me, not Keillor, but it's hard for a math guy to quit with the numbering.)
This is very informative. I think what irks him is that he thinks Unitarians feel themselves free to join in with other more-solely-Christian religions w/r/t things like Christmas but then do not chose to stick with the more dogmatic (i.e. burdensome) aspects. Again, I'm speculating based on years of listening to him. Anyway, Keillor suffers in the same way Cintra Wilson suffered in the NYT; fine while within their highly particular audiences but on thin ice with those not used to reading them.
I'm glad you found it useful.
I, too, am a listener to his show* who remembers both the show that first caught my attention and the show that finally lost my sympathies. There's still a lot I like about him, and I still listen.
It's an interesting question whether the difference between Keillor in performance and Keillor in print is more about craft--he's good at playing his parts on the show--or about radio being a collective medium.
In print, he's got one editor between him and the world**. In radio, dozens of are people work on the production. Feedback from sheer numbers helps get tone right, by helping avoid tone errors.
*who listened Saturday to see if Keillor would comment on this question, which he certainly did.
**though some local papers trimmed parts of his column this time around.