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Comments from the week of 06.11.23

Hello, Garrison.

I was wondering if you enjoy reading things by David Sedaris and Bill Bryson, and if you know either author personally. Although your styles and subject matter are not that similar, still I feel there is a kind of link between you. You and David Sedaris have written humorous stuff for The New Yorker, and you are both linked to Public Radio, and both now live in New York City. Bill Bryson grew up in Des Moines so there are those links. But there seems to me to be another deeper link.

Also, have you ever considered writing a novel or story collection featuring Bob, the Young Artist?

Look forward to seeing your show in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, in August. You seem to be doing pretty well, I’d say, if they needed to add another show because the first one was sold out!

Still listening and Reading,

E. Welles

Sedaris and Bryson are younger than I and far more worldly and hip, and Bryson is much smarter and is a hiker, which I’m not, and lives in England, which sets him apart, but I loved his A Short History of Everything. I’ve loved Sedaris’s humor and his memoiristic stuff and he once walked over and said hello to me at a fancy literary affair and we talked like instant pals. I felt an immediate kinship with him. Very mysterious. I haven’t read much for a long time, due to overscheduling and flurries of work and obligation, and then some eye problems, but I mean to get back to it in my old age as soon as I give up writing and doing shows. I find it intimidating to read talented writers; I am inspired to write by reading crappy pretentious bullshit. It’s the truth, Ruth. GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

A friend heard you on the radio that night in 1980 taking calls and spinning records on the night John Lennon died. What do you remember about that night?

Keep it up, please.
Dan Lawton

I don’t remember doing that and it doesn’t sound like something I would’ve done. I still think about him all these years later and a few weeks ago I went to an ophthalmologist whose office is across 72^nd Street from where it happened. She works with kids with vision problems and her waiting room was full of busy cheerful kids and the contrast between that and the entrance to the Dakota where the guy shot Lennon was very powerful. I didn’t want those kids to be burdened by the knowledge of the fragility of life, I wanted them to be engrossed in their fun and curiosity about the world. He died a quick death, a merciful thing, and I have prayed for his resilient family. A long and graceful old age was stolen from him in a few minutes. A reminder to savor the present because it can easily be lost. GK

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Oh boy, Garrison,

Picking on Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now? My first impulse was umbrage, but then: it was one of her first songs, written at age 23, after her divorce, an early effort which she herself has called naïve.

Please try Mitchell’s more mature “Shades of Scarlet Conquering” — an excellent poem on its own — or “Night Ride Home,” with its lovely, evocative chords, a choir of digital crickets from Thomas Dolby, and a verse featuring a “big dark horse” on the road at night.

Stupid songs? Just try to imagine the Class of 2000 at their 25^th class reunion, as everyone joins in on a rousing chorus of “Back That Azz Up.”

Now, take my advice: if you haven’t read Moby-Dick, DON’T. I read Moby-Dick. The smell of fish guts made my eyes water, and I got through it by opening a window and turning twenty pages at a time. I read it only because Bob Dylan mentioned it in his Pulitzer talk, and I don’t believe for a minute that he actually read it — he was jerking our chain. That Bob! What a rascal! Moby-Dick is the most tedious book I ever read, with Michener’s glacial-paced Alaska (which I received as a gift and gave back) a close second. And I’ve read lots (420 on my Kindle alone).

We live in an age in which one’s opinion is best kept to oneself. You simply cannot be on both sides now. Accordingly, I take back everything I said above. All of it. I — I was just, I don’t know — it was a spasm. I deeply regret it, especially the part where I compared a Great American Nautical Adventure novel (which had gone out of print at the time of its author’s death — nuff sed) to a heap of rotting fish guts.

Best,

Cliff Adams

Fort Mitchell, Kentucky

Thanks for your brisk rebuke and you needn’t regret it. Numerous people over the years walk up to an author and admire him and it’s sort of refreshing when someone spits on his shoe. I don’t mind at all. My pal Jon Pankake has read Melville’s novel twelve times and enjoyed it afresh each time. He says it’s a comedy. So I’m planning to look at it eventually. GK

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Hello, Garrison.

Devilled eggs were an important staple in my Mennonite childhood home; did your childhood home allow them?

My spell checker doesn’t like the way I spelled devilled, and I hope you still understand what I mean.

Thanks,
Dolores Nice-Siegenthaler

They were a great delicacy, usually served as garnish atop a green salad, and when I eat one I think of my aunt Elsie who made excellent ones and served them as appetizers. When I go to a restaurant, I miss that appetizer tray that the waiter (long ago) brought to the table, with celery, radishes, and devilled eggs. Somewhere there is a café that still does this and it’s probably in Iowa or Kansas and I hope to find it. GK

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Hello again, Mr. K.

Mr. Ziegler of Branford, Connecticut, is finding it “difficult and jarring” to use “they” in regard to one person who has defined themself as nonbinary. As you don’t know any nonbinary folks, you weren’t able to help.

Well, I do know one. The Grumpy Teen, whom I mentioned in our recent correspondence, was born female and defines themself as nonbinary. They now use a name other than the one we gave them at birth.

As a former English major, I agree that they/them is a clunky usage. And I hope we have a better one soon.

In the meantime, familiarity and consistency will help with the awkwardness. I’m a cranky, aging, straight lady, but I’ve learned a whole helluva lot since the GT came out three years ago.

By whatever pronoun, and whatever identity, they are the joy of my life.

Sincerely again,
Stephanie

Love and confusion and exasperation all in one letter: that is the gift of being a parent, constant crosscurrents. (I thank you for not using the word “journey.”) I’d never try to talk a GT out of their conviction but I would not hesitate to express my own feeling, which is: there is vast freedom within M or F and a GT maybe needs to find out more about this before switching teams. But love directs us to accept each other, a daily form of forgiveness. GK

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Dear Garrison,

After years of research, I have released a book that proves, beyond all doubt, that the French Impressionist master Claude Monet designed Yankee Stadium. (Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, Monet passed over to another realm in 1926.) It’s called Claude Monet Designs Yankee Stadium — A Love Story. 

Alas, his designs weren’t used (the haystacks in the outfield were especially problematic, as was the Japanese bridge from first base to third). But the paintings have been discovered. The fact that more people don’t know about this points to a conspiracy in the art world so vast we may not know its entire ramifications in our lifetime. Any help you can provide would be appreciated. I’m a fan of both your show and the Lake Wobegon Whippets.

R. Lee Procter

I like your thinking, the idea of a conspiracy arrayed against you and Claude, and you just need to build it up into the most outrageous and vicious conspiracy in the history of art conducted by lunatic misfits on steroids who run the fake news. No reason to hold back. GK

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I am writing because I am so pleased to have found you here. I listened to News from Lake Wobegon for many years, till it ceased. I was quite upset when this happened. It changed by weekly routine! I was upset with you if these claims were true because, selfishly I wished to continue listening. I am not here to assess and judge what occurred. I am too far removed but I agree: boundaries have moved, and norms have evolved. I am a lover of language and its clever, nuanced usage. You do it so well.

As I find myself on the upper west side of 45 and a mother with four terrible and incredible and awful and beautiful humans to call mine, I am grateful that reflections on life, such as yours, with humour and honesty are still shared. It helps my soul rest.

Most of my listening was done from Melbourne, Australia, but now I find myself amongst banana palms and black cockatoos in the tropics of Darwin. If life winds me that way, I may get to one of your shows sometime.

Thank you,

Katie

It’s a pleasure imagining you listening to the show from Australia and I’m sorry the show ceased in 2016 and sorry about the allegations made in 2017 that upset you. It was a weird shakedown attempt that went wrong — a man who’d been fired by Minnesota Public Radio and they wound up throwing me out the door, but it turned out to be a marvelous gift. It brought my wife and me closer together and that meant everything to me and I found out who my true friends are. Friendship is what it’s all about, what it’s always been about. That has been the beauty side of what seemed like a catastrophe. I wish you well with your four humans and hope we meet someday. GK

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Hi, Garrison.

You are spot on about the benefits of getting out there and walking with the stimulation of humanity all around you. I live in Scranton, which is a small city with a small-town feel, and exchanges like yours with the phlebotomist are not uncommon at the grocery store. But it is easy to take a day trip to New York City, and I spend the whole day walking all over and soaking up the action that surrounds me (plus you can find a wonderful variety of ethnic cuisine, unlike here at home — we finally got a Vietnamese restaurant in Scranton, but it took several years). You can be solitary there without feeling lonely.

Best,
Pat McC.

Glad you enjoy the great metropolis, sir, and glad that Scranton still has a small-town feel. That feel is vulnerable, as we all know, and easily lost in the hustle of contemporary life, people constantly checking their phones for texts, people walking down the street talking to their earbuds, and it’s up to us old people to maintain the old custom of making small talk with strangers and paying attention to what’s happening in our vicinity. If we maintain the close-up style, younger people may catch on and imitate it. GK

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Garrison,

I want to share with you my gesture toward “honoring the men who went ashore.” It’s a poem entitled Captain John Miller, the lead character in the film Saving Private Ryan. Since you are well read, you will notice that the poem pays an homage to both John McRae (In Flanders Fields) and Alan Seeger (I Have A Rendezvous With Death). At any rate, I sought to honor the men who went ashore.

Coleman Hood

Captain John Miller
 
Had I not died upon that barricade,
did I not lie beneath Spring’s shade,
if my time had been fulfilled,
had life not been so suddenly stilled,
 
had Death crossed alone that battered hill,
postponed its claim on another kill,
left me alive rather than dead,
pillowed in silk upon my bed,
 
had I awaited that rendezvous in vain,
or deserted the grave in which I was lain,
if I was allowed to finish the game,
would the world have been the same?
 
I see them now, sifted row by row,
lost opportunities like poppies blow.
Dreams of a generation collect
dust beneath a shroud of neglect.
 
What might I have done with my life…
fallen in love and taken a wife?
To her and to ours have been true,
to have known hello before adieu?
 
Perhaps a chance mankind to serve,
to know my duty and never swerve.
Would it matter if I should live,
and to the greater good I give?
 
Have I not done exactly this?
Can I not also enter Bliss?
Fate alike awaits us all,
each subdued by Death’s dark thrall.
 
Those who hold the torch on high,
keep the faith until you die.
I shall have to be content
with my life as it was spent.

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To buy Garrison Keillor’s new book, Cheerfulness, CLICK HERE.