Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 05.02.22

Mr. Keillor,

I’ve always appreciated your work. I remember tuning into the show on Saturday nights and now that seems quaint, like something my grandparents would’ve done. The world in some ways remains the same, but in so many ways has changed. I am glad you’re still writing and sharing your opinion. Maybe it’s because I’m a white male in my early fifties, but in a world that values diversity and inclusion there is one voice that is being turned way down. I’m not angry, and I get it.Why did I think I was so important?

I write, but I carry mail for a living. I get up at four every morning before the job and work on my craft and I get better.

Anyway, I heard the sign-off to The Writer’s Almanac, about being well and doing good work and I thought I’d stay in touch. The world needs all the light it can get, and you bring the world the light that you have. Thank You.

Robert

I guess you and I would disagree about diversity but I’m glad you’re still writing. It isn’t my Anglo maleness that I’m trying to express and I think diversity is about individuals, not race or ethnicity. I think the phrase “people of color” is patronizing and sort of silly. I’ve encountered black queers who are the worst kind of bullies and I pity white liberals who don’t dare stand up to them. But the world belongs to the young and I see some real hope there. I want to live awhile and watch what they do. I don’t expect them to pay attention to me. I write to amuse myself. Good luck.

GK

Hello, Mr. Keillor,

I have long admired your humorous writing and broadcasting. I am 63-years-old and own many collections of humor, from the New Yorker, individual writers, etc.

Something struck me when I was in a used bookstore the other day and came across a collection by S.J. Perelman. I'm no rube, I know who he is, but I was struck by how mannered his writing was. I remember in your Paris Review interview when you described amateur would-be humorists who write in an exaggerated way that comes stomping up the sidewalk and announces itself. I feel like Perelman's type of writing, maybe most humor from that era, commits a form of that writing sin, even if the sin is venal.

Am I all wet or did humorists from the old days create a style that doomed imitators that came after?

Thanks,

Greg Connors

Buffalo, N.Y.

I still admire Perelman but maybe not as much as when I was a high school boychick when I adored him. He was from a different planet of cigar-smokers and peddlers and big-hipped babes and sarcastic mommas and I loved the Yiddish and the dashes of Hollywood satire and the baroque sentence structure. Honestly, I haven’t read him much lately, just as I haven’t bet on the ponies lately or ordered knishes at Katz’s so I’ll have to go back and see what I think. I think he’s a great but does he still make me laugh out loud? I dunno, pal. Time is not a humorist’s friend. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to shoot some seltzer in my pants and see what happens.

GK

Garrison,

You began today’s column with the admonition that “it can be dangerous to tell the truth.” Here are my most treasured thoughts on “truth.”

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.      

~Winston Churchill

There are only two ways to tell the truth. Anonymously and posthumously. 

~Yiddish proverb

Tell the truth and run.

If you’ll stop telling lies about me, I’ll stop telling the truth about you.

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always exceeded the demand.

You concluded the column by writing that, “wisdom comes from experience, and experience includes stupidity.” The key here is understanding the meaning of experience. “Experience is what lets you recognize a mistake when you make it again.”

Enjoy May!!

Coleman Hood

Excellent thoughts, good sir, and now I’m going to try to forget what you wrote.

GK

Hi GK,

“That’s how I feel about COVID. Yes, people suffered, some terribly, but it also had its bright side.” From 4/29/22 posting.

I’ve also been thinking about the bright side of having illusions (delusions?) dissolved. I’m a science teacher who had to quickly move to online methods for 2 years now. While I thought my students wanted to learn no matter what, I’ve found more cheating than I could have guessed. Course averages have gone up by one whole grade. As a scientist, I always have believed truth and facts are better than rosy pretense. Psychologists at my university have explained that we live in a culture, probably from even before the pandemic, where students are feeling more precarity than ever before. As a result, students are doing whatever they feel they must to get credits, get a degree, get finished so they can get a job; they end up paying for credits rather than paying for an education. While in principle that makes me sad to think they will never know the pleasure of expanding their minds, meeting an intellectual goal, or experiencing the profoundness of their humanity, it is more practical for me as a teacher to know the truth with which I am dealing. Maybe I will be able to entice them back to real learning as a chef entices diners to a buffet. It’s a challenge to every teacher’s creativity but living through the pandemic is a bright spot in itself and has made many of us realize, we CAN meet such challenges!

Khrystle

You’re a good teacher, Khrystle, and I admire your work and your dedication. Higher education went through a big long boom after I left academia in 1968 and tuition shot up and the level of instruction got thinner with TAs enlisted to grind out the undergrads and — well, you know the story first-hand. Somehow the good ones like you have held onto high standards and colleges need to fix education and get off the credit assembly line. I’m not a great alum, however: I went to the U of M for appearances’ sake, to look busy, while actually I was writing, writing, writing on my own. Somehow it worked out but I could’ve done just as well by moving to a monastery, if there had been any Brethren monasteries which there weren’t.

GK

GK,

"I worry about the Supreme Court now that it has six federalists who commute to work on horseback." You say that like it's a bad thing. Having a great deal more bureaucrats and officials obliged to commute to work in that manner (as opposed to limos), might do wonders for the American public.

James Rankin

You go ahead and buy a horse and show us how and we’ll consider following suit but I’m a writer and I’ve been working at home for years now.

GK

GK,

Allow me to help you and others get over your fixations about the world’s richest man buying Twitter, supposedly in the name of free speech. My suggestion is to avoid looking for truth or accurate information on any social media platform. I have never given a tweet about Twitter or bothered to interface with the world via Facebook or had an urgent need for an Instagram. Reading daily digital issues of the NY Times and the Washington Post, along with our Austin newspaper, provides me with enough reliable information and free speech opinions to get me safely through the day. Why bother paying any attention at all to political wackos like our Senator Ted Cruz or a hare-brained tweet from Marjorie Taylor Green who thinks we need “Marshall law” as though Matt Dillion was still around somewhere. If Elon Musk wants to deal with this bunch of loonies in the name of free speech, then let him knock himself out with them. Good fiction penned by Flannery O’Connor or Katherine Anne Porter is far more interesting and edifying.

Sherman Conns

Mule Shoe, Texas

Always glad to hear a plug for fiction, sir. I post on Facebook to keep my relatives abreast of what I’m doing. They worry about me because I live in New York and I just want them to know it’s a good place to live and not to worry. I’m not trying to sell them my point of view, just to calm them down.

GK

I just read your article in the Saturday Evening Post. Yes, I subscribe to the diminishing magazine trade: Readers Digest, National Geographic, Reminisce, and I read them, too. My grandfather, Ora Deal, got through the 8th grade, but he read these magazines and had a fabulous collection of National Geographic, and he educated himself. You might be interested to know that he was a member of the Railroad Photographers Club c. 1910, which had its headquarters in the Flatiron Building in New York. He lived in Starkweather, North Dakota on the Great Northern rail line and took photos of every train on the line and traded with other photographers. A total of 4000 photos and negs were given to the Railroad Museum in Mandan, North Dakota but first scanned by the Great Northern Railroad club. He was a great fellow; loved Will Rogers humor and looked like that old time actor with the big mouth. I will be 80 in September this year, right after you, and I have written to you in the past. I am married to Jim Tollefson; not the guy who was in your high school class, but my Jim was born in Inglewood, California. I called him the Neise Norwegian who never saw Minnesota, but in 1999 when he retired, we did go to visit uncles in Moose Lake. I visited on my own in 1994; rented a car and they gave me a fancy sports car, which was fun. I drove it to Anoka, and looked around for a lake. I then headed up north to visit the uncles on a side road that took me through farmlands, and then I had to pee and there was nothing in sight. I was worried I would have to pee on the side of the road, not easy for a city girl. Anyway, I saw an intersection with a tavern on one corner and a gas station on the other corner. Tractors and farm trucks were there, and I scooted in with my fancy sports car and threw open the door to a surprised bunch of farmers who were chatting. I asked, "Where is the ladies’?" and they all pointed to the northeast corner of the store. I ran, and there was a mouse in there, and I did not care. When I came out, they were all gone; haha! I must have broken up something and frightened them. Well. I wonder if you are reading this long jabbering thing. I want to tell you I am still a great fan of yours and want to read it all. I got to see you in person some years back in Thousand Oaks, California; it was a great show more than 90 minutes. How do you carry on so long? We loved it. Whatever you are, however you go, keep on trucking. I am also writing my memoirs of when I first moved away from home at 19 and went to San Francisco; I’m trying to figure out HOW TO START THE DARN THING. How do you start writing a story? What is a good line? I am stuck there. I have the rest written. Much happiness to you and your family. I figure about 10 more years, too. Just organized a time capsule for my high school class;a big trunk full of stuff to be opened in 2042 when we will be 100. I wonder if I will be there to see it opened. That is 20 years from now.   

So nice to read your stories...

Diane

I love your jabbering, Diane. Start your memoir with this:

“I will be 80 in September this year and am married to Jim Tollefson, a Norwegian from Inglewood, California, who never saw Minnesota until 1999 when he retired and we went to visit my uncles in Moose Lake. I rented a car a fancy sports car, which was fun, and drove it to Anoka, and headed up north on a side road and then had to pee and was worried I’d have to pee on the side of the road, not easy for a city girl, but then saw an intersection with a tavern on one corner and a gas station on the other corner.” I’ve taken the liberty of combining two trips into one, but the paragraph then takes you into the room with the farmers and you want to do some description here and then you pee and meanwhile let’s have Jim talk to the farmers. The paragraph opens up several narrative avenues ––– what did Jim retire from? How did you meet him? You’re heading for the uncles and this leads to some family history, and you can choose what avenues lead to stories you want to tell, but the need to pee is an excellent start, an urgent universal experience. More detail. Let things open up. Find some conflict between you and Jim. And good luck.

GK

GK,

Thank you for writing The Lake Wobegon Virus. I enjoyed it. Facts can be stranger than fiction. I have spent a lifetime in my town of under 2000 on the prairie near Worthington. I have written a 4750-word description of some inhabitants of my town, which I fear should not be read by anyone. I should, as Kurt Vonnegut suggests: Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. Yet my ego suggests I ask you to read it and then destroy my short work of non-fiction right after reading it. If you are interested, I will mail or email it to you. Let me know.     

Patrick Costello                                         

P.S. Only one person has ever read it — an editor at the Star Tribune who did agree to destroy it after reading it. He was as ambivalent as I am about what to do with it.

The Star-Tribune is an empty shell of a newspaper and ambivalence is its standard style. Why would you ever send them anything you care about? You suggest that your writing is incendiary and dangerous, and if so, you should publish it locally where the people described therein can read about themselves. I didn’t go away to New York to talk about Minnesota, I did it in a series of small local theaters that were open to the people I wanted to talk about. My stories weren’t incendiary –– I got over that in my twenties. So I’m not the right one to give you an opinion. Write a book proposal, include the best part of the 4750 words, and send it to a New York publisher with the briefest of cover letters, and I hope they are intrigued and offer you a half-million-dollar advance. That’s the best reason for writing incendiary stuff, to earn money and build a fence around your property and raise horses and ride around in a carriage, wearing a top hat and tails. Good luck.

GK

GK,

You have spent the time of your work life using poetry, storytelling, and music to connect one human being to another. You have done so in a manner that was based on respect for the other people walking this planet with you. Thus, I was disappointed in you when I read your comment regarding gender: "Be who you want to be but don’t expect me to call you them or it or us." I expected more of you than this. I expected that you would be a person of simple human decency who calls people what they prefer to be called.  I don't refer to you as Gary. Your dotage does not give you a pass on treating people with respect.

Jane Rice

Jane, if you called me Gary, I’d be pleased. It’s the name my mother gave me. If you called me Greg, I’d gently correct you. If you mistook me for David Sedaris, I’d be honored. If you ignored me entirely, I wouldn’t be offended. I’m not the least offended by your criticism. I wish you well, especially now that spring is in the air and soon we’ll be able to eat lunch outdoors. If you see me, say hi.

GK

Dear Mr. Keillor,

I just finished reading Boom Town and it is now my favorite Garrison Keillor novel. I helped nurse my mother-in-law through end-stage pancreatic cancer, so your depiction of Arlene's illness drew me into your book, and the story kept me locked into it.

Pancreatic cancer is not a gentle disease, and morphine is blessing. My mother-in-law agreed with Arlene about using euphemisms to describe death — she very definitely did not "pass," she died. She was determined see one more spring before she died and held on to life fiercely until the early morning of the first day of spring, when she died in her sleep. She was a wonderful and strong woman. One of her dying requests was that we would take care of my father-in-law. Of course, we said yes, but she didn't have to ask. He resisted at first, but eventually realized that his wife was right, that life would be easier for him if he allowed his son and me to help. Now he lives with us and makes life more interesting (in a good way!).

My favorite passage is when Arlene's granddaughter "...wakes her grandma from a nap, whispering — Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? And Arlene says, “I love you, my little soft animal.”

You've written a book full of sadness and joy and humor and pain and managed to weave it all into a wonderful story. Thank you very much for doing this. Lake Wobegon will always live on in my imagination.

Sincerely,
J.L. 

Your letter means more to me than any book review, my dear. Your enjoyment of the book and the dying Arlene as you cared for your mother makes you my all-time favorite reader. It seems that I must’ve written the book for you and to have one reader as good as you is all I need. You’ve made my week, maybe my month. I’m started on a new novel called THE HIGHBOYS and I don’t know where it’ll go but I hope it will mean something to one reader who will then write and tell me so. God bless you.

GK

Dear Garrison Keillor,

My television broke about four weeks ago. Usually, I sit before the TV when I eat my meals. Instead of TV, I get out my collection of your tapes from the 1980s. I think you are a genius. These tapes are so funny or touching, so full of wisdom. I want to thank you for this. Your humor has blessed my life. I am wishing you well.

Helen M Winkle

Thank you my dear Helen Winkle,

Your note has made my eyes twinkle.

That my monologues

With beans and hot dogs

Have done you more good than a drink’ll.

GK

Hi, Garrison,

Your examples of kindness demonstrated made me recall one I experienced that has served as a benchmark ever since. Years ago, I was a small-city girl living in a much bigger city (Philadelphia) and I was walking back to my apartment, distraught in tears over my lost wallet. (I had been at a movie and it fell out of my pocket — I noticed its absence on my way home and had rushed back to the theatre, but it was nowhere to be found.) On the way, there was a young woman herding a stair-step family coming towards me; she looked rather harried, and their clothing appeared threadbare. As we passed, she looked at me and said, “Miss? Are you all right?” I don’t recall my exact words, but I clearly remember what was in my mind: “I should be asking if YOU’RE all right!” It blew me away — here was someone who probably had plenty of problems of her own, yet she showed concern for ME. I will never forget it. (And kindness was definitely in the air — the next day, which happened to be Easter, I decided to take one last check at the theatre…someone had turned in my wallet, still containing my lone credit card, only missing the roughly $5 in cash that had been in there.)

Pat McC.

Pat, I was hoping you’d get your wallet back. It was sweet of you to be alarmed at her sympathy for you. All the story needs is for the wallet to be returned to you by a wealthy man who turns out to be an uncle you never knew you had and the threadbare lady is his daughter who wears rags as atonement for a terrible thing she did. I do think the story needs a terrible deed in it somewhere.

GK

Mr. Garrison Keillor,

Thank you, as well as the guests, cast, and crew, for the wonderful Prairie Home Companion Revival show last night at the Buell Theater. Listening to the PHC was a Saturday night, or Sunday morning, tradition for my Minnesota family. I wanted to see the show live since I was little but didn't get a chance. So, thank you for bringing the show back for this night and giving me a chance to fulfill a dream.

Very respectfully,
Danielle

Danielle, I heard a woman cheering loudly in the orchestra section and she sang beautifully in the “Star-Spangled Banner” and also on “I Saw Her Standing There” and I wonder if that wasn’t you.

GK

Sir,

As an English major, to answer your question about novels written by and set in Canada, may I recommend Ann of Green Gables by Lucy Maud (LM) Montgomery. This 8 volume "novel" considered a classic of children's fiction was both written in and about Prince Edward Island, in 1908, about a mix-up whereby a farm couple asking for little boy to assist with chores are sent a little red-headed spitfire girl from the orphanage. 50 million copies have been printed. I did not read it until this year, but it is a captivating series.

Jo Schaper

Pacific, Missouri

Jo, that book is a favorite of my great-niece Annabelle down in Tallahassee who is an avid reader at the age of nine and is something of a spitfire herself. When I was her age, I was reading Tom Sawyer and Penrod which are not nearly so good.

GK

Yo GK,

Last week you mentioned this: "Are there novels set in Canada? I don’t know of any."

And I thought, "Oh my goodness! Has Mr. K never experienced the novels of Robertson Davies?"

If so, you're in luck. You have the opportunity to experience his work for the first time. I recommend starting with the Salterton Trilogy. Just the right mixture of humor and gravity.

Tempest-Tost
Leven of Malice
A Mixture of Frailties

Doodah,
Bradford

Bradford, if only there were world enough and time, but my eyesight is fading and I have books of my own to write and that’s what I do and when my eyes are tired, I put a cold compress on them and lie around listening to music. Maybe I should buy audio books — what do you think? I’m not sure I have the patience to sit and be read to. This is a dilemma. I shall brood about it for a while.

GK

Dear Garrison,

I wrote a piece a while ago about my first lie, or at least the first I remember. I told my mother that when she had left me at my grandparent’s farm in Sweden, my uncle had given me a ride in his motorboat and I had fallen out and had to splash around until he came back and picked men up. When I told her this, the Second World War had started, and I figured there was little chance of being discovered, the mail being what it was. Well, when the war ended, she went back to visit, asked about it, discovered it hadn’t happened. We agreed I must have dreamed it, but that was another lie.

When I thought about it, I remembered the young man from Lake Wobegon strolling along with a girl he’s just met at the ice-skating pond and wanting to impress her. “I wasn’t so sure what I could show her in Lake Wobegon that would be interesting, so I made up a story about a woman named Lydia Farrell who had lived here in love with the memory of a boy who had drowned. I picked out Florian Krebsbach’s house as the home where Lydia spent fifty years in solitude…. It surprised me how easily I did this and kept her interested.”

As I was writing my piece I found this in the editorial pages of The New York Times 1/5/18.

“Should parents be troubled when their kids start to deceive them?... Odds are, most of us would say yes. But research suggests the opposite is true. Lying is not only normal; it’s also a sign of intelligence…. Why do some children start lying at an earlier age than others? What separates them from their more honest peers? The short answer is that they are smarter.”

And beyond, maybe they’re on their way to being storytellers, novelists, poets. They’re just doing their finger exercises. I thank you for the years of pleasure your story telling has brought me. My Swedish parents never made it to Minnesota, but I feel at home in Lake Wobegon anyway.

Nils Peterson (now living in a senior home in Seattle, dancing in a daily ballet of walker pushers and near a daughter.)

Nils, I am going to cling to your idea that lying is a sign of intelligence. I do wonder why your mother remembered your falling-out-of-the-boat story through the chaos and drama of World War II and asked the uncle about it. To me, that is more extraordinary than the lie. But now we’re too old for making up stories, we have a treasury of true stories for anyone who’s interested. I did a show in Indiana the other night and talked about my childhood and the audience stayed with me all the way. Finally, a fundamentalist youth pays off.

GK

I've just finished Boom Town, and I laughed and (nearly) cried and loved every sentence. Your novels — and your weekly columns, for that matter — are like rollicking rides through magical realism, brilliant satire, deeply sympathetic portraits, and just plain silliness (as in all the made-up songs). I am in awe, imagining how your mind ricochets from topic to topic. It is all fascinating. Don't ever stop. Thank you sincerely.

Kate Johnson

Kate, you’re a good soul to write a kind note to a struggling author and I thank you for that. It makes me wish I’d written to John Updike and John Cheever and Patricia Hampl and Ian Frazier and other writers who’ve meant a lot to me. Instead, I just closed their book and imagined how proud I’d be if I had written it. Isn’t that terrible? You’re a better person than I and I salute you.

GK

Mr. Keillor,

I had to chuckle at your column mentioning Robert Mapplethrope's bull whip photo and Sen. Al Simpson's drunken cowboy story. When I was in my 20s and living in Austin, Texas my best friend Jason Warren Meeker and I were in a book shop on Congress Avenue. The Mapplethrope pictures had just erupted and Jason, a Democrat, wanted to shock me, a Republican, with the photos. He opened a Mapplethrope book up to the notorious bull whip photo and I turned to him and said, "But can he crack that whip?"  My friend Jason gave his signature laugh. I had bested him. Living in Wyoming now some twenty odd years, I have had the good fortune to be around Senator Simpson many times. Thank you for sharing the story about the drunk cowboys. I can't wait to ask him about it. My husband and I were at the Red Rocks/Buell Theater show. Opening with the National Anthem acapella was the most unified I felt with people in forever. My heart was filled. Big Al would have approved and sang loudly. Thank you.

Warmest regards,

Annemarie of Wyoming

Annemarie, Al Simpson will always be a hero in my book and I’m glad he has good friends out there in the wilderness of Wyoming. I keep wishing I’d run into him on Columbus Avenue and 86th and we’d sit down in a sidewalk café and discuss our ancestors. Say hello to him from me.

GK