Post to the Host

Comments from the week of 5.30.21

Join us for our first events back on the stage. (There just may be an additional date added soon).

Dear Garrison,

Our relationship has always been one-sided of course, you the storyteller and I the listener. For most of 40 years it has been this way except when you absconded to Copenhagen, for which I have only recently forgiven you. Here’s the thing: since you have been entertaining all of us on this most recent platform, you print many letters from people who seemingly have an axe to grind about one thing or the other that you have said. Has it always been this way, people breaking your balls for not agreeing with you? Seems to me that less than half of the voting public could use a little more roughage or go to underwear a size or two larger.

Your friend,

Mike M., Fowlerville, MI

Mike, I’ve regretted that move to Copenhagen a hundred times. It was the spring of 1987 and I felt invincible and imagined that living in a foreign city would make me a great novelist, as happened to Graham Greene and Robert Louis Stevenson and Dostoevsky and any number of others. And prosperity was a factor, which is a dangerous force. And it is a beautiful city. I had an apartment in Østerbro, near the train station and near the Soviet embassy, and I sat in a little maid’s room off the kitchen and wrote on a big word processor. The novel was a disaster, and I knew it but kept working, thinking I’d find the golden thread eventually, and meanwhile the Soviet Union was falling, and Danish communists were in the street protesting the liberalizations of Gorbachev and I was trying to be Danish, speaking fourth-grade Danish to Danish friends who read Cheever and Updike in English — a crazy life. I admitted defeat, came home, and Bill Kling let me go back to the radio show for another thirty years and so it had a happy ending. No letter-writers have stung me nearly so painfully as I stung myself.

GK

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GK,
I am a bit confused. Not something unusual for a Baptist minister from the South who is pastoring in Nova Scotia. But after reading your post I thought, “So it was a seizure not a stroke. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Can you help me? Just don’t know how to pray. But that is what my sermon is about this week.

Don F., Port Williams United Baptist Church, NS

A seizure is a little electric burst on the circuit that has temporary effect, but strokes come in various sizes and models and can debilitate a person and turn you into a pumpkin. I’ve had a couple strokes, which have not done much damage, and the incident a week ago was a blip, by comparison. Don’t pray for a seizure sufferer, not worth your time. But you could pray for the wives of old men, who have seen them flopping around unconscious and who worry it may happen again. She watches me more closely than one person should watch another.

GK

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I empathize with your seizure experience. I’ve had a half-dozen scary but minor incidents of Transient Global Amnesia: for an hour or two you lose the ability to form new memories. It can be hard to detect; it presents much like an anxiety attack. I make things easy for my family by reacting the same way every time. I say, “I was never athletic or good looking, all I had was my mind and now it’s gone.” I then proceed to tell stories of my time as a UPI reporter in 1976. Then I recover. They’re quite nice about it at the hospital.

Paul S.

This is very courtly of you, sir. I shall remember it for next time. My seizures aren’t so global, are more territorial, even peninsular. I can’t form words for a minute or so and I experience momentary strategic memory gaps, such as the name of my doctor. My own phone number. There’s no reason to feel panic about a minute of silence: shut up and enjoy it, I say. Meanwhile, I experience wonderful new benefits, such as being awakened in the pre-dawn by fine ideas that I pull out paper and write down. This didn’t happen to me back in pre-seizure times. I also have excellent dreadful ideas such as this morning when I woke up around 4 a.m. thinking I’d start a weekly radio show called “The River Road Show” that’d be like Prairie Home but we’d do the show in cities and towns along the Mississippi, from Bemidji to New Orleans and there’d be a blues singer, a country band, a young comedian, a teenage talent, and I’d be the announcer. It was all very clear in my mind. I am now disposing of it.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

I just finished watching (and thoroughly enjoyed) Ken Burns’ new documentary on Ernest Hemingway. I was surprised to learn how many concussions and head wounds he suffered in his lifetime and it got me wondering if this has happened to any other of the great writers. Have you ever had a concussion or a blow to the head? Just asking, but it would explain a lot.

Your friend and fan,

Dave

Dave, I’m not a great writer and I’ve never been concussed. Dr. Mork in Anoka refused to give permission for me to play football back in 1954 because he heard my “clicky” heartbeat and so I avoided a lot of trouble. Hemingway was an adventurous man, taking after his father, feeling it was his duty. Added to the injuries was his indulgence in alcohol and then, as a celebrity, he got dreadful medical care. We aging writers look to Joyce Carol Oates and John McPhee and Bill Merwin as models, excellent productivity over a long peaceful lifetime.

GK

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Dear Mr. Keillor,

My husband grew up in Minneapolis, lying on the living room rug listening to you on the radio and sometimes going to your shows in person. His mother remembers that the audience was offered free beer as an inducement to show up. But in 1975 or 1976, the family stood in line outside the theater in Saint Paul, and your suddenly very popular show sold out before they could get in. It was a first. My husband, then a toddler, was bawling in the parking lot when you walked by, and you stopped to ask why he was crying. My mother-in-law told you, “Because we didn’t get in!” So you gallantly offered to dedicate the show to him as a consolation, which you did. 

With gratitude and warm regards,

Emily

I don’t remember the free beer but that certainly explains the sudden popularity of the show. Beer has always been connected to comedy, going back to Shakespeare’s crowd at the Globe. I was once forced to sit and listen to one of those old shows and it was painful, the pretentiousness of my voice — I was trying to sound Southern and rural — and the self-consciousness of it and the awkward stabs at comedy. But maybe after a pint of Grain Belt, it got better. As for the meaningless gesture I made to the weeping toddler, if you’ll send me your husband’s address, Emily, I’ll send him an autographed copy of my memoir and my new novel — he’ll be the first person on his block to have one.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

In a recent correspondence you wrote, “... it’s nice of you to imagine me having a big troglodyte readership ....” Surely you should have written, “... imagine MY having ....” I was taught, many years ago, that a gerund must be preceded by a possessive pronoun. I have noticed over the past few years that many excellent writers, such as yourself, have eschewed this practice. Did they change the rules when I wasn’t looking?

Thanks for all your wonderful columns and responses to readers. I enjoy them immensely.

Jean L.

Jean, it’s a pleasure to imagine my having close readers who pay attention to possessive pronouns and I feel possessive about them. I learned grammar from listening to my parents talk to each other and they learned theirs from reading the King James and by the time I got to college I was talking and writing in a voice I got from them and my grandma, a teacher, and wasn’t all that affected by the study of grammar. But I’m grateful to be corrected.

GK

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Mr. Keillor,

Concerning the post about soldiers/sailors going to Japan in 1945 — my dad was one of them. After V-E Day, he and every one of my uncles were headed to Japan for whatever came next — they didn’t know. They were just doing what they had to do. If the war had gone on much longer, there might never have been me (born in October 1946), my four younger sisters and a score of cousins.

Dad and his brothers and brothers-in-law went on to live long, productive lives, raising their families well — but never talking about the war, until the 90s, when they told stories to the grands and great-grands. We grown-up kids listened in — and learned why dad never wanted to go to the beach. His stories about life on a ship and life as an enlisted man were reality.

I am typing this on Memorial Day. We called it Decoration Day, the day to put the flowers on our parents’ and grandparents’ graves. My Uncle Mike, a shy man who served with the Army Air Corps in Britain, loading live bombs into the bombers headed to Germany. I asked how he could do that. He looked at me with a half-smile and said, “We were young and thought nothing would ever happen to us.” You do what has to be done. 

Nancy G.

They kept quiet about the war out of deference to the dead. Men went to Europe and the Pacific who never came back. My mother-in-law lost a beloved cousin to the war and she could not bring herself to talk about it.

GK

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Mr. Keillor,

My son is finishing up his first year of college and is thinking of majoring in English, and I would love to know your thoughts about whether this is a worthwhile thing for him to do. Wouldn’t it be better to go into an engineering, math, or science field? Not everyone becomes a best-selling author like you, and I’d like him to be able to earn a livable wage.

Concerned Mom

Your son will follow his enthusiasm and ambition and find some good teachers and that will lead him off in directions unknown. I think the Department of English is one of the worst places to go since it’s been so thoroughly politicized and demented, and the pleasure of language has been completely leached out. Mortuary Science is a celebration compared to the English Dept. Take notice of what he’s reading and read the works for yourself and maybe start up a conversation. If he insists on majoring in English, offer to pay him for two years to sit in a rented room in a small town and read all the classics from Chaucer to Cheever and Jane Austen and Dickens and not skip Henry James and the Brontës and Twain and do Shakespeare, of course, and Shelley and Hardy, but no criticism — keep him away from the teachers. During those two years, he’ll likely find a lover and if, as odds favor, she’s a woman, then a family is likely, and they’ll need to think about income. Best-selling authors don’t come out of the English Department: it is there to kill their interest, so English grads tend to become English teachers, and this is perilous work. You can be the greatest Shakespeare scholar in the land but if two students accuse you of insensitivity to people with freckles and brown eyes, you’re likely to be thrown in the ditch. This sort of nonsense doesn’t go on in engineering or math because in those fields, there is a clear demarcation of competence, unlike in the humanities where it is entirely a beauty contest. Good luck to you both and if you’ve been neglecting prayer in your life, now is the time to resume.

GK

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Garrison, 

I cared for my mother for 10 years until her passing at 93. It’s hard to keep an old lady, nearly deaf, nearly blind and nearly crippled entertained and hopeful. All her friends had died and etc., you know the rest. 

The best thing I ever did for her besides morning coffee and fresh ice water (she loved it) was one of your books on CD and headphones … a church picnic, a long table full of food and a hungry dog who jumped up on the table and bad things happened, slip-sliding along.

I thought she was going to die laughing. So did she. And all through the book her laughter echoed through the house. My mother thanked you, and I thank you. 

Clay B.

Clay B., I am not the caregiver you are, and I feel bad about that, as I should. I’ve been guilty of neglecting relatives and friends as they drift into the shadows of old age and if justice prevails, I shall wind up alone in a home for destitute authors, a toothless geezer gumming his gruel, but your note is a sweet surprise. I did some good, I made somebody laugh who deserved to. Thanks.

GK

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Hi, Garrison.
Your crack to Monsignor Bob about not “getting” the parable of the unjust steward reminded me of my Catholic upbringing. Every year on some Sunday the parable was included in the readings. At Mass end, my brothers and I would just shake our heads in puzzlement. Didn’t Jesus get it? Did he not realize that that was the way the world went? Or maybe it was only that in Brooklyn, in St. Paul’s parish, near the docks, in the 1950s that stuff like “that” went on. We were puzzled but kept the discussion amongst the three brothers. No need to get a smack from Mom or Dad. As it goes today, when you want to escape responsibility for what you just said … “I’m just saying …”

Brian H.

Garrison, I’m delighted that you’re puzzled by the parable of the unjust steward. I was clergy for 15 years and still sometimes sub for ministers who need a week off, and this parable is my all-time fave. I love it because it’s so shocking on the surface — but once you understand it, its message is so simple and good. The manager wasn’t crooked; he controlled prices and inventory. He could charm customers with special benefits anytime he wanted. In this story, I’m the manager, and God is the owner of the business. The owner doesn’t bust the manager for doing something wrong; he commends the manager for doing something of real and lasting value. Jesus is saying, invest your time, energy, and expertise in things of lasting value: Love people, help people, build people up. That, at the end of your days, will be a life well lived. Amen.

Doug B.

Doug, now I understand the parable of the unjust steward even less than I thought I did. I think the point of the parable is that the more often it’s explained to you by smart people, the more confused you become. So take it on faith. That goes for you too, Brian.

GK

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In high school, I was asked by my English teacher to read a poem at the cemetery on Memorial Day, “In Flanders Field” — “Where the poppies blow between the crosses, row on row.” I did not understand why the farmers, mechanics, teachers, the town librarian, and veterans, a few in their uniforms, one in a wheelchair, several using canes or walkers, dispersed quietly after the reading, without the customary handshake or greeting. Some were tearful. 

Now at 80, with many of my friends still “shell-shocked,” still counseling for PTSD, still reflecting on The Red Badge of Courage, which was required reading in my high school, I now understand a little more about Memorial Day.

Michael F.

Memorial Day is a great tradition but the memory of those good men and women is not found in cemeteries but in history books and especially with our recent wars, Korea and Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s important to read honest accounts of the conflict and the political forces that sent our people over.

GK

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Hi, Garrison.

I have read many of your books and I’m wondering what you’re working on right now. I finished The Lake Wobegon Virus and That Time of Year. What’s next?

Scott

I just finished a new novel, Boom Year, about Lake Wobegon undergoing an invasion of millennial entrepreneurs who earn fortunes from manufacturing artisanal firewood and organic manure and gourmet meatloaf and breeding composting worms and raising cockapoos trained to do childcare. I’m in it and my wife, Giselle, and various friends and for a novel with six funerals I think it’s pretty funny. I’ve also finished a play, Shakespeare’s Mom, that some producers are looking at, and so onward we go.

GK

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Dear Garrison,

I was born and raised in south Minneapolis and have listened to you since you first started PHC. We’ve have seen most of your live shows when you visit here in Portland, most recently at the Oregon Zoo a couple years ago.

One of our favorite monologues you is the one about the Tollerud family who adopted a child from South Korea. That story is meaningful to our family because it’s our story. I’m wondering how you developed that story and if you had a personal connection to a family who experienced adopting a child from Korea.

Jo Ann

Yes, indeed. Two of my wife’s siblings adopted infants from Korea, one of whom lives not far from us and has established a connection to his birth mother who is known as K-Mom. And my niece adopted a Chinese orphan who now has made my niece a grandma. And a nephew has settled in Vietnam, married a Vietnamese woman, and they are expecting twins. So there are numerous connections. But those people will have to tell their own stories, I’m getting out of the business.

GK

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Dear Garrison Keillor,
I was born in the Midwest in 1942 to a devout family and eventually came to New York and the Episcopal Church, and I understand what you are getting at. I believe that a great deal of what I understand about religion comes from music. I would love to hear your thoughts on the connection.

Mark S.
New York City

I go to a church that is blessed with a terrific music director and he’s in tune with the history of this church, a merger of an Episcopal with a Black AME church years ago. When I started attending 25 years ago, there were numerous Black church ladies in broad-brimmed hats and the Black membership is still evident. So John includes “His Eye Is On The Sparrow” and “Precious Lord” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” especially in the Communion sequence of hymns we sing while standing in the aisle to go forward, which is very moving. And low-church Methodist and Baptist hymns familiar to us old fundies. He has a small choir of excellent professional singers and they address the acoustics of the room in a way that can be absolutely glorious. He’s an excellent organist and can rip off a joyful postlude but he can also switch to a Hammond for a bluesy hymn like, say, “Precious Lord.” I go to church for the prayers and the readings and try to connect to the homily, and sometimes the music brings me to tears and that’s a beautiful thing. Keillor men are not weepy and when church brings you to tears, it has done its job. We’ve made a mess of things and God loves us still and now we have another chance. God bless you.

GK

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I’ve been having an argument with my husband over the use of spaces after periods.  In high school (granted, this was many years ago), I learned that you always insert two spaces, and my husband says that the current thinking is that only one should be used.  It looks odd with only one period.  What do you think?  What do publishers require?  Can you please help me settle this dispute?  I’m willing to change if change is warranted.

Beverly

Beverly, I am not going to get in between you and your husband about this or anything else and that’s it, period.

GK