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Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon

nytimes.com

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Re: Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon

#41

Post by macintux »

rootbear wrote: post #23
solipsism wrote: post #12

I grew up listening to Garrison Keillor and stories from Lake Wobegon. Listening to it as an adult, I have to say, it's not very good quality. I guess it's impossible to keep up a high level of quality week after week for so many years. But when I listen to it I hear a man rambling almost incoherently. There's not even a reasonable arc most weeks, he just babbles until time is up and Garrison abruptly says ".. and th…

My sister and I, long time listeners to PHC, had both noticed that the monologues had declined in recent years, but we felt that they had gotten a bit better in this last year. I think Keillor wanted to go out on a high note and do his best in these final shows.

Given the sheer volume of writing he had to do week for years, wouldn't surprise me. I certainly couldn't sustain that quantity and quality.

Re: Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon

#42

Post by kaitai »

technofiend wrote: post #16
cjensen wrote: post #3

It's long saddened me that you can't get Prairie Home Companion as a podcast: there's too many songs from too many authors so they don't even try to acquire the rights. Our copyright regime still needs to adapt to the modern world.

I don't think GK hates anyone or anything but I remember the day I completely lost interest in PHC: it was the day an interview ran and the intro explained Garrison lives in NYC. The thing is sometimes there's not much distance between an homage and a satire. Fred Armisen's Portlandia is a good example of a show that wobbles between gently poking fun and outright mean-spirited mockery. Once I learned all the Prarie H…

Don't worry; Garrison is plenty attached to St. Paul, getting in spats with the neighbors, enjoying his lovely house. All his love affairs started in Minnesota and that's something. I don't think they all ended here though.

Re: Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon

#44

Post by HelloImDumb »

technofiend wrote: post #31
HelloImDumb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GK was 45 years old when he first did a show in New York. He moved back to St. Paul five years later. The show is typically touring around the country and the world. He has split his time since 1987 living in New York and Minnesota. How does the fact that he decided, in his middle age, to live in New York at various times. suddenly change his work into mean-spirited mockery? I don't think you understand his work. You…

It's obviously a matter of perspective: for me writing an opening monologue of "Well, it's getting colder here each night in Lake Woebegone" from a Starbucks on Broadway doesn't feel as sincere as writing the exact same words in St. Paul. I understand he's trying to depict a bucolic lifestyle and portray himself as a resident and narrator of this fictional little town. But in my opinion if you're sitting at a remove…

I hate to break it to you, but it is entirely fiction. There is no Lake Wobegone. St. Paul is not a little town either. Sorry to further shatter your suspension of disbelief.

Re: Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon

#45

Post by dang »

CPLX wrote: post #18

I found PHC style humor completely insufferable and unlistenable, but members of my family (who grew up in the Midwest in the 50s and 60s) just love it, and there's no accounting for taste of course. I always thought the show stood as sort of the perfect archetype for what you'd call "white" American culture. Which I'm pretty sure is what David Simon was trying to say in this classic clip from The Wire: https://m.you…

I used to feel that way, with much annoyance. But it dawned on me that Keillor was really an ironist (a rather prickly one), and that the sentimentalism and old-timey nostalgia were largely camouflage.

I think the day I started changing my view was when they were reading birthday greetings passed up as notes from the audience. Keillor read one that said "Happy birthday to Grandma so-and-so in X-ville, upstate NY. 96 years old and still chopping her own wood." The audience dutifully went "awwww" and clapped. Keillor paused and said: "Why doesn't anybody up there help that old lady out?"

Re: Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon

#46

Post by pmoriarty »

CPLX wrote: post #18

I found PHC style humor completely insufferable and unlistenable, but members of my family (who grew up in the Midwest in the 50s and 60s) just love it, and there's no accounting for taste of course. I always thought the show stood as sort of the perfect archetype for what you'd call "white" American culture. Which I'm pretty sure is what David Simon was trying to say in this classic clip from The Wire: https://m.you…

One of the least funny shows ever, maybe even worse than Seinfeld. I'm so glad it's dead!

Re: Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon

#47

Post by cjensen »

wikibob wrote: post #15
cjensen wrote: post #3

It's long saddened me that you can't get Prairie Home Companion as a podcast: there's too many songs from too many authors so they don't even try to acquire the rights. Our copyright regime still needs to adapt to the modern world.

I came here to say this. For years I thought of setting up something to automatically record and catalog the shows, and sadly it's too late now. Has anyone found an online source for full archived shows? Surely someone somewhere has them saved...

PHC provides an archive[1]. I've used Audio Hijack [2] in the past to grab some of them, but that's a bit of a pain in the neck.

[1] http://prairiehome.org/shows/

[2] https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/

Re: Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon

#48

Post by keane »

From https://twitter.com/sacca/status/749260339762442240, Garrison Keillor gave the following letter to each attendee of his last A Prairie Home Companion:

Dear Friends,

I come from serious taciturn people and grew up in a separatist religious sect that believed that every word and deed should be to the glory of God and here I am winding up forty-two years of talking my head off, much of it silliness, and portraying a private eye and a cowboy. This was not supposed to happen. As Robert Frost did not write:

  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
  And, sorry I could not travel both,
  I chose the one with the galloping hooves and the barking spiders
  And now I’m trying to figure out why.
I am a writer who got tangled up with Minnesota Public Radio and A Prairie Home Companion and not because I was ambitious or had aptitude, but simply through a series of coincidences. I was like a kid in Port-au-Prince who’s never seen ice and whose family is too poor to travel but he reads a book about Antarctica and is fascinated and eventually becomes captain of the Haitian Olympic hockey team. He’s not a great player but he’s pretty good for a Haitian. That’s my story. And now, as retirement nears, it’s a revelation to be accosted by people who want to say: Your show has meant a lot to me. Some of them have been tuned in for most of their lives. It’s very sweet. Also confusing, since I never was a big fan of the show myself. I enjoyed doing the show — it was the only social life I had — but the show was never as good as I wanted it to be, and that’s just a fact.

I’m 73, in good shape for a writer, working on a memoir and a Lake Wobegon screenplay, writing a weekly column for The Washington Post, planning to take brisk walks and start reading books again and rediscover the pleasures of the Weekend. Meanwhile, I am grateful beyond grateful for the people I’ve met along the way, Richard Dworsky, Tim and Sue and Fred, the ladies I’m singing with, Sara and Sarah and Aoife and Heather, and Suzanne Weil who was the first person to ever put me on a stage. She is here tonight and it is all her fault, every bit of it. Had it not been for Suzanne, I would be preaching every night at the Union Gospel Mission on Skid Row and all my friends would be old drunks. Millions of people would never know about Lake Wobegon or Powdermilk Biscuits or the power of rhubarb to ease shame and humiliation. But in the course of fifty years of preaching, I would’ve brought three, possibly four, men to eternal salvation. I will have to make peace with this myself. Meanwhile, thank you for listening to the show.

–Garrison Keillor

Re: Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon

#49

Post by jhbadger »

HelloImDumb wrote: post #44
technofiend wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously a matter of perspective: for me writing an opening monologue of "Well, it's getting colder here each night in Lake Woebegone" from a Starbucks on Broadway doesn't feel as sincere as writing the exact same words in St. Paul. I understand he's trying to depict a bucolic lifestyle and portray himself as a resident and narrator of this fictional little town. But in my opinion if you're sitting at a remove…

I hate to break it to you, but it is entirely fiction. There is no Lake Wobegone. St. Paul is not a little town either. Sorry to further shatter your suspension of disbelief.

Yeah, exactly. St. Paul and New York City have more in common with each other than either do with rural communities in their own states.

Re: Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon

#50

Post by wahern »

dang wrote: post #45
CPLX wrote: post #18

I found PHC style humor completely insufferable and unlistenable, but members of my family (who grew up in the Midwest in the 50s and 60s) just love it, and there's no accounting for taste of course. I always thought the show stood as sort of the perfect archetype for what you'd call "white" American culture. Which I'm pretty sure is what David Simon was trying to say in this classic clip from The Wire: https://m.you…

I used to feel that way, with much annoyance. But it dawned on me that Keillor was really an ironist (a rather prickly one), and that the sentimentalism and old-timey nostalgia were largely camouflage. I think the day I started changing my view was when they were reading birthday greetings passed up as notes from the audience. Keillor read one that said "Happy birthday to Grandma so-and-so in X-ville, upstate NY. 96…

You're confusing sarcasm for irony. Once upon a time you could be ironic without implying anything negative about the subject or object of the irony. Perceptive and incisive irony can elicit complex emotions and thoughts about a subject, but it can and often does end there, regardless of the speaker's personal beliefs.

A quote from Garrison Keillor reprinted in the article alludes to this: "You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories."

American law schools use the Socratic method for teaching. A good law school professor will never answer a question even when directly posed, but merely respond with another question, often times using classic Socratic irony. With the really good professors, no matter how heavily laden with innuendo their questions, in three years you'll never figure out their actual opinions or beliefs about a subject without resort to their published material outside of class.

(And, FWIW, the biggest mistake you could ever make reading Plato, for example, is to believe that it's obvious what kind of point his protagonists (e.g. Socrates) are trying to make. The Laws is an excellent example.)

That's the type of character Garrison Keillor seems to be, particularly when it comes to questions of culture and sentimentality. If you think he's gaming his audience, then that's sad.

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