Garrison Keillor Books

This cassette features four more stories that only Garrison Keillor could conjure up. It starts with "The Krebsbach's vacation", which portrays two old-timers in the agony of taking a vacation that neiter one wanted to go on. Then comes "Prophet", Keillor's special take on the responsibility of knowing "the truth". "The six labors of Father Wilmer" is a terrific story of a priest who has had it with certain church members. "Fertility" isn't what the title would suggest it is, but it serves to show again that Garrison Keillor brings to the table both in style, and ability, what no one else can. This is another great cassette.

This collection of images presents many couples in many kinds of embrace, from a girl and her horse to that famous picture of "V-J Day, Times Square," from kids at play to elders on their eighty-first anniversary, famous to everyday, and all the grades in between. Black and white pictures predominate, with a large minority in color. Most pictures date from the 1950s and `60s, with a sprinkling from the `40s to `90s. It hardly matters in many cases - human affection goes back even farther than the human species; hugs are timeless.

Garrison Keillor's brief intro set a sweet tone, and many people will simply sink into the warmth of the imagery. Anyone who's ever had a special someone will find a familiar thrill in at least one or two of those pictures, something that resonates with a moment in their memory. I got what I wanted from this book, poses that suit an ongoing personal project, but I'm sure that every reader will find something of their own. Enjoy - maybe even enjoy it with a friend!

-- wiredweird

I bought this because of the Morgan Freeman "A Savior is Born" half of the CD, which I had seen on video and loved. (The video illuminates this lovely recording so beautifully through "stained glass" images.) It is so well written, with a number of insightful phrasings, which add to its depth. It is the true Biblical account. The only small complaint I'd have at all is that they call Mary a "maiden" instead of a "virgin". The music is outstanding--really beautiful. My five kids, ranging from 8 to 2, all love this.
We have listen to the Garrison Keillor part only once, and I didn't enjoy the music right off, but we really like Garrison Keillor and the parables, too, of course, and will give it a few more tries.

Garrison Keillor delivers yet another home run with his trip down memory lane to fictional Lake Wobegon. Chock full of boyhood angst, baseball, religion, flatulence jokes and sexual fixation, Keillor elicits memories from his flock of loyal readers and creates a pseudo-memoir that stirs echoes of Bill Bryson's Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and David James Duncan's The Brothers K. High praise for this author and much deserved. If you're a man (especially one who grew up pecking away at his own Underwood) between the ages of 30 and 60, Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 is a 'must read'. I can't recommend it enough. Salmon Run

There's nothing like a Keillor book to take you out of 2007 big-city craziness and bring you to another time and place. Like all of his others, a great stress reliever. As a child of the 50's, this one was close to home.

Garrision ( Gary?) Keillor like Stephen King,
hasn't forgotten what it was like to be young in a small town
and "different"... Misbegotten English teachers
and traitorous sisters who steal your girly book!
Boogers and farts and constipation... dirty words
and evil rock and roll are all of a time that endures.
Swing / big Band is to rock and roll
as rock and roll is to hip hop and rap?
Music isn't valued for how it sounds alone, but how it
makes parents act?

Keillor's trip back fifty years to the summer of 1956 is a charming slice of Americana, Wobegon style. At times this book was very funny, and it was frequently insightful. I wonder, also, at the extent to which it was autobiographical. I did think the way it was ended was sucky. I was pulling hard for things to go a different direction and was left feeling Keillor had betrayed the free spirit of his character, Kate, and also the tone of his first 270 pages. Oh well, it's his novel, after all, and, with its imaginative teenage boy just stretching his wings as a writer, with its minor league baseball played on hot summer afternoons, with its asides into how polite society recoiled from the rising force of rock and roll, and with its dead-on recreation of a bygone era down to its Sunday dinners and the tone to a small town Fourth of July, it's basically a good one. Four stars and a chuckle.

It's hard to tell which parts of this book are the most enjoyable - his exposure to the wiles of the opposite sex through the magazine "High School Orgies" and the rather basic primer provided him by his cousin Kate - his ongoing battle with his older sister over all kinds of sibling issues - his experience of becoming the newspaper reporter covering the Lake Wobegone Whippets and their talented new pitcher - his observations of the various personal foibles of all manner of friends and relatives - or just the way that Garrison Keilor tells a story. He makes it seem so easy, yet I defy you to sit down and write like he does. You can hear his voice coming off the pages and darned if it isn't more fun than shooting rats at the town dump to just sit there and let him tell you about being 14 in the Summer of 1956. Really!

and I find it amazing and amusing every time.The citizenry of the fictional little town of Lake Wobegon and Keillor's brilliantly devised history of the town captivate me with every reading and I always "hear" the narrative in his calm, soothing voice, which to me makes it that much more enjoyable. Garrison Keillor is a storyteller par excellence and an American treasure.

I love oral history. Keillor's stories are like the one's we sometimes have the good fortune to hear while having a cup of coffee with a neighbor while the winter wind whistles outside and the cat is playing with a ball of yarn. Some are so funny that tears come to your eyes. Some are so tender and touching that tears come to your eyes. Keep your hanky handy.

Many people who express frustration with Keillor's writing complain that it simply doesn't "do" anything for them. For me it doesn't have to. In an age when rampant cynicism is en vogue, it is refreshing to be thoroughly amused by something other than hypocrisy or idiocy-- Keillor's prose exposes intertwining threads of small-town life and how they reflect on the human experience.

Anyone that is familiar with Keillor from his radio appearances will be satisfied to learn that his writing reads like he speaks. Its rather hard not to imagine Keillor mumbling each sentence in his low-pitched, calming voice as you read along.

Keillor captures the human imagination so well by juxtaposing the complex (and simple) thoughts of a few people living in a town that values its simplicity and familiarity above all else. Lake Wobegon has all the essential characters: a small café, a grocery, a Catholic church ( Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility), a Lutheran Church, and the Sons of Knute (a Norwegian lodge). As has been noted, in places it reads like a collection of short stories rather than a unified story with a continuous plot.

I still struggle with understanding what makes this book (and Keillor in general) so captivating for me. The best I can do is to say that Keillor maintains reverence for the simple American life while candidly examining the anxieties and aspirations of small-town Americans. Furthermore, even if only for brief spells, Lake Wobegon Days offers and outlet to appreciating the nuances that define our lives.

Being a Minnesota resident all my life, a paying member of MPR (the irony of which you'll see below) and the product of a family of artists, writers and musicians of many generations (another irony which you'll see below), you think I'd be just as arty and fawning when it comes to Keillor's non-existent humor as the rest of the local artsy-farsty crowd. However, I'm here to tell you that there are a few smug little local Minnesota myths that many self-styled Minnesotans need to experience a sad realization in lieu of:

1) "Minnesota Nice" isn't particularly any nicer than the "niceness" in any other state despite how smugly the anchor people here GUSH(!) about it on KARE 11 and WCCO Channel 4 News or WCCO AM 830 radio. However: MN polite? Sure. MN possibly just might kill you with kindness? Quite possibly. Just try making friends with those same local self-described MN Nice types, and you'll quickly see what I mean. Indeed, many outstate would-be transplants who got the cold shoulder (no pun intended) have instead learned to call it Minnesota Ice, for they described their MN experience as one of loneliness and isolation, and if possible they soon moved elsewhere because of how cliquish it is here.

2)During inclement weather, chances are anyone here who make the observation ("Nice weather, huh.") as their first example of alleged MN dry humor, clearly has little or no understanding of what dry humor actually is. Trust me, whenever many local types encounter the REAL DEAL they kind of go dull in the eyes at best, or think that you're being "negative" at worst. Either way, the recipients of your attempt at suble understated humor will be even be less inclined to act MN Nice. And it isn't sarcasm. Please look up the term before you say that you or anyone else has a "sarcastic" sense of humor. I don't think you'll describe yourself that way ever again. Rather, I you probably mean a facetious, drole, dry or even dark sense of humor.

3)And finally: Garrison Keillor isn't funny. GASP! Sorry folks but it's true. And this book is no exception. Despite all their MFA and liberal arts degrees, the "arty" and "whimsy" types at NPR and elsewhere still can't connect the dots enough to see the glaring and ironic parallel between Keillor's humor and the fable about the Emperor's New Clothes. But then again we're the state famous for that sixties folk singer who never could sing worth a damn, and let's not forget that kooky governor who wouldn't work and play well with others.

Don't get me wrong I love this state excluding its aforementioned smug self-deluded foolishness, and I've some wonderful friends and family here. Art is the one area of human endeavor that is wholly subjective. So if you like Keillor or not you don't owe anyone any justifications. But if you're anything like me, just the sound of Keillor's voice on NPR is enough to make me wince, groan and quickly change channels. And you'd be surprised what some think of him at the Literary Loft Center. I was. It ain't good. And the upshot is that Keillor's fans are much the like fans of soccer. They get all indignant whenever anyone doesn't share their irrational zeal as if other people aren't allowed to have an opinion, let alone, one that disparages either soccer or Keillor.

I laughed out loud constantly while reading this book. I think you have to know where the author is coming from in order to fully appreciate Lake Wobegon Days. My parents grew up in a small midwestern town, and I spent the early years of my life there too. Again and again, this book reminded me of stories my dad told me and things I remember from my own childhood. This book would be especially enjoyable for anyone who understands or appreciates small-town life.

This is a LOT of fun. An obvious satire on Jesse Ventura--from wrestler to movie actor ("Predator" was about it, basically) to governor of Minnesota--"Me" has a ball spoofing big tough muscleheads who, of course, always join the military and always in a special forces type unit (We learned to pee straight up), and always musclehead their way to the top, or a reasonable facsimile therof (at least for them).

Keillor is whip-smart in putting this together; his own character, as such, is the guy who's ghost-writing the book for Big Boy Jimmy Valente, who cautions the "Ghost" not to use fancy words like "pellucid", so of course in the very next paragraph of the actual narrative itself that's exactly what the "Ghost" does. There's a vast amount of chuckling and snickering to be had in reading this; it's enough fun to keep your mind off the tax stimulus check you either never got or else got much less of than you thought you would.

See Big Boy claw his way up from teenage weakling to a macho guy who can press 300 pounds. (Heck, if I had THAT much laundry, I'd send it all out to the dry cleaner for pressing). See Big Boy go from unsung war hero to political hotshot in a few easy, uh, steps. See yourself snorting with derisive glee as you move your way through these hilarious pages. And you will, believe me.

Very nifty, very funny, and worth the 3 bucks I paid for it at my local used book store. A real hoot.

Me:By Jimmy Valente is one a Keillor's funniest books to date. He takes an obvious non-fictional character and makes him into this hilarious haughty person that still can warm the reader's heart. I loved it and hope you read it soon.

There really isn't a lot that can be said about this book. I read this for a bookring on bookcrossing. This is a satire of wresting, war, and politics. The mayor of Minnesota Jimmy Valente (a Jesse Ventura rip-off) tells his story of how he went from a scrawny adopted kid to a heart throb war veteran to a wrestling legend to a governor.

It was a light, quick read that didn't take a lot of thinking. It was amusing, not laugh out loud funny, but it kept my interest. As a wrestling fan, I found it enjoyable.

I thought this book might offer some humor and have some fun with Jessie Ventura and his politics, but man, this book stinks! Right off the bat Keillor writes about "Big Boy's" conception between a married man and a woman engaged to another man. He states that his mother "might have sought out an abortionist" and that "it's obvious why they did what they did and put me up for adoption". I've never met anyone who went through an abortion or been involved with an adoption and thought it was funny or as frivoulas as Keillor writes. This is my first attempt at Mr. Keillor's writing and if this is any indication of it, I'm staying far away from him and you should stay far away from this book...

As a stand-alone read, this book is in many ways and places hilarious, and as a person without any previous experience of Keillor's writing, I recall being driven to laughter over and over again.
I do not think this book would bear cover-to-cover reading in the same way I do not think one should make a meal out of cake--taken in small doses (perhaps in the bathroom), this book is great fun--
--and AFFECTIONATE--even the main subject of this book would be, IMO, unlikely to take any offense at all. Those desiring political depth or biting and cruel satire will be dissapointed; I don't know if Keillor could be that mean if he tried, and I'm glad.

My Mom loved this audio book as a Christmas gift and had made it a Christmas Keepsake to pull out for the holidays to enjoy.

This first collection of "Guy Noir" routines, lifted from A Praire Home Companion, are very funny. Garrison Keillor and his merry band of actors give a sense of the old time radio drama? with these. The sound effects are excellent and the theme is pretty cool. Both series are great. I wish they'd lift more of them to create a few more series.

I have played this tape so often that it's worn out. I have some of his other tapes but this one is by far my favorite. I especially like the rendition of Lida Rose. Also, if you admire alliteration and all that amusement, you'll absolutely adore it!

I love PHC and Guy Noir. Does anyone remember (or know where I can get) the St. Patrick's Day show he recorded in Dublin, Ireland? The Guy Noir skit on that broadcast was high-larious.

This particular collection is a 9-track running joke. It has its standout moments with fantastic feats of alliteration in a couple tracks and the old fashioned sound effects are fun . . . but, as another post here says, it gets less funny as it goes along.

The essence of comedy is brevity and most of these skits take too long. I recall the Guy Noir skits I heard on the radio being shorter, much more varied and having a bigger cast with more fantastic stories. Most of these tracks just drag on as if by taking longer to get to the punchline the same old shtick will become funnier; mostly, it doesn't work. Unless you're a real die-hard fan completing your PHC collection, this CD is a monotonous disappointment.

Buy this album! It will bring you back to a time before Garrison Keillor and Prarie Home Companion descended as completely into self-absorption and self-parody as they are today.

A time ago Keillor described New York performance artists as "raging narcissists." He was right, but did not know how he was predicting his own aesthetic future.

And you'll see it so clearly here. For one thing, Keillor shares the Guy Noir stage with someone other than a sound effects man: the character of Pete is essential to understanding Guy Noir's psyche. We can guess that Pete was phased out so that Noir, as portrayed today, is more of a loner. But it might also have had to do with the fact that Pete pretty consistently upstaged Guy - you be the judge.

But what really matters, of course, is the quality of the comedy here, and it's just great. Word plays, tongue twisters, great plots - it's bright, original, funny and deliciously ironic. You'll love it!

This was the first book I've read by Garrison Keillor, and while it was slow in parts - there were some definite laugh out loud stories. I was completely amused that he used the F word, too ;)

Before he decided to throw in the towel and become what his fans wanted him to be, Garrison Keillor really wanted to see himself and his society from the outside. He spent a lot of time in New York and Denmark. In that, as we learn in this book, he became who he thought he wanted to be.

In our collective lives of quiet desperation, most of us don't get that chance. We don't have the money, talent or perceived time to do so. But Keillor did.

The ostensible lesson is that who we are IS who we want to be. But these notes were written before he drew that conclusion. My favorite passage is called "Episcopal," where he makes up new words to an old Fats Waller tune to describe the attractions of being Episcopalian:

I'm slow to anger
Don't covet or lust.
No sins of pride except sometims I really must.
Episcopalian, saving my love for you.
The theology's easy, the liturgy too.
Just stand up and kneel down and say what the others do.
Episcopalian, saving my love for you.

With this, Keillor sums up the current (and probably end) state of his career.

Oh, hear that old piano, from down the avenue...
I smell the dry rot, I look around for you...

This book was written before he gave up, and you'll enjoy it.

This book is just about the worst thing I have ever read. One thing though... it talks about the end of the prairie home companion show... was there some break there or what? the show is on every weekend. Purple Monkey Dishwasher.

Not really fair to review this now - I'm a bit hazy on it. Because it's an anthology of humorous/whimsical articles and a few daydream stories, I wisely only read it in small doses over a while - the pieces suffer if you read too many in a row, and weren't written for this. Still it means I'm not as up on exactly why it got an A-.
 
Several pieces are definitely not worthy of an A, though few would drop below a B. I recall really relishing 'Who do you think you are?', a reflection on dealing with the assumption of mediocrity. 'The Current Crisis in Remorse' was a clever satire on the much (legitimately) pilloried denial of guilt in the courts. How to write a letter was on the money, and particularly the first of 'Three Marriages' was quite touching and felt authentic.
 
He's in the same category as P.J. O'Rourke, but less biting, and his humour is not so much the clever one-liner as a slow characterisation. He rides on the edge of sentimentality but somehow rarely crosses it, managing warmth and definitive whimsicality.

This work represents a *hodgepodge* of Garrison Keillor works that would not have fit well published in any of his other books. If you are looking for a book about the life and times of Lake Wobegon, MN, this is not it. Even so, there are a good many short pieces in this book that make it a DEFINITE ASSET to your collection. My favorites include "The Young Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra" (a hilarious parody on "The Young Musician's Guide to the Orchestra"), the poem "The Old Shower Stall", the essay on sneezing, the essay on letter writing, and Keillor's commentary on being voted one of the sexiest men in America. Though not typical in his established "The News From Lake Wobegon" story form, the poetry and prose in this collection are definitely typical Keillor humor!

It is a mystery to me why Twain murdered this story. I forgive him because I like his other works.

The paper which makes up the 2nd half of this book is interesting but doesn't clarify anything.

In 1876 Mark Twain proposed to William Dean Howells, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, that a number of authors including Twain himself each write a story--"'blindfolded' as to what the others had written"--based on the same skeleton plot, which Twain would devise. In the end the idea came to nothing, or almost nothing, because Howells never managed to interest other authors in taking on the task. But Twain did write his own contribution to the project. His A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage is a curious story about a greedy farmer's attempts to line his pockets by marrying his daughter off to a wealthy suitor. The farmer's plot is complicated, however, by his estranged brother's will and by the appearance in town, under unusual circumstances, of a multilingual stranger. The mystery--there is, after all, a murder in the tale--is laid to rest in Twain's final chapter with the unlikely introduction of Jules Verne into the story. Twain never published his novella, and part of the manuscript was lost for more than a hundred years. It appeared in print for the first time in 2001.

The Norton paperback of A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage includes four facsimile pages of Twain's manuscript and is beautifully illustrated with watercolors by Peter de S?ve. In a brief foreword and a nearly forty-page afterword Roy Blount Jr. discusses the history of the manuscript and places the story in the larger context of Twain's more familiar work and the politics of the day. It is not the most interesting of essays, but Twain fans who are sufficiently familiar with his oeuvre and with mid-nineteenth-century politics may appreciate it.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

I am a major fan of Twain and have always held him in the highest esteem. His "The Mysterious Stranger" got me through some tough times in college with the help of other books such as "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" IS the Great American Novel. There is little left of his that I haven't read and just when you think you've read all his best stuff, another short story comes out of nowhere and totally amazes you with his insight. This is not one of those stories. However, it's not bad and it's a nice enough way to spend an hour or so. Bear in mind that the Preface and Afterword are together longer than the story itself. There is some nice information about Twain and the the times in which this story was written but it isn't essential that you read them. Twain had an idea of taking a basic, simple plot and having 20 or so other authors of his era write their version of the story. (OK, I DID get that much out of the Preface and Afterword). His motion, however, died for lack of a second and we are left with this; his briefly written entry. It reminded me a lot of his style in "The Gilded Age". That book was too long and this book is too short but the story has an interesting twist to it. The moment I saw this book on the shelves I bought it and I have no regrets. If you're a fan of Twain's, you should buy it too. After all, if you act quickly, you too can have a first edition of Mark Twain.

This is my first Mark Twain book, and I got to say that I like it. For a short story, it's excellent and I usually don't like short stories.

This story tells exactly what the title is: a murder, a mystery, and a marriage. They all are excellently incorporated into each other and all has a purpose.

Also, the contributions from Roy Blount, Jr. and Peter de Sève are wonderful. The foreword and afterwords were informative about the book and the illustrations are beautifully, yet - in a way - comical. And the fact that this book is now first time published as one should cause a celebration.

Excellent book.

Finding an unpublished piece by Mark Twain is reason to celebrate, but that doesn't mean its shortcomings should be ignored. Though the story begins well and has an interesting set up, the ending is abrupt and does not fit well with what has gone before. More was needed to make this a coherent and, more importantly, an interesting read. For reasons unexplained Mark Twain ended this story savaging Jules Verne. I never read any opinions he had on Verne but would be interested in finding them, should they exist. This story is only worth reading as a curiosity. However, after doing so, one understands why Twain chose to let it languish on the shelf.

Tackling some Arthur Miller themes with equal pathos but with a much healthier dose of humor, Garrison Keillor reinforced my admiration of both his writing dexterity and his ability to capture human emotions. He touches places that you thought were unique to you... and exposes the paranoid amongst us as just plain normal people. This is a book I was so disappointed to finish... I enjoyed every page and would recommend it wholeheartedly. I'm off now to re-read Keillor's earlier work with fresh vigour!

I enjoyed Garrison Keillor's "Lake Woebegone Days," but his penchant for spewing his political opinions in otherwise non-political pieces has made me chary of his more recent work. (I notice he has a book about being a born Democrat, "from the heart:" I haven't chosen to read it. While he certainly isn't using his head, I don't know if he really speaks from the heart. Maybe more from the spleen.) I suppose Mr. Keillor is still successful enough that he does not mind alienating a large portion of his soon-to-be-outta-here audience.

The narrator of "Love Me" does not account for most of the time that passes between college and old age, a bit of sloppiness. There were some flashes of insight and amusing writing, but it could have been condensed into a short story. Not a satisfying story. Probably a true story for Keillor, in some ways. What a drag.

Let me tell you about this book. It has lists in it, and in the lists it has lists of lists. Every ten pages, it has something funny. But most of the time, it is smug. The hero if you want to call him that gets a job at the New Yorker where he is the resident bore from Minnesota. He lives on a terrace and has thoughts of new york that are incredible cliches. Garrison, I noticed that used paperbacks of this thing are going for less that rolls of Charmin. Around a cent. Too bad we dont have half penny pieces, and too bad that the publisher didnt use softer paper.

I'll be honest, I'm not necessarily into books that describe old people in a somewhat sad state of love, but this book does a fantastic job. In a sense, there are two stories going on. One an unrealistic but hilarious satire of both New York and of professional writers, where John Updike and others play a significant role in the plot. The other is an underlying theme of love between two mismatched individuals, one who desires greatness and the other who desires equality for those without greatness. The Main character, unable to write more books, takes up a job as an advice columnist named "Mr. Blue" and writes some amazingly clever and witty responses to some of the individuals who write to him. All the while he grows both further apart and closer to his wife, who remains in Minnesota I promise you that this book is not what you'd expect. It was very enjoyable, extremely witty and imaginative and worth the time.

Get this if you need to laugh.If you find yourself on the dark side of middle age and have found yourself wondering what was it all about,anyway?(your life),you need this book.Wildly romantic,immensely tender-hearted,and wickedly funny.Perfect for a read by the fire.Garrison is a wondrus human,and this book is not to be missed.