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Garrison Keillor

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Garrison Keillor

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Garrison Keillor
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(born Aug. 7, 1942 , Anoka, Minn., U.S.) U.S. radio entertainer and writer. He began writing for The New Yorker in college and worked as a staff writer there until 1992. In 1974 he created and hosted the public-radio humour and variety show A Prairie Home Companion, about the fictional Minnesota town Lake Wobegon. He then created a new program, The American Radio Company (198791), but revived A Prairie Home Companion in 1993. His books include Lake Wobegon Days (1985), Leaving Home (1987), Me (1999), and Liberty (2008).

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Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:

Garrison Keillor

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Garrison Keillor (born 1942), host of public radio's popular "A Prairie Home Companion" and author of the best-selling "Lake Wobegon Days", has made a career of telling stories about the fictional Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon and the lives of its residents. Keillor has become an American icon, and his show is heard by nearly three million U.S. listeners each week on over 500 public radio stations. It is also heard overseas on America One and the Armed Forces Networks in Europe and the Far East.

Author and radio personality Garrison Keillor writes about God's Frozen People, the Scandinavian settlers of the American Midwest, a quirky cast of characters united only by their religious faith and distrust of worldliness. After decades on the air, Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion became a cultural guidepost; a cottage industry has grown around him, including a store in Minnesota's Mall of America devoted to his fictional hometown. The television program The Simpsons "once did dead-on parody of a Keillor monologue," explained Bill Virgin in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, adding that "the term 'Lake Wobegon effect' was coined for school test results that showed that all the students were, like those in Keillor's fictional town, 'above average."'

Had Conservative Religious Upbringing

Keillor was born Gary Edward Keillor in Anoka, Minnesota, on August 7, 1942. His paternal ancestors came from Yorkshire, England, around 1770; his maternal grandfather left Scotland in 1906. The third of six children, Keillor was raised in a conservative religious household. His family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren sect, which frowned upon activities such as drinking, dancing, and singing. Television was banned in the Keillor home. "[W]e were not allowed to go to movies because they glorified worldliness," Keillor told Associated Press reporter Jeff Baenen. " People drank in movies. They drank like fish. They smoked cigarettes. They danced. And we did not do those things." Radio, however, was allowed because "I don't think people smoked as much on radio."

Despite the strictures in his home, Keillor harbored lofty literary ambitions from a young age. At age 11 he started a newspaper called The Sunnyvale Star. In junior high, he submitted poems to the school paper under the pseudonym "Garrison Edwards," which he considered more grandiose than his given name Gary. He also developed a taste for the erudite New Yorker, which he discovered at the public library. "'My people weren't much for literature,"' Jay Nordlinger quoted Keillor as saying in the National Review, "so for him the magazine was 'a fabulous sight, an immense, glittering ocean liner off the coast of Minnesota."' Adopting as his life dream to work at the New Yorker, Keillor graduated from Anoka High School in 1960 and received his B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota in 1966. In college he worked at the Minnesota Daily and at the University radio station, KUOM, two extracurricular activities that ultimately helped his career.

After college, Keillor embarked on a month-long job hunt among magazines and publishing houses on the East Coast. He had interviews at the Atlantic Monthly in Boston and at the New Yorker and Sports Illustrated in New York. Keillor told Atlantic Unbound interviewer Katie Bolick that the trip convinced him, ironically, that where he really wanted to work was in the Midwest. "If I had really wanted to get a job in New York, or course, I would have simply moved there and taken any job I could get and hoped for something better eventually," Keillor explained. "But I didn't: I was engaged to marry a girl who didn't want to move to New York, and I could see that New York is a tough place to be poor in, and then, too, I thought of myself as a Midwestern writer. The people I wanted to write for were back in Minnesota. So I went home."

Landed Job in Public Radio

In 1969 Keillor landed a job at Minnesota Public Radio that evolved into a career. At the same time, he took writing stints, and while researching an article for the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, developed the idea for a radio show with musical guests and commercials for imaginary products. In the summer of 1974, he hosted the first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, which takes its name from a cemetery at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1978 the show moved to its present broadcast site at the World (now Fitzgerald) Theater in Saint Paul and two years later began national broadcasts. In 1996 the show began broadcasting live over the Internet and direct to worldwide satellite. From its humble beginnings at a college auditorium, the show has played in well-known venues such as Radio City Music Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Fox in Atlanta.

A Prairie Home Companion is a serial about the fictional town of Lake Wobegon and its inhabitants. Keillor described Lake Wobegon, population 942, as "the town that time forgot and decades cannot improve." The show celebrates small-town values in what Washington Post reporter David Segal described as "a seamless and enchanting two-hour variety program of homilies, comedy and music." The show consists of various segments, including news, comedy sketches, and fake commercials for sponsors like Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Store ("Remember, if you can't find it at Ralph's, you can probably get along without it"). But the centerpiece of each show is always a 20-minute monologue, done by Keillor himself. "For me, the monologue was the favorite thing I had done in radio," Keillor told New York Times reviewer Mervyn Rothstein. "It was based on writing, but in the end it was radio, it was standing up and leaning forward into the dark and talking, letting words come out of you."

In 1985 Keillor married second wife Ulla Skärved, who had been a Danish exchange student at Anoka High and whom he met again at his 25th high school reunion. By 1987 Keillor quit A Prairie Home Companion - from "sheer exhaustion," he explained on the show's Web site - and moved to Denmark. However, within two years he had returned to the United States and started a new radio show in New York City. The show, American Radio Company of the Air, first broadcast in 1989 from the Majestic Theater in Brooklyn. It strongly resembled A Prairie Home Companion; so strongly in fact that in 1993 Keillor decided to revive the show back home to St. Paul.

Pursued Parallel Track as a Writer

Alongside his work as a radio personality, Keillor carried on a parallel life as a writer. After sending stories to the New Yorker for several years, he had his first story accepted for publication in 1969 and went on to become a regular contributor at his favorite magazine. In the early years writing for the New Yorker he lived with his wife and son Jason on a farm near Freeport, Minnesota, and would send two or three stories to his editor each month. But everything changed in 1992 when Tina Brown became editor of the magazine, replacing the legendary William Shawn. She introduced big changes to the magazine, which including phasing out a lot of the old writers. Keillor was one of the casualties of the new order, an event he recalls bitterly. "The New Yorker used to be a writers' magazine and it was very important to me," he told Irish Times contributor Frank McNally. "But under Tina Brown's editorship, it's been transformed into a magazine … driven by gossip. It's not a writer's magazine any more - it's all about 'buzz' now."

After his tenure at the New Yorker ended, Keillor started writing novels and in 1985 published the best-selling Lake Wobegon Days. Drawing on the same material he used for his radio show, Keillor spins tales of family life, school days, and growing up in the fictional small town of Lake Wobegon. Many of the stories describe the town's history and social conventions. It was the beginning of a literary phenomenon, as the book spawned a number of sequels and spin-offs.

In 1998 he published Wobegon Boy, a novel about John Tollefson, a radio manager stuck in a mid-life crisis. While some reviewers have compared Keillor to American humorists like Mark Twain and Will Rogers, National Review critic E. V. Kontorovich compared the author to Thomas Jefferson, noting that both rely on common-sense morality. "The antidote to self-absorption, self-pity, and other manifestations of the 12-step society can be found among the unpretentious Norwegian townsmen," asserted Kontorovich. "The reader will smile for as long as it takes him to read three hundred pages."

In 1998, at the age of 55, Keillor had a daughter Maia, with his third wife, violinist Jenny Lind Nilsson. Keillor's first son, Jason Keillor, from his marriage to Mary C. Guntzel, grew up to work as stage manager on his father's radio show.

While most of his works center upon Lake Wobegon, Keillor dabbled in politics with 1999's Me: By Jimmy "Big Boy" Valente as Told to Garrison Keillor, a satirical spoof about then-newly elected Minnesota governor and former wrestler Jesse Ventura. That same year he was awarded a National Humanities medal and was honored at a White House dinner hosted by President Bill Clinton. Explaining the selection of recipients, William R. Ferris, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, said "They are gifted people with extraordinary powers of creativity and vision, and their work in preserving, interpreting and expanding the nation's cultural heritage."

In 2001 Keillor published Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, a quasi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale. The novel's humor arises from the conflict between the protagonist's strict religious upbringing and his pent-up desires. New York Times reviewer Malcolm Jones found it only mildly amusing. "The same qualities that endear the show to us - its easygoing, deliberate corniness and amateurishness," wrote Jones, "suddenly seem merely cute, annoying and sometimes just plain trite on the page."

In July of 2001 Keillor underwent heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He made a full recovery and continued to broadcast his show and write. His books include story collections, novels, and children's books. In addition, he penned an occasional essay for Time and an advice column for the online magazine Salon and taught a writing class at the University of Minnesota. Keillor has considers his double-track existence satisfying both personally and socially. "Writing is pure entrepreneurship and a great way of life," he noted on the Prairie Home Companion Web site. "And then, if you do a radio show every Saturday, you have a built-in social life. So it's a pretty good deal."

Books

Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press, 1997.

Periodicals

Irish Times, March 7, 1998.

National Review, December 8, 1997; April 19, 1999.

New York Times, August 20, 1985; August 26, 2001.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 7, 1999.

Washington Post, July 9, 2001; July 15, 2001.

Online

Baenen, Jeff, "Garrison Keillor Spins More Tales from Lake Wobegon," Prime Time Online,http://www.rny.com/pubs/pt/pt9801/leisure/keillor.html (November 13, 2001).

Bolick, Katie, "It's Just Work," Atlantic Unbound,http://www.theatlantic.com/ (October 8, 1997).

Minnesota Author Biographies Project,http://people.nmhs.org/authors/biog (November 12, 2001).

A Prairie Home Companion Web site,http://www.phc.mpr.org/(November 13, 2001).

Houghton Mifflin Chronology of US Literature:

Works by Garrison Keillor

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(b. 1942)

1985Lake Wobegon Days. By the host of A Prairie Home Companion on National Public Radio, Keillor's series of linked stories based on his monologues from his radio show evokes a tender and wry vision of American small-town life. It draws on the author's upbringing in Minnesota, his Lutheran community, and a range of characters with Midwestern folkways, which Keillor both respects and satirizes. Critics compare his sensitive and comic tales to those of Mark Twain, James Thurber, and Sherwood Anderson.

Quotes By:

Garrison Keillor

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Quotes:

"One day Donald Trump will discover that he is owned by Lutheran Brotherhood and must re negotiate his debt load with a committee of silent Norwegians who don't understand why anyone would pay more than $120.00 for a suit."

"Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke."

"The funniest line in English is Get it? When you say that, everyone chortles."

"Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people."

"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose."

"Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze."

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AMG AllMusic Guide to Classical Music:

Garrison Keillor

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Garrison Keillor

Biography

A shy, introspective, persona is balanced by a sharp sense of humor, small-town wisdom and love of traditional folk and jazz by Radio Hall of Fame member Garrison Keillor. The host of the popular live radio show A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor is heard weekly on more than 400 National Public Radio stations. Keillor's books, including Lake Wobegone Days, Wobegone Boy, Happy to Be Here and We Are Still Married, have made him a regular presence on the best-selling lists of American authors. An audio version of Lake Wobegone Days was the recipient of a Grammy award in 1985.

Keillor's earliest radio experience came as a student at the University of Minnesota, where he graduated as a journalism major in 1966. Beginning in 1969, Keillor wrote for The New Yorker magazine. While researching an article on the Grand Ole Opry in 1974, Keillor conceived a live radio show featuring traditional music. While the first broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion were heard on Minnesota Public Radio, the show quickly became a national phenomenon. During the first 13 years the show was aired, it received the George Foster Peabody award, the Edward R. Murrow award, and a medal from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Although Keillor's deadpan delivery remained the show's centerpiece, A Prairie Home Companion provided regular airplay for a lengthy list of performers including Greg Brown, Jean Redpath, Bill Staines, Beausoleil, Robin & Linda Williams, Butch Thompson, Prudence Johnson and Michael Cooney. The show was also notable for its occasional incorporation of classical artists, both instrumental and vocal, into its folk context. The show was broadcast on the Disney cable TV network for several years and received two Ace awards for television broadcast excellence.

In 1987, Keillor announced that he was ending A Prairie Home Companion. Moving to New York, he launched a similar show, The American Radio Company, two years later. Although the new show lasted four seasons, Keillor's fans wished for a return to the original program. In 1993, Keillor relented. Returning to the World Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, he resurrected A Prairie Home Companion.

In addition to his continued involvement as host of A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor hosts a poetry radio show, The Writer's Almanac, broadcast daily and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The Atlantic magazine.

A deep-voiced vocalist, Keillor has sung many songs on A Prairie Home Companion. Together with the Hopeful Gospel Quartet, he recorded an album of spirituals and hymns in 1992. ~ Craig Harris ~ Craig Harris, Rovi

Discography

Gratitude, Gravy & Garrison

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Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Garrison Keillor

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Garrison Keillor
Birth name Gary Edward Keillor
Born (1942-08-07) August 7, 1942 (age 69)
Anoka, Minnesota
Medium Radio, Print
Nationality American
Years active 1969–present
Genres Observational comedy, Satire
Subject(s) American culture (esp. the Midwest); American politics
Spouse Mary Guntzel (1965–1976)
Ulla Skaerved (1985–1990)
Jenny Lind Nilsson (1995–present)
Notable works and roles Himself, Guy Noir, Lefty, Bob Burger, and Lake Wobegon narrator in A Prairie Home Companion

Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality. He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion (also known as Garrison Keillor's Radio Show on United Kingdom's BBC Radio 4 Extra, as well as on RTÉ in Ireland, Australia's ABC, and Radio New Zealand National in New Zealand).

Contents

Personal life

Keillor was born in Anoka, Minnesota, the son of Grace Ruth (née Denham) and John Philip Keillor, who was a carpenter and postal worker.[1][2] The family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, an Irish fundamentalist Christian denomination Keillor has since left. He is six feet, three inches (1.9 m) tall[3] and has Scots ancestry. Keillor is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.[4] In 2006 he told Christianity Today that he was attending the Episcopal church in Saint Paul, after previously attending a Lutheran church in New York.[5][6] He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in English in 1966. While there, he began his broadcasting career on the student-operated radio station known today as Radio K.

Keillor has been married three times:[7]

  • To Mary Guntzel, from 1965 to 1976. The couple has one son, Jason, born in 1969.
  • To Ulla Skaerved (a former exchange student from Denmark at Keillor's high school whom he famously re-encountered at a class reunion), from 1985 to 1990.
  • To violinist Jenny Lind Nilsson (b. 1957), who is from his hometown of Anoka, since 1995. They have one daughter, Maia Grace Keillor, born December 29, 1997.[8]

Between his first and second marriages, he was also romantically involved with Margaret Moos, who worked as a producer of A Prairie Home Companion.[9]

The Keillors maintain homes on the Upper West Side of New York City and in Saint Paul, Minnesota. One of his brothers, the historian Steven Keillor, is also an author.[10] In the summer of 2001, Keillor had mitral valve surgery on his heart.

On September 7, 2009, Keillor was briefly hospitalized after suffering a minor stroke.[11]

Ancestors

In his book Homegrown Democrat (2004), Keillor mentions some of his noteworthy ancestors, including Joseph Crandall,[12] who was an associate of Roger Williams (who founded the first American Baptist church as well as Rhode Island); and Prudence Crandall, who founded the first African-American women's school in America.[13]

Career

Keillor in 2010, wearing his signature red shoes

Radio

Garrison Keillor started his professional radio career in November 1969 with Minnesota Educational Radio (MER), now Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and distributing programs under the American Public Media (APM) brand. He hosted The Morning Program in the weekday drive time slot of 6 to 9 a.m. on KSJR 90.1 FM at St. John's University in Collegeville, which the station called "A Prairie Home Entertainment." The show's eclectic music was a major divergence from the station's usual classical fare. During this time he also began submitting fiction to The New Yorker, where his first story, "Local Family Keeps Son Happy," appeared on September 19, 1970.[14]

Keillor resigned from The Morning Program in February 1971 to protest what he considered an attempt to interfere with his musical programming. The show became A Prairie Home Companion when he returned in October.[15]

Keillor has attributed the idea for the live Saturday night radio program to his 1973 assignment to write about the Grand Ole Opry for The New Yorker, but he had already begun showcasing local musicians on the morning show, despite limited studio space for them, and in August 1973 The Minneapolis Tribune reported MER's plans for a Saturday night version of A Prairie Home Companion with live musicians.[15][16]

A Prairie Home Companion debuted as an old-style variety show before a live audience on July 6, 1974, featuring guest musicians and a cadre cast doing musical numbers and comic skits replete with elaborate live sound effects. The show was punctuated by spoof commercial spots from such fictitious sponsors as Jack's Auto Repair ("All tracks lead to Jack's where the bright shining lights show you the way to complete satisfaction") and Powdermilk Biscuits, which "give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done."[15] Later imaginary sponsors have included Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery ("If you can't find it at Ralph's, you can probably get along without it"), Bertha's Kitty Boutique, the Ketchup Advisory Board[17] (which touted "the natural mellowing agents of ketchup"), the American Duct Tape Council, and Bebop-A-Reebop Rhubarb Pie ("sweetening the sour taste of failure through the generations"). The show also contains parodic serial melodramas, such as The Adventures of Guy Noir, Private Eye and The Lives of the Cowboys. After the show's intermission, Keillor reads clever and often humorous greetings to friends and family at home submitted by members of the theater audience in exchange for an honorarium.

Also in the second half of the show, the broadcasts showcase a weekly monologue by Keillor entitled The News from Lake Wobegon. The town is based in part on Keillor's own hometown of Anoka, Minnesota, and in part on Freeport and other towns in Stearns County, where he lived in the early 1970s.[18] Lake Wobegon is a quintessential but fictional Minnesotan small town "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." A Prairie Home Companion ran until 1987, when Keillor decided to end it; he worked on other projects, including another live radio program, "The American Radio Company of the Air" — which had almost the same format as A Prairie Home Companion's — for several years. In 1993 he began producing A Prairie Home Companion again, in a format nearly identical to the original's, and has done so since.[19] On A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor receives no billing or credit (except "written by Sarah Bellum," a joking reference to his own brain); his name is not mentioned unless a guest addresses him by his first name or the initials "G. K.," though some sketches feature Keillor as his alter ego, Carson Wyler.

A Prairie Home Companion regularly goes on the road and is broadcast live from popular venues around the United States, often featuring local celebrities and skits incorporating local color. In April 2000, he took the programme to Edinburgh, Scotland and gave two performances in the city's Queen's Hall. These were broadcast by BBC Radio on 1 and 8 April. He also toured Scotland with the program to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Keillor also sometimes gives broadcast performances of a similar nature that do not carry the "Prairie Home Companion" brand, as in his 2008 appearance at the Oregon Bach Festival.[20]

In a March 2011 interview with the AARP Bulletin, Keillor announced that he would be retiring from A Prairie Home Companion in 2013[21], but in a December 2011 interview with the Sioux City Journal, Keillor told the interviewer "The show is going well. I love doing it. Why quit?"[22] His publicist later confirmed that "He doesn't have any specific plans to retire. He's still having a lot of fun doing the show."[23]

Keillor is also the host of The Writer's Almanac which, like A Prairie Home Companion, is produced and distributed by American Public Media. The Writer's Almanac is also available online[24] and via daily e-mail installments by subscription.[25]

Writing

Keillor in 2007 in Lanesboro, Minnesota

Keillor has written numerous magazine and newspaper articles and more than a dozen books for adults as well as children. In addition to writing for The New Yorker, he has written for The Atlantic Monthly and Salon.com.

He also authored an advice column at Salon.com under the name "Mr. Blue." Following a heart operation, he resigned on September 4, 2001, his last column being titled "Every dog has his day":[26]

Illness offers the chance to think long thoughts about the future (praying that we yet have one, dear God), and so I have, and so this is the last column of Mr. Blue, under my authorship, for Salon. Over the years, Mr. Blue's strongest advice has come down on the side of freedom in our personal lives, freedom from crushing obligation and overwork and family expectations and the freedom to walk our own walk and be who we are. And some of the best letters have been addressed to younger readers trapped in jobs like steel suits, advising them to bust loose and go off and have an adventure. Some of the advisees have written back to inform Mr. Blue that the advice was taken and that the adventure changed their lives. This was gratifying. So now I am simply taking my own advice. Cut back on obligations: Promote a certain elegant looseness in life. Simple as that. Winter and spring, I almost capsized from work, and in the summer I had a week in St. Mary's Hospital to sit and think, and that's the result. Every dog has his day and I've had mine and given whatever advice was mine to give (and a little more). It was exhilarating to get the chance to be useful, which is always an issue for a writer (What good does fiction do?), and Mr. Blue was a way to be useful. Nothing human is beneath a writer's attention; the basic questions about how to attract a lover and what to do with one once you get one and how to deal with disappointment in marriage are the stuff that fiction is made from, so why not try to speak directly? And so I did. And now it's time to move on.

In 2004 Keillor published a collection of political essays, Homegrown Democrat, and in June 2005 he began a column called "The Old Scout",[27] which ran at Salon.com and in syndicated newspapers. The column went on hiatus in April 2010 "so that he [could] finish a screenplay and start writing a novel".

Keillor wrote the screenplay for the 2006 movie A Prairie Home Companion, directed by Robert Altman. (Keillor also appears in the movie.)

"Common Good Books, G. Keillor, Prop." in St. Paul

Bookselling

On November 1, 2006, Keillor opened an independent bookstore, "Common Good Books, G. Keillor, Prop."[28] in the Blair Arcade Building at the southwest corner of Selby and N. Western Avenues in the Cathedral Hill area in the Summit-University neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota.[29] The bookstore's opening was covered by the St. Paul Pioneer Press.[30] In April 2012, the store moved to a new location across Snelling Ave from Macalester College in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood[31]

Voiceover work

Probably owing in part to his distinctive North Central accent, Keillor is often used as a voiceover actor. Some notable appearances include:

  • Voiceover artist for Honda UK's "the Power of Dreams" campaign. The campaign's most memorable advertisement is the 2003 Honda Accord commercial Cog, which features a Heath Robinson contraption (Rube Goldberg Machine for those in the USA) made entirely of car parts. The commercial ends with Keillor asking, "Isn't it nice when things just work?"[32] Since then, Keillor has voiced the tagline for most if not all UK Honda advertisements, and even sang the voiceover in the 2004 Honda Diesel commercial "Grrr".[33] His most recent ad was a reworking of an existing commercial with digitally added England flags to tie in with the World Cup. Keillor's tagline was "Come on, England, keep the dream alive."
  • Voice of the Norse god Odin in an episode of the Disney animated series Hercules.
  • Voice of Walt Whitman and other historical figures in Ken Burns's documentary series The Civil War and Baseball.

Controversies

In 2005, Keillor's attorneys sent a cease-and-desist letter to MNSpeak.com regarding their production of a T-shirt bearing the inscription "A Prairie Ho Companion."[34]

In 2006, after a visit to a United Methodist Church in Highland Park, Texas, Keillor created a local controversy with his remarks about the event,[35] including the rhetorical suggestion of a connection between event participants and supporters of torture and a statement creating an impression of political intimidation: "I walked in, was met by two burly security men ... and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics." The security detail is purportedly routine for the venue, and according to participants, Keillor did not interact with any audience members between his arrival and his lecture.[36] Supposedly, before Keillor's remarks, participants in the event had considered the visit to have been cordial and warm.[37]

In 2007, Keillor wrote a column that in part criticized "stereotypical" gay parents, who he said were "sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers."[38] In response to the strong reactions of many readers, Keillor said

I live in a small world -- the world of entertainment, musicians, writers -- in which gayness is as common as having brown eyes .... And in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other a lot. But in the larger world, gayness is controversial ... and so gay people feel besieged to some degree and rightly so .... My column spoke as we would speak in my small world, and it was read by people in the larger world and thus the misunderstanding. And for that, I am sorry. Gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, and they know that, and so do I. [39]

In 2008, Keillor created a controversy in St. Paul when he filed a lawsuit against his neighbors' plans to build an addition on their home, citing his need for "light and air" and a view of "open space and beyond". Keillor's home is significantly larger than others in his neighborhood and would still be significantly larger than his neighbors' with its planned addition.[40] Keillor came to an undisclosed settlement with his neighbors shortly after the story became public.[41]

In popular culture

His style, particularly his speaking voice, is often the subject of parody. The Simpsons parodied Keillor in an episode in which Homer is shown watching a Keillor-like monologist on television; Homer hit the set exclaiming "Stupid TV! Be more funny!".[42]

One Boston radio critic likens Keillor and his "down comforter voice" to "a hypnotist intoning, 'You are getting sleepy now'," while noting that Keillor does play to listeners' intelligence.[43] Keillor rarely reads his monologue from a script.

One of the audio bumpers that begin each hour of Dennis Miller's radio talk show features a short clip of Keillor introducing a broadcast of APHC, followed immediately by snoring.

In the bonus DVD material for the album Venue Songs by band They Might Be Giants, John Hodgman delivers a fictitious newscast in which he explains that "The Artist Formerly Known as Public Radio Host Garrison Keillor" and his "legacy of Midwestern pledge-drive funk" inspired the band's first "venue song."[44]

Pennsylvanian singer-songwriter Tom Flannery wrote a song in 2003 entitled "I Want a Job Like Garrison Keillor's."[45]

The Cleveland Show once mentioned Keillor as an exemplar of humor so subtle as to be inscrutable. [46]

The Homestar Runner cartoon "Date Nite" features an Easter egg found by clicking on the period in "end." at the end of the cartoon. In it, a Public Radio wrestling event is advertised in which Keillor "...wrestles his own soothing voice in a steel cage." [47]

Awards and other recognition

Bibliography

Keillor's work in print includes:

Lake Wobegon

Other

Contributions to The New Yorker

Title Department Volume/Part Date Page(s) Subject(s)
Notes and Comment The Talk of the Town 60/47 7 January 1985 17-18 A friend's visit to San Francisco and Stinson Beach, California.

See also

References

  1. ^ Wadler, Joyce (June 7, 2006). "Where all the rooms are above average / Garrison Keillor's home not a little house on the prairie". The San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/07/HOG8GJ8NBR1.DTL. 
  2. ^ Lands' End
  3. ^ Salon Books | Hot sex with the ex
  4. ^ Powers, John (August 10, 2008). "Plenty of niceness, and no ice, for a Grand Old Party". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/travel/getaways/us/articles/2008/08/10/plenty_of_niceness_and_no_ice_for_a_grand_old_party/. 
  5. ^ Carolyn Arends, "From the Radio to the Big Screen", Christianity Today, June 5, 2006.
  6. ^ prairiehome.publicradio.org
  7. ^ http://marriage.about.com/od/entertainmen1/p/keillornilsson.htm
  8. ^ "A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media". American Public Media. 1998-01-02. http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/features/hodgepodge/19980102_baby/. Retrieved 2010-12-24. 
  9. ^ Garrison Keillor
  10. ^ Steven Keillor
  11. ^ Walsh, Paul (2009-09-09). Minor stroke puts Keillor in hospital. Star Tribune. http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/style/58076947.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUs. Retrieved 2009-09-09. 
  12. ^ Keillor, Garrison (2004). Homegrown Democrat. New York: Penguin Books. pp. 39–40, 84. ISBN 0-14-303768-4. 
  13. ^ Keillor, Garrison (2004). Homegrown Democrat. New York: Penguin Books. pp. 84. ISBN 0-14-303768-4. 
  14. ^ Lee, J. Y. Garrison Keillor: A Voice of America, pages 29–30. University Press of Mississippi, 1991.
  15. ^ a b c Garrison Keillor, page 30. University Press of Mississippi, 1991.
  16. ^ "Keillor to Quit Daily Show, Others Leave KSJN, Minneapolis Tribune, 1973-08-24, 14B.
  17. ^ prairiehome.publicradio.org
  18. ^ Keillor, Garrison; Richard Olsenius (photographs) (2001). In Search of Lake Wobegon. New York: Viking Studio. pp. 12–13. ISBN 978-0-670-03037-8. 
  19. ^ prairiehome.publicradio.org
  20. ^ "Oregon Bach Festival pressroom". http://www.oregonbachfestival.com/pressroom/news/267. Retrieved 2009-08-17. 
  21. ^ "Garrison Keillor, 'Prairie Home Companion' Host, to Retire From Radio". The Hollywood Reporter. March 17, 2011. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/garrison-keillor-prairie-home-companion-168797. Retrieved 2011-03-30. 
  22. ^ Miller, Bruce (1 December 2011). "Garrison Keillor keeps the home fires burning". Sioux City Journal. http://siouxcityjournal.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/garrison-keillor-keeps-the-home-fires-burning/article_fa5de025-6cb5-541d-a7fa-b055d065b5ae.html. Retrieved 22 January 2012. 
  23. ^ Smith, Kelly (3 December 2011). "Keillor says he's rethinking retirement". Minnesota Star Tribune. http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/134963948.html. Retrieved 22 January 2012. 
  24. ^ The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor | Analysis of Baseball by May Swenson
  25. ^ mail.publicradio.org
  26. ^ salon.com
  27. ^ "The Old Scout" at Tribune Media Services
  28. ^ Common Good Books, G. Keillor, Prop."
  29. ^ Summit-University
  30. ^ twincities.com
  31. ^ "Common Sense Books". http://www.commongoodbooks.com/. Retrieved 9 April 2012. ""Common Good Books is now open at our new, brighter location--38 S Snelling Ave, at the corner of Grand and Snelling!"" 
  32. ^ creativeclub.co.uk
  33. ^ youtube Grr Commercial
  34. ^ . http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/higgins200509280816.asp. 
  35. ^ The United Methodist Portal
  36. ^ Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Columnist Jacquielynn Floyd | Dallas-Fort Worth News[dead link]
  37. ^ GuideLive.com | Arts/Entertainment News and Events | Dallas-Fort Worth | The Dallas Morning News | Books[dead link]
  38. ^ Family? Gender? Cowboys? I’ll tell you all about it, by Garrison Keillor - Chicago Tribune
  39. ^ salon.com
  40. ^ Katherine Kersten » Blog Archive » Mr. Keillor’s Unneighborly Ways
  41. ^ Mediation ends Keillor's feud with neighbor
  42. ^ snpp.com
  43. ^ boston.com
  44. ^ youtube.com
  45. ^ "I Want a Job Like Garrison Keillor" at songaweek.com
  46. ^ Garrison Keiller in The Cleveland Show
  47. ^ Homestarrunner.com "Date Nite"
  48. ^ a b c d "Something for Everyone". School of the Arts: University of North Carolina. http://www.uncsa.edu/performances/sfe1.htm. Retrieved April 26, 2011. 
  49. ^ museum.tv
  50. ^ Welcome to Minnesota - Minnesota Historical Markers on Waymarking.com
  51. ^ The Moth - Annual Moth Ball
  52. ^ San Jose State University, Press Release, "Garrison Keillor to Receive 2007 John Steinbeck Award," 2007 Sept. 10, http://www.sjsu.edu/news/releases/releases_detail.jsp?id=2530

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