Garrison Keillor

Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny by Garrison Keillor is silly and ridiculous. I picked it up because my wife and I can't help laughing at the author's Guy Noir stories on the radio show Prairie Home Companion. If you have the same problem, then you'll probably enjoy this book.

It's a caper involving a tape worm diet pill (!) and plenty of gangsters and pretty women and snapshots of our lives from a special bizarre angle lens. "She was tall and blonde, except she'd dyed the roots brunette, an show more original touch." Another's sensuous sighing into a phone was a "sussuration, like the wind in the silvery cottonwoods by a burbling brook flowing through the whispering prairie grasses by a long two-track road somewhere in Nebraska, not that I've been there myself but I read Willa Cather once when I was dating an English major named Leslye who was, in fact, from Lincoln, Nebraska, and I believe 'sussuration' was the word Willa used."

Guy's a private eye, of course, and clients often have unusual projects for him, like the one who had "finally finished reading Moby-Dick after ten years and had forgotten what the book was about and could I help?" There are plenty of noir (small n) descriptions, like the bad guy Bogus Brothers whose scarred faces looked like "they'd been pounding fence posts with their foreheads" and who smelled "like old gym socks sprayed with cheap cologne." There are bad puns ("Someday my prints will come"), and Keystone Kops interludes, like the romantic get-together ruined by Guy's overenthusiastic attempts to multitask while piloting a canoe. The author also manages to poke fun at Prairie Home Companion, which has been turned into a Spanish language show to boost the ratings, and himself, as the displaced host that Guy pities. Interspersed throughout are the show's trademark jabs at Minnesota, Minneapolis and St. Paul. It also finds room for many more references to farts and sex than you'd hear on the radio show.

If life seems somber at the moment, you might pick this one up and remind yourself how ridiculous we all are. show less

THAT TIME OF YEAR was a Christmas gift to myself, because I was a Prairie Home Companion listener for over thirty years, since it was introduced to me by a Minnesotan friend (from Mankato). Alternately hilarious and deeply moving, it had me chuckling and laughing out loud as I read it in bed each night for the past week,annoying my wife to no end, as she was trying to read her own book. Besides the usual Lake Wobegone weird tales and trademark Keillor humor, songs and limericks, we also show more learn much about the author's childhood, filled with loving aunts, and how he stumbled into radio, his workaholic habits and close shaves with strokes, heart problems and brain seizures, which finally forced him into a reluctant retirement at 74. He also tells of his three marriages and all the dear friends and family he has outlived, and even offers an explanation about how he was "hung out to dry" via unfair accusations made during the #metoo movement, causing Public Radio to sever ties with him, ending one of my favorite daily five-minute shows, "The Writer's Almanac." He tries not to be bitter about this, but it was obviously a bitter pill. Bottom line: I LOVED THIS BOOK. It is classic Garrison Keillor, pulling no punches, 78 and at the top of his game. We're almost the same age. Let's hear it for the old guys. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the REED CITY BOY memoir trilogy show less

I’ve read most of GK’s books, and I think this is the best. It’s honest, funny, and settles in my mind once and for all who he is. And I like who he is. He’s an important writer in our time, and his brush with MeToo won’t change that. One can take down his picture at the U, cancel his wonderful “Writers Almanac,” and otherwise try to pretend he hasn’t been on this earth for nearly eight decades, but like most great yet flawed writers, his works live on and will continue to show more live on long after he’s gone. Thank you, GK, for this book and for your explanation. Now, go fish somewhere. show less

I read the first quarter of this newest Garrison Keillor book — well, actually, listened to him narrate it — on a car trip en route to Eastern Kentucky and back. So much that I had forgotten! I had forgotten how laugh-out-loud funny Keillor is. I had forgotten how memorable Lake Wobegon’s inhabitants are. I had forgotten how many car trips were made enjoyable by previous Lake Wobegon recordings.

What I learned is that no place — not even Lake Wobegon, Minn., Keillor’s fictional show more hometown — is immune from change. I also learned that Midwesterners have it right: less said, soonest mended. That, whatever they say, the Midwest runs on small-town socialism; you pay a little extra at Bunsen Motors because you value Clarence and Clint Bunsen, even though you could get a better deal at the Ford dealership over in the next town. And lastly, that insisting on “freedumb” and having your own way at all costs is as bad as the coronavirus and as devastating to society. It’s no accident that Minnesota Nice has made the state prosperous and a draw for young families. Welcome back, Garrison Keillor.

Yet The Lake Wobegon Virus differs from both previous Lake Wobegon books and the radio segments. This is a sadder but wiser Lake Wobegon. The next generation is no longer interested in men’s lodges, like the Sons of Canute, nor ice fishing nor learning Norwegian nor dairy farming. Increasingly, the young leave their small hometowns for the bright lights of Minneapolis and New York and Los Angeles. And like the laughs, mulling over the sacrifices and compromises we’ve all had to make (or will make) makes this book indispensable. Five Prairie Home stars. show less