Review
Garrison Keillor is forever identified with A Prairie Home Companion and the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. Not since Will Rogers has a humorist/philosopher become such a national celebrity. In this lucid, well-researched study Peter Scholl chronologically follows the dual career of Garrison Keillor (the pen name Gary Edward Keillor has been using since he was thirteen) to explore the Minnesotan's double mastery of the arts of storytelling and writing. School looks at how Keillor's radio writing and conceptions have influenced his published writing, including sketches and stories for the New Yorker, his books Happy to be Here (1982), Lake Woebegon Days (1985), Leaving Home (1987), We Are Still Married (1989), WLT: A Radio Romance (1991), and The Book of Guys (1993). In this engaging, balanced literary portrait, School analyzes how Keillor's public career as a radio performer has often put him at odds with his more solitary life as a writer. At least four times Keillor has quit his positions in radio to devote himself more exclusively to writing, and this oscillation between two callings reveals a complex ambivalence in Keillor's careers - an ambivalence that adds to the poignancy and uniqueness of the stories Keillor tells. -- Midwest Book Review
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
