Happy to be here [Hardcover]

Garrison Keillor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1982

Contains the author's reflections on life in the 20th century. Garrison Keillor is the author of "Leaving Home" and "We Are Still Married".

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Keillor's parodies, satires, and whimsies - which have been appearing in The New Yorker since 1969 - rarely provide big laughs or Perelmanic dazzle; but they do have an affectionate, easygoing, back-home quality that makes for a nice change from the clenched-up sparring of most New York-based humorists. (Keillor is Minnesota all the way.) Least distinctive of the 30 pieces collected here are obvious send-ups of trends in jargon and lifestyle: there are familiar, somewhat dated digs at alternative weddings (Sam and Judy "chose to emphasize their mutual commitment to air and water quality, exchanging vows while chained to each other and to the plant gate of a major industrial polluter"); at the craze for communal/natural goods and services ("all of our meat comes from animals who were unable to care for themselves any longer"); at the Foxfire enshrinement of plain-folks (numbing oral histories about making snowmen and customizing cars); and at psychobabble - applied to baseball. Elsewhere, however, Keillor develops a more satisfying double-joke, as in "Shy Rights: Why Not Pretty Soon?" - which lampoons gay-liberation rhetoric while maintaining the ever-apologetic tone of the minority in question ("Discrimination against the shy is our country's No. 1 disgrace in my own personal opinion"). And there are pieces which derive welcome texture from a literary-parody element - like the overlong but endearing "Jack Schmidt, Arts Administrator" (a la Sam Spade). But the special stuff here, if not the funniest, is Keillor's just-slightly-off-kilter Americana: folksy reminiscences which may veer into farce now and then but at the same time demand to have their warm, real centers taken seriously. "My North Dakota Railroad Days," for instance, generates train nostalgia while simultaneously skewering it. And best of all are three sweetly addled evocations of early/small-time radio. (Keillor is a longtime broadcaster, host of National Public Radio's "Prairie Home Companion.") Mostly minor-league humor, then, but with enough one-of-a-kind touches (including a few likably autobiographical snippets) to rise just a little above the crowd. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Garrison Keillor, author of nearly a dozen books, is founder and host of the acclaimed radio show A Prairie Home Companion and the daily program The Writer's Almanac. He is also a regular contributor to Time magazine.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum; 1st edition (1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0068112017
• ISBN-13: 978-0068112013
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,473,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Garrison Keillor is the bestselling author of Lake Wobegon Days, Happy To Be Here, Leaving Home, We Are Still Married, Radio Romance, The Book of Guys and Wobegon Boy (available in Penguin Audiobook). He is the host of A Prairie Home Companion on American public radio and a contributor to Time magazine. He lives in Wisconsin and New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious!, May 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Happy to Be Here (Paperback)

I've only thus far read 3 GK books (Lake Wob./H2BH/Leaving Home), but this is definitely a neck-in-neck rival with Lake Wobegon Days. If there's any doubt as to whether or not this is a good buy, then just check it out of the library and read "The Tip-Top Club". You'll have to buy it, because you'll want to read it more than once!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Discursive Review, March 31, 2010

By 

Gord Wilson "alivingdog.com" (Bellingham, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Happy to Be Here (Paperback)

I once had the great good fortune to win, from Penguin Books, a scroll with a long quote from Garrison Keillor on it (and signed by him). It's the only thing I've ever won except for a beer key chain. It's a quote about books. Part of it was on the cover of one edition of "We Are Still Married". The rest is on my wall. It's very profound, about how people always say the book is going away, and yet it survives. I've also dipped into a bit of GK: The Book of Guys, We Are Still Married, and heard bits from The Prarie Home Companion.

Most of this book appeared in The New Yorker. I think how most of P.G. Wodehouse (the funniest writer not still alive) appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, and it makes me think that if you don't make it in New York you don't make it at all. Those days laid a secure foundation for the then young writer such that he could later broadcast from Minnesota, but I'm not sure he could have started there.

That said, this is one of the funniest books I've ever read, up there with Sein Language by Jerry Seinfeld, Without Feathers by Woody Allen, and the Jeeves books of the immortal Wodehouse. But the delight in it is the same as in Wodehouse: in the nuances of language, the pastiche of a certain kind of speech, bringing to the heartland the mainspring of British comedy: a delight in the various dialects as translated into writing. Of this last, Keillor is a master.

Among the gushing praise blurbs in the not nearly so well designed mass market paperback I read is one from Roy Blount Jr. that says "This book will leave you either dumbfounded or happy-- almost deservedly happy-- to be anywhere." There's a sense of place here that heightens the senses while it relaxes the soul, and once having been to Keillor's midwest, wherever you are becomes special and different. The placeness comes across.

It's a bit of a wonder that in "WLT", to my mind the most perfect piece here, Keillor can write about 1919 and the birth of local radio like he was there. No, it's not Doug Adams, not an SF cavalcade of the fantastic, it's hitchhiking across this vast unknown tract of space and time, immersed everywhere in a sense of place. And to find, to one's surprise, that somehow the book survives, to pause within its pages to rest, relax, and look around, happy to be here.

3.0 out of 5 stars A pretty good laugh, I think, December 30, 2011

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Happy to Be Here (Paperback)

Well, that fellow Keillor is a fairly sharp cookie. He's got what most of those political characters don't---his finger on the pulse of middle America. Of course, I'm referring to big shots, top bananas, fat cats, football stars, Lexus drivers, idols of stage and screen or people with 2,096 friends on Facebook. They live different lives altogether. No, I mean your average American like Joe Sixpack or Kellie Sewall who lives just down the street here in town. She certainly knows a writer when she finds one. Mr. Keillor is quite humorous and sometimes displays a a rare sense of earnest whimsy---or would that be "whimsical earnestness"? I'm not one of your top writers, I guess, though my mom would have loved me to be one. I don't really know. But Mr. Keillor certainly gets into all the nooks and crannies of the vast panorama that is your daily American life away from New York Timesville and outside the Beltway. He just has a knack for it, I guess, and he has talent too. Of course, if you're going to read this selection from cover to cover---and I always read each book cover to cover---my mom taught us to do that---"Don't give up easily", she told us, "it might turn out to be good later"---anyway, if you persevere, you may find that this book of his is a bit like avocado dip. A little goes a long way. Sure, you could space your readings out and take more time to savor each chapter. Some people like to do that. But not me, because of my mom. A few stories in here contain pathos, others bring out nostalgia for an America before Internet, cell phones, and reality TV, when people actually spoke to each other, had meetings, ate dinners in public halls, and travelled on trains. But you can't stop progress, as they say.

I would like to finish my review by saying that if you've ever listened to "Prairie Home Companion" or read any Lake Wobegon stories, you'll certainly like this book. Most of Keillor's books are above average just like the kids in his hometown. They belong to a genre that's slightly apart from what is usually thought of as "literature". That's why I haven't given it more stars.

Anyway, if you didn't like those other things, then I guess you'd better read something else. That's life, I suppose.