Me by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente, Governor of Minnesota [Import] [Paperback]

Garrison Keillor (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: Faber and Faber (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571202365
• ISBN-13: 978-0571202362
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,593,804 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

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hilarious romp by a writer having the time of his life., March 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Me: by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente (Hardcover)

Every now and then, a writer discovers the perfect subject for his talents. That's the case with this book. I think Keillor must have written this book about as fast as his fingers could fly over the keyboard, because the nature of the subject matter allowed him--no, really encouraged him--to just throw caution to the winds and charge at his subject with gleeful energy. Keillor in the past has had trouble finding the right sort of persona to voice his sometimes acerbic observations on the Midwestern character. No such problem here. Like the real Jesse Ventura, Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente is a self-invented man. Like Ventura, Jimmy is a cartoon. He is much too large to be a real human being. His voice is not human. His behavior is cartoonish, over-the-top and extreme. He inhabits a world full of cartoon characters (the other professional wrestlers), all of whom stand for strange and spooky little corners of the human imagination. The "sport" of wrestling is a cartoon of good and evil, misdeeds and retribution. Jimmy Valente's war, Vietnam, was a cartoon version of an ordinary war.

In other words, everything about Jimmy Valente is bigger than life, and that gives Keillor full license to let his imagination run riot. He never had to worry about being excessively colorful or bizarre, because his subject is so cartoonish that "anything goes."

The result is a laugh riot, and clearly Keillor has no nasty agenda with respect to the extremely odd but oddly likable man who currently is his governor. One of the fun little jokes Keillor has is his inclusion of dialogue between Jimmy and his ghost-writer, Garrison Keillor. In those exchanges, Jimmy usually puts down his amanuensis with trenchant humor and a clear sense of who he is.

I have not enjoyed everything Garrison Keillor has written, although I've enjoyed most of it. This book is just a treat. Read it when you've got someone around so you can can read to them some of the more outrageous lines.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Satire: Lively, Descriptive, Funny, December 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Me: by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente (Hardcover)

Garrison Keillor's is a master of comparrison. He creates excellent word pictures with hyperboles and ellaborate similes and metaphors. For me, Garrison's writing style is a model. As for the content of the book, Garrison creatively and colorfully portrays the Governor without overly criticizing the Governor.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Overall witty, funny but very slow in some spots., April 29, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Me: by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente (Hardcover)

This is nowhere close to the quality of "Lake Wobegon Days" but worth a read, nevertheless. While it is very witty and clever in many places, at other times it really drags and often becomes so silly as to be unbelievable even as the fantasized life of Jimmy "Big Boy" Valente. I think Mr. Keillor rushed this one to the publisher when it could have used some polish and revision.