Customer Reviews

Pilgrims: A Wobegon Romance (Lake Wobegon)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A personal note: Years ago I bought a hardback copy of Lake Wobegon Days. I figured since I loved the radio show surely I'd love his book. Wrong. I'm usually a dedicated reader. Once I lay out the money for a book I usually read it through whether I like it or not. I was raised not to waste food and I suppose that carried over into not wasting a read, especially when I laid out the hard earned dollars to buy it. At any rate, Lake Wobegon Days is one of the few books I just couldn't bring myself to finish. I have avoided Keillor's books since then. Until now!

I have to admit that I picked up Pilgrims: A Wobegon Romance in a book store not expecting to buy the book. After reading about ten pages while standing in the aisle I found a chair and read ten more. I bought the book. Pilgrims is a funny, intelligent story told by a master storyteller. As a man who also loves to sing but who has been told "don't sing" I found an instant kinship with "Gary" Keillor. Truth be told, the real Keillor is a much better singer than I am.

The story is entertaining and straightforward. Gary Keillor, the main character, stops by Lake Wobegon to deliver a speech to The Thanatopsis Women's Club. After a chain of misunderstandings so reminiscent of a television sitcom where one misunderstanding leads to another, Gary Keillor agrees to pay for a trip to Italy for a group of Wobegonians. It is during this trip that the author's gift for storytelling really shows. Though the purpose of the trip is a somber one, the following pages are a giggle a minute. Self deprecation is one of the oldest bits a comedian/author can use; and it can get old in a hurry. But in Keillor's hands it is pure honey.

There is more here but I don't want to run the risk of ruining the read for anyone else. I found Pilgrims to be a very, very entertaining.

I may have been wrong all these years.

I highly recommend Pilgrims: A Wobegon.

Peace to all.

Garrison Keillor has to be one of the most preeminent story tellers of today; but if you expect his books to be the sweet, innocuous, wonderful stories of his Prairie Home Companion radio show - they are not. His books are not the same; they are deeper and more complex. They delve into the deeper recesses of the Midwestern human soul..
`Pilgrims' is doubly funny if you know Midwesterners..."oh no, not another picture, no whooping please, do not give me any notice, I wish to just blend in. `Pilgrims' is the story of a trip to Italy by some familiar names of Lake Wobegone. They are going to fulfill a promise to put a picture on his grave of one of the town heroes, Gussie Norlander, from WWII.
The pilgrims include Marjorie and Carl Kresbach, ,Daryl and Marilyn Tollerud, Clint and Irene Bunsen, Eloise and Wally Kresbach, Wally and Evelyn Kreuger, Father Wilmer, Lyle Janske and Gary Keillor - radio host.
The descriptions of the characters and their reactions and the surroundings around them are part of Garrison's gift of storytelling. In the Midwest self depreciating style... Gary Keillor speaks and everyone wonders how this this man ever came to be telling stories on the radio.
`Pilgrims' tells of love, husband's and wife's misunderstandings. It is earthy and pithy, especially compared to the weekly PBS show that many listen to. I really don't want to give away the story endings, but it has many unexpected twists and turns of how these Midwesterners react to this trip to Italy. They find a surprising answer to the story of hero Gussie Norlander, they also discover some surprising answers to their lives. They all discover that maybe it is enough to just live life and there might be a larger meaning beyond what you would expect. To say more would be to give away the twists that make this an interesting book of the human condition, not just of the Midwesterner's mindset.

Prepare to laugh. In Keillor's latest Wobegon fantasy, a dozen Lake Wobegonians make a trip to Rome to honor a hometown war hero who died during the Italian campaign in WWII.

Keillor tags along, or at least Gary Keillor does. This Keillor is the host of "A Prairie Home Companion", a highly successful radio show. Lake Wobegon is Keillor's home town and when he returns to give a speech there he gets roped into footing the bill for the entire trip.

The usual cast of characters are here. They have little respect for Keillor or for his program which seems to mock their home town. The trip is supposedly intended to re -ignite the flame in one couple's foundering marriage. But it turns into much more, a mystery, a suspense, a romance? Keillor implies that outcome in his title. One must presume that it refers to his love for this imaginary little Minnesota town?

The high points along the way are the many opportunities Keillor has to mock himself, even his own singing. This self deprecating humor is pure gold.

If you value his is earlier books from lake Wobegon and his radio show for their gentle homespun humor this book may come as a shock. Those simple, straight laced Minnesotans appear to be hiding a lusty little secret. Divorce, adultery, graphic sex is more common than you've come to expect from these good Christian folk and permeates the book.

The story seemed to ramble, sometimes aimlessly, and it wasn't always easy to separate the actual events of the pilgrimage to Rome from the musings, anecdotes, regrets, etc. that the characters reminisce upon along the way.

There are a some funny moments but not as many nor in the laid-back small town sense of his earlier books. There's plenty of sex discussed including a rather steamy and explicit "nooner" for Margie with a twenty year younger Italian stud who appears to be very good at what he does. Then a few days later after unprotected (I did mention explicit) sex with her 'Italian stallion' she has sex with her husband Carl the night of their anniversary. This down to earth Minnesotan high school teacher, wife & mother doesn't seem at all concerned about pregnancy, STD, cheating on Carl or passing a STD to him. Her only regret is what God will think and punish her for, perhaps choke her on a communion wafer! Choking on a communion wafer is one of the humor highlights but, still, the entire incident seems out of character considering how his early books portray these folks. You almost get the impression that the author is a sexually frustrated man living out his fantasies in print.

I finished the book but certainly didn't enjoy it nearly as much as his earlier stories from Lake Wobegon. Definitely not one you'd want to read to the kids.

During one of those author-who-you-should-know interviews on public television a few years ago, I was about to change channels when I heard a rather arresting statement that went something like "writer X gently relaxes the reader into stark reality..." I've forgotten who they were talking about, but few things I've heard on any author before or since are better suited to Garrison Keillor and PILGRIMS --- the latest in her series of books rooted deep in the soil (or, should I say, soul?) of Lake Wobegon and the radio hinterlands of his Prairie Home Companion.

PILGRIMS has much in common with everything else that flows from Keillor's seemingly inexhaustible and irresistible Midwestern imagination. But this time, in a spirit of reckless literary abandon, he transplants 12 unlikely Wobegonians --- including his semi-fictional self --- into the original hotbed of classical culture: Rome. Though Italy may seem about as far from their Minnesota Nordic roots as Betelgeuse, they travel amazingly well. Among the loose-knit cluster of pragmatic Lutherans and anxious Catholics is a carpenter, a couple of farmers, the usual busybodies and gossips, a car salesman, a priest, Wobegon's mayor, two teachers, and a famous radio talk show host called Gary.

If this is all beginning to sound a little Chaucerian, you're getting warm. Like his precursor (admittedly a far better poet), Keillor's mainly prose novel gently mocks the pretensions of a religious pilgrimage by relating the more practical concerns, aspirations, misadventures and joys that bubble up along the way for some remarkable "ordinary" people. Typical among them is trip organizer and unlikely heroine Margie Krebsbach, a high school librarian who had never displayed any qualities as a leader in her life.

Every pilgrimage has an ostensible goal to distinguish it from mere tourism. After all, it would be hard to sell the concept of anyone in Lake Wobegon going off to Europe with nothing else in mind except to have fun and enjoy the scenery (both architectural and human). No way! The Catholics need approval and the Lutherans need justification, so like the good psychological theologian he is, Keillor gives them all a collective Purpose: to mount a picture of local war hero Augustus "Gussie" Norlander on his gravestone in a Roman military cemetery.

Understanding that piece of the "plot" is essential because the real journey of PILGRIMS starts not en route as it does with Chaucer's intrepid lot, but from the moment Keillor's Wobegonians land in a jet-lagged daze at Da Vinci Airport and plan the logistics of completing their mission. In many ways, the geographical and cultural realities of dislocation kick in right there on the tarmac with the first irritable group photo, the first arguments over whether to sleep or sight-see, and the first wrangle over whether to eat "native" or familiar.

Having set that machine in motion with all the predictable and humorous missteps that he invents with such maddening ease, Keillor goes beneath the surface of his seemingly placid and diffident characters to explore the ingredients of their hearts. And here's where PILGRIMS gets really interesting. Keillor blindsides the reader (gently but insistently) with the stark realities of unfulfilled dreams, lost opportunities, dashed hopes, faded love, anxious futures, shattered ideals, uncertain faith, and the whole gamut of worries that travel with all of us wherever we go.

Margie becomes the focus of a tentative but determined journey back to her own future, a spiritual and psychological pilgrimage in which she learns to reclaim what she truly loves about herself and her life and shed the parts that weighed her down. Much of that redemptive action happens unbeknownst to her companions, who undergo their own private epiphanies at the same time. They all come together around the inescapable realization that even their Purpose evolves into something else. The late lamented "Gussie" turns out not to be the larger-than-life hero they were all expecting to honor. In fact, his life was not half-bad and about the same size as all of theirs.

And somehow, that not only works for Keillor's homeward-bound Wobegonians, but it works for me, too. After reading PILGRIMS, you'll be left with a big smile in your heart and perhaps just a wee tear in your eye. What could be more vintage Garrison Keillor than that?

--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch

The small town folks Keillor immortalized in his earlier Wobegon books now seem a distant memory. He doesn't seen to like these characters much any more and in turn I didn't enjoy reading about them either. It might be time to make that permanent move to the big city.

I love the Prairie Home Companion show and attend shows in St. Paul whenever in town. I have read all of Garrison's books and this one is an absolute gem. Funny, funny, funny. Whoever wrote the review about the book being steamy has to know Garrison's syle which is to be tongue in cheek about the whole European affair thing the main character had. I thought it was one of his best, although I loved Pontoon, Liberty and now reading The Christmas Blizzard, both on CD and book. When you read Garrison's books, remember, this is all about laughing at ourselves and finding humor and downright joy in our lives. If you love to laugh, get this book! It is wonderful.

Not Garrison Keillor's best but a funny read none-the-less. The characters' backstories reminded me of my early days in small-town Midwest. The author's kind-hearted gossipy characters are realistic. When they finally get on the flight and go, the description of Rome is true, as are some of the scenes of group travel, although Keillor could have written more hilarious detail into airport experiences. I took one star off because the actions of the main character, Margie, regarding her inheritance were not convincing, and in fact were exasperating to read. Otherwise, very entertaining, especially if you know Midwest life and Keillor's other works.

This has to be the worst book ever written by Garrison Keillor. I have been a fan of PHC & News From Lake Wobegon for 30 years. I don't know is Garrison was just writing a book to just write another novel, but this is not the usual writings of the folk of Lake Wobegon that we know. His writings are getting more sexually explicit, and the book was a major disappointment. I have wasted two hours of my life with this book. Garrison, bring back the writings and stories of Lake Wobegon folks that we grew up to know and love.

I have listened to Garrison Keillor's radio show for years and thought this book would be much like that. Without going into detail, let me just say this book is not the clean, wholesome fun that the show is. I gave up part way through. I have better things to read about than the sexual fantasies of Mr. Keillor.