WLT: A Radio Romance [Paperback]

Garrison Keillor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1992

An intimate look into the lives of the quirky staff of WLT--a friendly neighborhood radio station founded by floundering Minneapolis restaurant magnates--weaves together real-life trauma with radio-life drama. Reprint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Popular radio host Keillor's fictional history of a Minneapolis radio station-a seven-week PW bestseller and a BOMC featured alternate in clothprovides poignant reminders of a time that never was but probably should have been.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The glory days of Midwest radio prove the ideal subject for old radio-hand Keillor, now writing at the height of his awesome power, which could make a homesick cat laugh. Brothers Ray and Roy Soderbjerg set up station WLT (With Lettuce and Tomato) in Minneapolis in 1926 to draw crowds to their wilting sandwich restaurant. The station proves a gold mine after the two reluctantly agree to allow commercials, and the brothers turn their somewhat divided attention (Ray's chief vocation is sex, Roy's inventing the unnecessary) to the new medium. The novel takes off on a sustained joyride as a hilarious bunch of characters are hired to fill the air with the cornball, pseudo-pious, pseudo- populist fare that held the Midwest in thrall until television offered a superior snow job. Keillor continually contrasts the smutty, lust-filled lives of the cast and crew in the studio with the wholesome, homespun drivel they broadcast. On air, for example, Little Becky is a winsome angel, but look out--the chain-smoking child star will perform the crudest of practical jokes on the unwary. A blind sports announcer, a crushingly cheerful songstress confined to her wheelchair by polio and fat, and a dissolute group of gospel singers are just some of the superb oddities that people Keillor's pages. A straight man to these comic figures and the novel's hero is young Francis With, who comes of age at the station and goes on to great things. The comedy is as broad as it comes, but it also has a depth that includes poignancy, particularly as it records the station's downhill slide. Humor and insight into the heart of raunchy America don't get any better than this. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (November 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140103805
• ISBN-13: 978-0140103809
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #305,584 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

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hysterically Funny, April 10, 2005

By 

John P Bernat (Kingsport, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: WLT: A Radio Romance (Paperback)

We want to keep Garrison Keillor in the box he's made for himself. The prudish reviews below testify to that.

But, haven't you been listening? Keillor smokes Pall Malls. He likes to drink. His greatest aspiration as a young man was to hang out with the literary degeneracy in New York City, and he realized his dream.

You could say he made his tight-cornered bed and now he must lie in it, and you could be dead right. However, in this book, he decided to tell a dirty joke or two and see what the public said about it.

Myself, I liked it. In fact, I like WLT about the most of anything he's written. You get such an image of the other Keillor, who likes a drink and a smoke and a dirty joke. A sexist Keillor who thinks men and women should be attracted to one another and have sex now and again. It's just right.

That particular Keillor cannot survive today, though. The archetype is out of fashion to a fatal degree. He wants us to love it, but we've been too conditioned for other qualities. Strangely, these new qualities are just as loutish and brutal, but they're somehow acceptable.

Radio is dead, but we do have satellite...

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Arguably THE Great Overlooked American Novel, April 24, 2006

By 

R. F. Hurley "glassangel" (Sonoma County, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: WLT: A Radio Romance (Paperback)

You want yer prose style? We got yer prose style. You want your OUTRAGEOUS humor... um... read what happens when your top writer for live radio programming doesn't get enough sleep...

I laughed so hard, I couldn't breath.

His prose pacing is like a psychedelic journey: just when you think things are slowing down, you're already off on another wild excursion. He seemlessly accomplishes what Ken Kesey did somewhat awkwardly in Sometimes a Great Notion-- no slouch of a book in its OWN right.

If you're wondering where the Great American Novel has been hiding, wonder instead how someone as well known as Keillor could get away with writing something like this, only to have it languish in obscurity. If American literature is dead, it's only because Americans have COMPLETELY forgotten how to read.

(excuse my rant)

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE GREATEST Keillor novel EVER!, December 7, 2000

By 

steven marshall (Pasadena, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wlt (Audio Cassette)

WLT is one of the most moving works I have ever read by Keillor. I read it when it first came out in hardback, and recently bought the audiobook, read by Keillor; it was like hearing it for the first time. Keillor's style of reading is so believable and enthralling, that I found myself leaving earlier for work in the morning so I could hear one whole side of the tape on the way. Listening to WLT as read by Keillor is a promise that you will laugh out loud, and a moment later weep as if you've lost your best friend. Amazing. I loved it! Deeply affecting!