A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Dear Mr. Keillor:
I hope you can provide me with a little dating advice. I'm a single female in my early thirties who would like to settle down but most of the guys I have met are similar to your Norwegian bachelor farmers and seem to think in grunts. Writers like yourself seem to be more sensitive and observant than other people. Where do you guys hang out? Where did you hang out when you were young and single? And did you develop these qualities with age, or have you always had such consideration and aplomb? Or are all men like this and just incapable of putting their thoughts in words? Please advise.
Farran
Cincinnati, Ohio

Dear Farran, Writers appear more sensitive because sensitivity is our job, but that doesn't make us considerate or funny or easy to live with. Many writers go for days without saying much, only responding to direct questions, often with grunts. Where we hang out depends on who we're with. I hang out with my wife in quiet restaurants with old waiters whose feet hurt and who don't introduce themselves by name. We talk and stuff. Most men are capable of putting their thoughts into words when they choose to, but they don't like to be forced to testify. Or made to perform. Men are stubborn. A woman gives me a big hello, and gushes for a minute or two, and asks me how I am, and smiles, expecting to be regaled with a long essay, I say, "Not that bad."

---

Sir:
I am a life long student of American Literature and a huge fan of Mark Twain. I have some ideas about what you do that resembles Twain, but I'd be very interested to hear what you see as similarities between yourself and Twain and what you feel you've learned from Twain.
Missourian

Dear Sir, I share your high opinion of Mr. Twain and have never thought much about what he and I might have in common. We both grew up on the Mississippi, were both draft dodgers, and wrote for money, and beyond that, you tell me. Twain was a born talent, as evidenced by his letters home when he was a teenager and travelled to New York to get work as a printer and see the big city. You read them and you can detect his mature voice already there. And you see how he thrived on travel and new sights and the company of adventurers and eccentrics and losers. I'm a diffident performer and a reluctant traveller compared to him. What I most admire about Twain, though, is how well his stuff reads a hundred years later. He's still funny. This is truly extraordinary. Ain't nobody else from the 19th Century who makes me laugh out loud, I'll tell you that.

---

Dear Mr. Keillor:
I listen to the Writers Almanac every morning as I am driving home from the gym. I enjoy the program very much, but I have a question for you. What is a poem? As an engineer-type I have never really understood poetry. If something rhymes and has a certain meter, then I recognize it as a poem. As I listen to and enjoy the poems you read each morning, I sometimes wonder why what you are reading is a poem, as opposed to, say, a short-short story, as they don't apparently have either rhymes or a meter. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on this and your helping me to understand. Thank you.
Ken Goldman
Washington D.C.

Dear Mr. Goldman, Poetry is heightened speech, whether rhymed or not, and as such I believe it is always metrical, even if the cadence is irregular. There is usually a certain amount of mumbling and murmuring in prose, but poetry doesn't mumble. It's a sort of raising of the voice. A declamation, even if an intimate one. If you're curious about poetry, start with the Renaissance poets and Shakespeare and try Emily Dickinson. Mary Oliver is good, and Sharon Olds, and Robert Bly and Donald Hall and Philip Levine and on and on and on. Your appreciation would only be sharpened if you sat down and tried to write some poems in imitation of poems you admire. A sonnet, for example, is a beautiful piece of engineering, as is the sestina, villanelle, and even the lowly limerick. A book on poetic forms might intrigue you.

---

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I was sharing the audio portion of Lake Wobegon (where you discuss being athletically challenged) with a black friend of mine, who also claims to be challenged. We had always joked about ourselves being the last ones "picked". I couldn't wait to get his reaction when that segment ended. I stopped the tape, looked his way, and he wryly asked, I wonder how many black people there are in Lake Wobegon?
PK in Virginia

Dear PK, To my knowledge there aren't any. I don't know what prompts his question, of course, but I'd say there is a solid tie between the Christians of Lake Wobegon and black Christians wherever they may be, and the folks of Lake Wobegon are pretty clear about this. Religious faith trumps race, I do believe. When I meet black folk who grew up evangelical and hearing the Scripture, I have more in common with them than I have with whites who grew up secular. Even if the whites were athletically challenged.

---

Dear Mr. Keillor,
Thank you so much for your humorous stories from Lake Wobegon. I can always count on a laugh when I listen to Prairie Home Companion on Saturday nights. At first I wasn't quite interested in your stories because they weren't backed up by a thumping beat or rhythm guitar. My question is... am I too young to be listening to your show? I'm only 25 years old. Aren't folks from my generation supposed to not be able to sit still to listen to a radio broadcast?
Jesse Brown

Dear Jesse, I don't have any big conclusions about 25-year-olds. I'd hate to think they're marching in formation to any show. I have a lot of faith in them as independent thinkers and I expect they'd all be skeptical about me and my show. I'm only a writer, one guy, and the show is a pretty modest enterprise. I am lucky to be able to do it and the demographics of the audience are beyond my ken. But I'm pleased if you should listen and hear something you like.

---

Garrison Keillor:
Greetings. My question. I have been worried sick ever since Larry, Kitty and the babies were evicted. Now, with larrydotcom.com sold what has become of Larry? And how is Kitty?? Any update on their health and whereabouts would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Michele Grinberg
Charleston, WV

Dear Michele, Good of you to ask. Larry is okay. Kitty and her kitties went off to Antiguaand are living in splendor in a grand beach house with a vast terrace shaded by palms and a swimming pool, and Larry is still living under the stage of the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. He couldn't leave it. He's not a sunshine guy and he felt there were a lot of personal issues left to resolve.

---

Dear Garrison,
Some of my all-time favorite Lake Wobegon stories have to do with fishing ("Bruno the Fishing Dog"; "Ronnie and the Winnebago"). I was wondering if you have ever taken notice of or an interest in the art/sport of fly fishing? This may seem like an odd question, but because fly fishing is simultaneously rural and traditional, sentimental, literate, and elegant, it always makes me think of you and PHC.
Bryon Anderson Holland, MI

Dear Bryon, You're awfully kind to associate PHC (and me) with literacy and elegance, but I'm not a fisherman myself, and never did any fly fishing. I've noticed all of the elegant literary books about fly fishing, and I can see that it would be an advantageous career move for a guy like myself, but I have no interest in it whatsoever. My friend Ian Frazier does and I'm happy for him. However, my friend Ian Frazier has never ever in his life told me about the glories of fly fishing or tried to get me to come with him. This is one thing I love about friends. They're able to compartmentalize.

---

Dear Garrison,
Can you please explain to me what is so great about Jello molds?
Kirsten from New York

Dear Kirsten, I can't. I never cared that much for Jell-O. It's a food for small children and when you get to be 14 or so, you're pretty much over Jell-O. Except of course when you feel gloomy and full of self-pity, and then a nice orange Jell-O with sliced bananas can help.

---

Dear Mr. Keillor,
I'm looking to you as someone who has gotten to and is getting to do a lot of "cool stuff". How did you get people to let you do it? How do you get them to pay you for it? Do you ever feel like a lucky bastard because of what you get to do? If so, how do you deal with the guilt?
--A guy in St. Paul

Dear St. Paul Guy, I should have more guilt than I do, you're right. I will try harder in the future. And I am a lucky bastard. It was hard to get them to pay me for it, partly because of the guilt that kept me from asking for money. As for your first question, How did I get people to let me do it? --- it's simple: I offered to work on the weekend, which not many people in radio cared to do. They preferred to work a normal 9-5 day. I started out in radio working the 6-9 a.m. shift. I wasn't that slick at what I did, but they didn't fire me, since they didn't know anyone else who would work those hours for so little money.

---

Dear Mr. Keillor,
Would you be willing to share your risotto recipe? Not too long ago I read your essay "The Rice, the Bat, the Baby" and am anxious to know your secret--I can almost smell the onions and the parmesan!
Thanks,
Susan Carr
Columbus, Ohio

Dear Susan, Don't have a recipe, and that's the great thing about risotto. It's a process that lends itself to improvisation. Tonight, for example, I shredded chicken breasts in a food processor and boiled it in chicken broth to make a sort of super-broth. I melted a stick of butter in a pot and then sauteed a chopped onion in it until translucent, and then dumped in a bunch of arborio rice and smooshed it around. Then I poured in some of the chicken broth (heated almost to boiling) and stirred it around, and after while I added a few other ingredients: chopped radicchio, mushrooms, and frozen bay scallops. The possibilities of ingredients are almost endless. My wife really likes peas in risotto. Our daughter is fond of it period, any way. When the rice is cooked (after several doses of broth and a lot of stirring), you toss in the grated parmesan (lots) and stir it around and serve it in mounds. You can improvise so much into risotto. I wouldn't do raw hamburger, or pork, but almost anything else.

---

Dear Mr. Keillor:
In your monologues, you seem kindly disposed to clergymen, treating them quite sympathetically. You make them seem almost human. This I like, being a member of the clergy myself, but how do you explain this in light of your Separated Brethren background which, if I understand it, has no place for clergy?
The Rev. Dr. John Sanders

Dear Rev. Sanders, The Separated (or Sanctified) Brethren had ministers, called laboring brethren, who were called by the Spirit in mid-life to travel around to minister to the scattered flocks. My Uncle Don Campbell had such a calling when he was in his late forties. We didn't have an ordained clergy, or schools of theology in which to train them, but we did have ministers. I can't imagine being disposed any way but favorably toward clergy. I've met hundreds in my travels, and have found them to be profoundly kind people and rather heroic in their loneliness. And they uphold prayer in our secular society, and for this they are to be especially valued. I am a liberal who is absolutely opposed to official prayers as being hollow, meaningless, Pharisaic, and sacrilegious, but true heartfelt prayer accomplishes vast good in the world and clergy are the champions of prayer.