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GK responds to queries on topics from childbearing to potato salad, with a little bookstore fetish in between.
Here's your chance to ask GK your most pressing questions—about the writing life, the radio life, Lake Wobegon, Guy Noir, whatever you like. Also, feel free to send feedback about the show. Honest comments and criticism are always welcome! Send your own post to the host. |
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February, 2001
Dear Mr. Keillor:
I am a senior (English major) at Indiana University
and Purdue University at Indianapolis. A requirement in my capstone
course is to interview an English major. I heard you speak a couple
of years ago in Indianapolis and gathered from your knowledge and experience
that you were indeed an English major. You are my favorite author, so
would you mind answering a few questions?
Thanks for your time and attention.
Sally L. Burton
Indianapolis, Indiana
Dear Sally Burton---- I'll take a quick
stab at your questions. Hope this is what you want...
Garrison Keillor
Where did you attend college?
The University of Minnesota, of course.
Golden Gophers. Rah rah rah for Ski-u-mah. Class of 1966.
What courses did you take that were most beneficial
to you?
A sophomore-level journalistic writing course,
taught by an old Marine colonel named Lindsay. Nuts and bolts of reporting,
no fancy literary stuff tolerated, and he was adamantly opposed to misspelling.
Any assignment that contained a mispelling was automatically graded
F, with no appeal. This focused the writer's attention on copy-reading
and in the course of three months, developed a habit of close reading
that stays with you forty years later. Amazing to learn so much so easily,
thanks to a tough teacher. For a writer,the ability to read your own
writing critically is absolutely crucial.
Did you enjoy literature or writing courses more?
I enjoyed some literature courses ----a Shakespeare
survey, a Milton class, a course on Thoreau and Emerson - -- but think
my enjoyment was due to the teaching, rather than the literature. I
really craved writing courses, and back then, before the boom in Creative
Writing, there were precious few offered.
Did you obtain post-graduate education? If so, where
did you attend and what did you major in?
I did a couple years at the University, in
English, really as a way of postponing having to leave a place I loved.
When did you decide you wanted to major in English?
In my sophomore year, after taking all the
writing courses the School of Journalism offered, and after I saw how
dismal all the rest of the journalism courses were --- Mass Media in
Modern Society, that sort of thing, pointless pseudo-scientific courses
that gave you nothing you could ever use, simply an occasion for a pretentious
academic to pontificate. Better, I thought, to go read Chaucer and Milton
and Shakespeare, and of course that was the right thing to do. Better
for anyone to do, not only an aspiring writer, but Anyone. Even if you
intended to write ad copy for Cheerios and Little Debbie Snack Cakes,
you'd be better off knowing Chaucer than listening to some academic
with hair declaim on Principles of Advertising In 20th Century American
Life.
What was your most satisfying accomplishment during
your college career?
I almost flunked out of school during a year
when I edited the college literary magazine, the Ivory Tower, and when
I was put on academic probation, I quit the magazine, buckled down,
and got almost straight As for a year and a half.
How long did it take you to become a respected writer?
I'm a writer of entertainments, and respect
isn't what I'm out for, so I don't think about it. That's for essayists
or poets. For me, as for most writers of fiction, the great challenge
isn't to win respect, it's to keep the reader's attention. That's the
hard. part. I don't crave respect so much as the ability to sometimes
make people chortle. And that, of course, is information I'm not privy
to.
Is there any further advice you could give me?
I could give you tons of advice, many square
yards, some of which would be good advice.
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