Hi Garrison!
Your routines about English majors are encouraging to those of us hoping to find meaningful work. That is, work where we don't ask, "Want fries with that?" or "Why not try a new long-distance service?" Just exactly what do you think English majors are uniquely well trained to do? (other than reciting bits of Shakespeare and Keats, which doesn't seem to make us marketable.) What sort of job should we seek? A bevy of us are waiting for your response.

Susan

Dear Susan, A B.A. with a major in English is not a defined, interchangeable good to be traded on the job market; so much depends on the nature of your education. Were you trained by people who loved language and writing, or by Stalinist grinds intent on building a cadre to spread the true word? We, your potential employers, believe that acquaintance with great writers has given you some humanistic large-mindedness and esprit and some facility with the language that might translate into professional skill at writing and editing. And writing and editing are the key to so much that is lively and interesting in the world. Every day one encounters acres of leaden flabby unreadable English and one simply tosses it aside, a vast waste of effort on someone's part. The world needs you, if you can write well. I've been looking for several years for someone who can write for me, now that my synapses are shrinking, and haven't found anyone.

GK: Is Steven King your evil twin?

You both write books; you about Lake Wobegon and King, well you know. You sing on your show and King sings in a rock and roll band. You both have black heavy rim glasses and lots of black hair. You both live by the Canadian border, you in Minnesota and King in Maine, writing about the same subjects: Minnesota and Maine. So, therefore, can Stephen King be called your "evil twin?"

Thanks,
D Quong.

Dear D., I don't wear black hornrim glasses or have lots of black hair. Mine is sort of hair-colored and is thinning on top. And I don't feel I live near the Canadian border. Nor do I write about Minnesota. Other than that, sure, he and I are definitely a matched pair.

Dear Garrison,
As a former New Brunswicker, I have always been interested in your Canadian heritage. I have visited the Keillor House Museum in Dorchester, NB. This is not far from the Nova Scotia border. Are these your relatives?

Marion Packard

Marion, those are my relatives. Squire John Keillor who lived in that old stone house in Dorchester was a distant cousin of my ancestor Thomas Keillor, a Yorkshireman who came over around 1775 to farm on the saltwater meadows of Nova Scotia around Amherst. A descendant of his, William Keillor, married a Mary Crandall, a descendant of New England Loyalists and Baptist clerics, one of whom was a close associate of Roger Williams, the dissenter against John Winthrop's Puritan Massachusetts. William & Mary's son James was my grandfather. In 1880, when he was twenty, he came down to Minnesota to help out his sister and her husband when the husband took sick, whereupon the husband promptly died, and James was obligated to stay. Thus we became Americans. Through a good deed that was a better deed than what was intended.

Dear Garrison
Is it true that it is illegal to sleep naked in the state of Minnesota? -- Not that anyone would want to try it at this time of year! Any light that you may shed on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

Thanx
P.J.

Dear P.J., It is illegal to sleep naked and Minnesotans do it all the time, especially at this time of year. The unlawfulness of it only adds to the thrill. It is illegal because we feel that a naked unconscious person is particularly vulnerable, and in our state's great liberal tradition, we protect the vulnerable and unwary. (This is why Minnesota is chockfull of warning signs and guardrails.) One would only be arrested for nude sleeping, of course, if your house caught on fire and authorities had to break in to save you. So you'd probably be grateful for the arrest.

Garrison,
I know you have a relatively small child at home, and I was curious to know if you have a favorite children's show that she watches? Do you have any that you really despise? How do you manage to fit in the time to write as much as you do? I am an aspiring writer and the only time I get during the day to write is when my two-year-old takes her 15 minute to a half an hour nap. What methods do you and your wife use to maintain your sanity?

Danielle B.

Danielle, my daughter doesn't watch TV yet but she does love movie musicals with some dancing in them. She was big on Mary Poppins for awhile, and now it's "Singin in the Rain," though she's shown some interest in "Oklahoma" because there are horses in it. I don't watch TV myself enough to despise anything on it; our screen is pretty much blank, except for Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds dancing across sofas. I write in the morning ---- just plunk myself down and do it, and if you do a little every day, it all adds up. My wife and I maintain our sanity by having lives of our own and a life as a couple, all of which is facilitated enormously by having an au pair who lives upstairs, a fantastic young Czech woman who our child adores. If it weren't for her, our lives would be very very different. We're lucky and we know it.

Mr. Keillor,
After attending Michigan State many years ago, I've returned to school 23 years later for my teaching certificate. What do you feel is the most important thing I can impart to my students after I become a high school English teacher? Your "real world" opinion is important to me since I hear so much academic theory in my classes. There seems to be a gap between the theory of teaching and the reality of what students need to know. Being that you are a writer who regularly encounters his audience, what do you think?

Warmly,
Cindy Perlman

Cindy, good for you for embarking on a teaching career. We need more teachers who've had another life and seen the world outside school. My older sister went into teaching after she'd raised her four children, and she is more patient, more dedicated, more knowledgeable, for it. And maybe more grateful for the chance. I think a high school English teacher should set out to impart a love of language, this magnificent old theater Wurlitzer called English, all of its elegance and vulgar grandeur and gradations of scorn, and I think you impart this, first of all, in your own speech as a performer, which teachers are, and secondarily by encouraging it in your students' writing. From a basic love of language can come the patience to be precise, to spell, to use correct grammar. So many high school kids live in a prison of coolness, that ironic minimalism that was considered cool in my day and still is, and which is, in the end, debilitating. Lack of expression is killing to the imagination, and one simply ceases to have an inner life: that's the tragedy. Those goofy kids who love to throw words around are the lucky ones, and someday they'll have life experiences to match the words. Your role is simply to champion the English language, and know that you're having a big effect, even if it doesn't seem so.

Mr. Keillor,
About four years ago, my family and I moved from the DC metro area to a small town in Wisconsin. I had always enjoyed your show, and previously thought you were exaggerating about the oddities of the Midwest. Now I realize you had not scratched the surface. I had to leave the room when our new neighbors brought us tomatoes as a house-warming gift (wild manic laughter would not make a good impression). I'm considering writing my own book based on my experiences here. A possible title could be Purgatory, WI Pop. 40,000. What do you think?
~Rosemary

Rosemary, You do what you need to do and just hope that the book earns you enough money to enable you and your family to move out of Purgatory before the neighbors read the book. I don't understand why fresh tomatoes are funny, as a housewarming gift or any other sort of gift, but perhaps you'll make this clear in the book.

Garrison:
How about a film? Popular as the Coen Brothers may be, they miss the essence of Minnesota by quite a few yards. In case you don't want the extra burden, your friend Steve Martin writes great scripts and Tim Hutton would make a great 'you'. Isn't it about time Lake Wobegon became visible?

Lucie Marty
Northern Minnesota

Lucie, I'm all for it. When the movie people beat a path to my door, I'll be here to welcome them in and serve coffee and cookies. Meanwhile, I'm just sitting here trying to live a life and do a radio show. It gets harder as one gets older and solemner and the brain cells evaporate out your ears. Back in 1985, when the radio show was briefly famous, I spent a week in Los Angeles and had some meetings and dinners with people and large hopeful things were said and then I simply came back home and kept doing the show. It's a good life. A life of modest craftsmanship among pleasant people. The movie life is a boomtown life. You go to L.A. and skulk around and stake out your claim and work hard --- and part of the work is sitting at a table and being Impressive ---- and maybe you hit a vein and maybe you spend twenty years writing scripts that nobody ever produces. The prospect of that is enough to make a person grateful to be in radio.

Dear Garrison,
Boy, do I have an idea for you. With the rage of the reality-based shows such as "The Making of a Girl Band" and "The Making of a Boy Band," I think you should consider: "The Making of the Polka Band".

Sarah Isakson

Sarah, those shows may be the rage where you are, but from where I stand, reality is mostly based on having a four-year-old child. "The Making of Bowel Movements" is big here, and "The Making of Whole Sentences".

Dear Garrison:
My question: although a lot of your listenership dwells north of the (formerly!) longest undefended border, Canada gets at best cursory and snarky mention in your commentaries, as a sort of North-of-North-Dakota Wasteland. Why is that? And how about scheduling a few shows in Canada?
Bob

Bob, I was in Toronto in November, visiting at the CBC, and came away with my admiration for Canada properly refreshed. I never looked on it as a wasteland, always have found it interesting, because for all the similarities, there are keen differences between us and them. We did a show in Vancouver a few years back and frankly I found it unpleasant. When you approached the Canadian border officer and she said, "Business or pleasure?" and you said, "Business," a dark shadow seemed to fall. I was taken off to a separate room and grilled about the radio show and what exactly I did and who I did it for and what the greater purpose of it was and so forth. It felt like East Berlin in 1965. All the papers were in order, and the CBC was sponsoring us, and yet this officer felt that she needed to teach me a lesson, and boy, did she succeed. I can understand that Canadians are leery about the big country to the south, and God bless them, and I don't need to go north and invade their culture. The reason I don't talk much about Canada is that I'm ignorant. Occasionally I have joked about Minnesota being the first line of defense against Canada and about frostbacks sneaking over. That was humor, son. If it sounded snarky, well, I'll try to refrain from joking about your country in the future.

Dear Garrison:
I've halfway decided to go winter camping in Minnesota with my young boys and wife. The boys, 3 and 5, could probably catch, slay, skin, cook and eat any slow-moving wild game with just a little direction and an edible de-icer, so they'll be up for it. My wife will need some cajoling though. Any
enticements besides those you've laid out? Geez, it sounds so wonderful in Minnesota in February!

Michael McGuigan
Philadelphia, PA

Michael, winter camping is wonderful. You make sure to dress properly and don't go too far off the beaten path and you'll be fine. You'll see the most fantastic beautiful naturescapes and you'll learn a basic appreciation of a good fire, and of fuel and food and mittens, and at night you'll lie together like a pack of dogs and keep each other warm. And you'll tell about it for years to come. I'd wait until the boys are a year or two older and will be able to remember it. And I'd recommend a warm motel room for your wife. I'm opposed to cajolery in marriage.

Mr. Keillor,
I have two questions, which I believe could be linked:

1.) what do you think of "lawyerly" writing, by that I mean the style of writing appropriate to the legal profession (I have several attorney-friends who were philosophy & English students but who swear the law has ruined them); and 2.) I've seen you criticize writing as "flabby" on a number of occasions. What precisely do you mean when you use this term. Gratzi,

D.A.M., Esq.
Vancouver, WA

Sir, the writing style of the legal profession has to do with creating leakproof precision, I suppose, and all the wherefores and whereases have some shamanistic value. There is some fine writing in court decisions, however, very precise but also elegant. Anyone could profitably spend a few hours in a law library browsing through the bound decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Flabby writing is committed by people who aren't very clear in their own minds about what it is they're trying to say. It is conflicted writing, purportedly expository and yet containing a great deal of camouflage. And then there's writing that simply is unconscious. Out cold. You read it for pages and pages and there's nothing there. The sentences march on, and there are paragraphs, but there's no writer present.

Dear Garrison,
As the days get shorter and darker here in Seattle, I've wondered about how a Minnesotan sees Seattle. We are as far north as you guys, so the days are just as dark (sometimes darker, with no snow to make the surfaces reflective) and we have many Norwegian bachelor fishermen and Norwegian bachelor loggers, which is not quite the same as a farmer, but serves our purpose. I know you've been out here in the summers and perhaps even seen the small valleys and fjord-like vistas that we have. Any thoughts on Seattle, the next largest city west of Minneapolis/St. Paul?

Anne Whitacre
Seattlite and listener (KUOW)

Anne, we Minnesotans secretly envy Seattle and some of us are less secret about it than others. It's a magnificent place, where you can easily get up to the snow and then you can get back to greenness. The city has a lot of esprit, and Seattlites are deeply loyal to their city and also very funny about themselves. It's a good theater town, a big movie-going town, a good bookstore town. The Orchestra, which I've worked with several times, is a bunch of gifted and friendly and professional people, the combination of which (G & F & P) is not found everywhere in the music world. You get off a plane in Seattle in January and the place seems springlike to a Minnesotan. There's a nice crisp chill in the air, but also the smell of vegetation. And of course the salt air fills us with romantic yearnings. I could go on. It's a city I'd love to live in. I can't because my social skills are so poor and I need to stay in Minnesota where I have friends who knew me back when I was nicer. But every time I go to Seattle, I think about living there.