A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

English Majors
Saturday, December 6, 2008

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GK: After this message from the Professional Organization of English Majors.

New York is a city where people get around on trains, which means it's a city of readers, and New Yorkers have less shame than most people so you see them reading books like "Healing your Childhood Wounds through Fetal Regression Scream Therapy" and "How to Find the Love You So Desperately Crave" whereas we English majors prefer to read books that will make other people think we're very sensitive—

SS (READING): And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.

(BING BONG SUBWAY DOORS)

GK: We feel the need to impress others with our excellent taste, our inquiring intelligence.

SS: "Perfumes of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely he mutely craved to adore."

FN (UNDER): Wow, she's reading Ulysses. I was going to talk to her but now — I don't think so. She'd just think I'm dumb.

GK: And so we English majors beat on, ceaselessly reading fine literature, going against the current, and no wonder no body likes us.

SS: "She was never meant to be tamed. She needed to run free and that was why she adored Brent. He was wild too. And that's why she invited him up to her apartment that night even though she had had three glasses of wine..."

FN: Hey, what you reading, babes? Looks interesting...

GK: So — save the classics for home, and on the subway, take a chance. You never know where it might lead. A message from the Professional Organization of English Majors.