
Garrison Keillor Turns Out the Lights on Lake Wobegon - msm23
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/arts/garrison-keillor-turns-out-the-lights-on-lake-wobegon.html
======
pjmorris
I came to NPR and to Prairie Home Companion in college, after a childhood
filled with moves, losses, and failures. I greatly enjoyed the music and the
stories, to the point where I once had a Powdermilk Biscuits t-shirt, and
still have a PHC tie. However, the dedications they read at intermission
really made the show for me; in the notes people wrote to each other
celebrating their various graduations, anniversaries, relationships, and
communities, I saw a real-world analog to Lake Wobegon's strong women, good
looking men and above average children. I think believing something like that
was out there, somewhere, helped me reshape my life to transmute the moves,
losses, and failures into relationship. community, and hope. I find Lake
Wobegon to be sentimental, but in a way that matched my sentimentality. I'm
really grateful for the part Mr. Keillor's show has played in my ife.

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jswrenn
My friends and I all grew up listening to Garrison Keillor, raised by parents
who themselves grew up listening to Garrison Keillor. Keillor's retirement has
very much felt like abruptly losing contact with many old friends at once.

I just hope Lake Wobegon is doing alright without us.

~~~
brashrat
I grew up the same way :) ... except he rubs me the wrong way, I think he's
not at all interesting or clever, a completely banal failed ironic, with a
deep streak of hate inside.

~~~
tamana
Hate?

~~~
tallanvor
Hate might be too strong of a word, but I understand what he means. It may be
more that he's made a willful choice not to adapt to the times.

~~~
hollerith
Garrison Keillor's not adapting to the times is an indictment of the times
more than it is an indictment of Garrison Keillor, IMHO.

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CPLX
I found PHC style humor completely insufferable and unlistenable, but members
of my family (who grew up in the Midwest in the 50s and 60s) just love it, and
there's no accounting for taste of course.

I always thought the show stood as sort of the perfect archetype for what
you'd call "white" American culture. Which I'm pretty sure is what David Simon
was trying to say in this classic clip from The Wire:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i6EpfCzdMoY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i6EpfCzdMoY)

~~~
dang
I used to feel that way, with much annoyance. But it dawned on me that Keillor
was really an ironist (a rather prickly one), and that the sentimentalism and
old-timey nostalgia were largely camouflage.

I think the day I started changing my view was when they were reading birthday
greetings passed up as notes from the audience. Keillor read one that said
"Happy birthday to Grandma so-and-so in X-ville, upstate NY. 96 years old and
still chopping her own wood." The audience dutifully went "awwww" and clapped.
Keillor paused and said: "Why doesn't anybody up there help that old lady
out?"

~~~
wahern
You're confusing sarcasm for irony. Once upon a time you could be ironic
without implying anything negative about the subject or object of the irony.
Perceptive and incisive irony can elicit complex emotions and thoughts about a
subject, but it can and often does end there, regardless of the speaker's
personal beliefs.

A quote from Garrison Keillor reprinted in the article alludes to this: "You
get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories."

American law schools use the Socratic method for teaching. A good law school
professor will never answer a question even when directly posed, but merely
respond with another question, often times using classic Socratic irony. With
the really good professors, no matter how heavily laden with innuendo their
questions, in three years you'll never figure out their actual opinions or
beliefs about a subject without resort to their published material outside of
class.

(And, FWIW, the biggest mistake you could ever make reading Plato, for
example, is to believe that it's obvious what kind of point his protagonists
(e.g. Socrates) are trying to make. The Laws is an excellent example.)

That's the type of character Garrison Keillor seems to be, particularly when
it comes to questions of culture and sentimentality. If you think he's gaming
his audience, then that's sad.

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cjensen
It's long saddened me that you can't get Prairie Home Companion as a podcast:
there's too many songs from too many authors so they don't even try to acquire
the rights. Our copyright regime still needs to adapt to the modern world.

~~~
wikibob
I came here to say this. For years I thought of setting up something to
automatically record and catalog the shows, and sadly it's too late now.

Has anyone found an online source for full archived shows?

Surely someone somewhere has them saved...

~~~
cjensen
PHC provides an archive[1]. I've used Audio Hijack [2] in the past to grab
some of them, but that's a bit of a pain in the neck.

[1] [http://prairiehome.org/shows/](http://prairiehome.org/shows/)

[2]
[https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/](https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/)

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criddell
One of the things Keillor handled so well in his story telling was the mostly
insignificant but somehow important differences between Lutherans, Catholics,
and the other denominations and religions. I grew up in a very small town in
Ontario and it often felt like he had borrowed characters from my past (and
then softened them and made them more likable).

~~~
druiid
I greatly enjoy(ed) PHC and some of his commentary about the different
Christian denominations. I should say though that the one thing that was
annoying was that he likes to often poke fun at Unitarians in a not so
'laughing with us' way. Counting myself as a Unitarian, I did find the bit in
his last show in which he joked about the word changes for 'Marching to Zion'
for Unitarians to be spot on though.

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harvestmoon
Personally, I am a huge fan of Guy Noir. I wonder if he ever found out the
secrets that the city was trying to keep from him - or if he found the answers
to life's persistent questions... Guy Noir, Private Eye.

------
ianbicking
The News From Lake Wobegon is available in a podcast, with a very long
archive:
[http://prairiehome.org/listen/podcast/](http://prairiehome.org/listen/podcast/)
\- and really it's better as a podcast

------
keane
_From[https://twitter.com/sacca/status/749260339762442240](https://twitter.com/sacca/status/749260339762442240),
Garrison Keillor gave the following letter to each attendee of his last A
Prairie Home Companion:_

Dear Friends,

I come from serious taciturn people and grew up in a separatist religious sect
that believed that every word and deed should be to the glory of God and here
I am winding up forty-two years of talking my head off, much of it silliness,
and portraying a private eye and a cowboy. This was not supposed to happen. As
Robert Frost did not write:

    
    
      Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
      And, sorry I could not travel both,
      I chose the one with the galloping hooves and the barking spiders
      And now I’m trying to figure out why.
    

I am a writer who got tangled up with Minnesota Public Radio and A Prairie
Home Companion and not because I was ambitious or had aptitude, but simply
through a series of coincidences. I was like a kid in Port-au-Prince who’s
never seen ice and whose family is too poor to travel but he reads a book
about Antarctica and is fascinated and eventually becomes captain of the
Haitian Olympic hockey team. He’s not a great player but he’s pretty good for
a Haitian. That’s my story. And now, as retirement nears, it’s a revelation to
be accosted by people who want to say: Your show has meant a lot to me. Some
of them have been tuned in for most of their lives. It’s very sweet. Also
confusing, since I never was a big fan of the show myself. I enjoyed doing the
show — it was the only social life I had — but the show was never as good as I
wanted it to be, and that’s just a fact.

I’m 73, in good shape for a writer, working on a memoir and a Lake Wobegon
screenplay, writing a weekly column for _The Washington Post_ , planning to
take brisk walks and start reading books again and rediscover the pleasures of
the Weekend. Meanwhile, I am grateful beyond grateful for the people I’ve met
along the way, Richard Dworsky, Tim and Sue and Fred, the ladies I’m singing
with, Sara and Sarah and Aoife and Heather, and Suzanne Weil who was the first
person to ever put me on a stage. She is here tonight and it is all her fault,
every bit of it. Had it not been for Suzanne, I would be preaching every night
at the Union Gospel Mission on Skid Row and all my friends would be old
drunks. Millions of people would never know about Lake Wobegon or Powdermilk
Biscuits or the power of rhubarb to ease shame and humiliation. But in the
course of fifty years of preaching, I would’ve brought three, possibly four,
men to eternal salvation. I will have to make peace with this myself.
Meanwhile, thank you for listening to the show.

–Garrison Keillor

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fencepost
This isn't the only long - term show to end - Whad'ya Know (notmuch.com)
wrapped up a 30+ year run the last weekend in June though it was ended due to
declining numbers and being expensive to produce (live audience, traveling
shows, etc.).

~~~
macintux
I caught Whad'ya Know when they came to town many years ago. The musical guest
was Reverend Peyton and his Big Damn Band and Jim Packard was (or pretended to
be) uncertain whether he could say that on the air, so the first time he
introduced them he called them the Big Darn Band.

Was overall a quite entertaining experience, but my local NPR station dropped
the show a long time ago so I haven't kept up.

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drdeadringer
I'll never forget when he brought his show to my hometown. I got one of the
last seats in the house, literally way back against the wall. Good times.

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robotjosh
This loss stings because its not possible for the NPR of today to come out
with shows like car talk and phc anymore.

~~~
kasey_junk
First NPR didn't come out with phc or car talk in the first place. They were
both produced by affiliated local public radio stations and then syndicated
(phc is an american public media syndicated show for instance).

Second affiliated stations are still producing great national programs.
Stalwarts like "this american life" and "on the media" or newer shows like
"the moth radio hour" seem to directly contradict your statement.

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steveax
I'll miss Tom Keith and Fred Newman the live foley artists. Those guys are
amazing.

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solipsism
I grew up listening to Garrison Keillor and stories from Lake Wobegon.
Listening to it as an adult, I have to say, it's not very good quality. I
guess it's impossible to keep up a high level of quality week after week for
so many years. But when I listen to it I hear a man rambling almost
incoherently. There's not even a reasonable arc most weeks, he just babbles
until time is up and Garrison abruptly says ".. and that's the news from Lake
Wobegon".

~~~
cardamomo
For me, that's almost part of the charm. Each show doesn't itself need to be a
masterpiece in order to play a part in the overall narrative of Lake Wobegon
and Keillor's psyche. The show gained narrative force through its many years
of accrual.

EDIT: Spelling

~~~
someonefaraway
Also, the stories and jokes _needed not_ be top-notch (even though the way GK
brought them to life on the radio always was). They tell you about mediocre,
often weird people quietly but merrily living their lives just the way they
want to, thank you very much. Turns out surprisingly many listeners liked
that. NFLW was a celebration of natural, unashamed, funny, sad, humane
mediocrity. I only came to know the show about two years ago and will miss it
for a long time to come.

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GCA10
I'm amazed he sustained this as long as he did. It was a charming concept when
he got started ... but its frozen-in-time quality lost me after a while.

Doing a show about a weird little slice of Americana will never grow old. It's
just that the slice needs to keep changing every 5-10 years.

~~~
rootbear
I enjoyed the musical guests. I'm looking forward to the new show, which I
think will give me a lot of what I went to PHC for in the first place.

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rhapsodic
I'm kind of with the Simpsons when it comes to Prairie Home Companion:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmkq7yylRkU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmkq7yylRkU)

