Far From Lake Wobegon

“With the boldness of the born liar, I just launched into the tale. . .”

I did a phone interview with Garrison Keillor for Style Weekly a little before a May 1992 show at the Mosque in Richmond.  Talking from New York, his voice cast the same spell it did over the radio.  The warm midwestern lilt, flights of fantasy, and comfortable pauses were heard over a background of city noises drifting up to his apartment from the street below. 

Cleary:  What are you looking at right now?

Keillor:  I'm sitting here looking at my desk, which is 2 inches thick and in some places 6 and 8 inches thick with a great deal of stuff which I don't want to look after.  It's stuff I should have done a long time ago.  A lot of people are angry and disappointed with me for it . . .I think about them every day.

Cleary:  Your show is carried on 227 radio stations, and I'm sure you get requests for appearances from each one.  What made you decide to come to Richmond?

Keillor:  I've never done a show in Virginia except in Vienna, which is in the suburbs of Washington, and I've always wanted to.  Going on tour with the show is my way of seeing America.  I guess I can somehow only go places if I have a reason.  I've only been in the toe of Virginia, down around Maces Spring--I went in there when I was researching a story on the Carter family.  I rode a bus in the night through Virginia up to New York, and I believe I went through Charlottesville, and I think I went through Richmond, but I don't know, I was asleep at the time.  So my reason for going is because I want to see the state.  I don't know how much I'll see, but I'll see something.  That's better than nothing.

Cleary:  "Memorial Day and Reflections on the Civil War" s the theme for your Richmond show.  Why?

Keillor:  Well, it was a coincidence really.  It was that time of year, and I believe in observing these holidays.  We'll be in Richmond for the 23rd.  And then the week after, which I think of as Memorial Day, we'll be in Brooklyn celebrating Walt Whitman's birthday and reading from "Leaves of Grass."  So those two shows come together.

Jay Unger, who wrote "Ashoken Farewell," the song from the Civil War series on PBS, and who's very attracted to the music of that time, will be on that show, along with Molly Mason.

I don't know how deeply we want to delve into the Civil War--it's a comedy show, at heart, though sometimes we do wander far afield.

Cleary:  You mentioned Walt Whitman.  You were the voice of Walt Whitman in the Civil War series on PBS.  I've heard that you're a Civil War buff.  Does your interest in the war predate the series?

Keillor:  Yes, I was really a Civil War buff as a child, and I read all those Bruce Catton books.  I just couldn't read enough about the Civil War--the fascination and the horror of it.  But it was an interest I had when I was a boy.  I still have it in my head somewhere but I don't pursue it.  I don't dress up in a blue wool uniform and go tramping around in the hills of Gettysburg--I've seen other people do it, and I think it's a fine thing to do, but it requires a fanaticism and a dedication that I do not possess.

Cleary:  Do you miss Lake Wobegon?

Keillor: I do and I'm going back--not forever and not for all time--but I've bought some land back there, a cornfield and birch woods by a river.  It appeals to me to live once again by a river among birch trees and red oaks, so I'm going to be spending some time back in Minnesota.  I still like New York.  It's been a great place for me, and I'm going to hang onto the apartment and come back when I can.  New York has this rhythm to it that really gets you pumped up.  We need that, us Midwesterners.

Cleary:  Your novel, "WLT: A Radio Romance," just came out.  How do you balance writing for the radio with the other types of writing you do?

Keillor:  I don't really balance them.  They compete against each other.  They fight for my time, and I just sort of float along and do what is at hand.  I sit and I do this, then something else walks in the door and I sit and do that.  I've got a lot of books that I want to write, but I don't sit down and work at it--but someday I will.  Maybe this summer.

Cleary:  Do you surprise yourself sometimes when you're telling your stories and go off on tangents that you hadn't planned on?

Keillor:  Yes I do.  The audience is very patient, but I try not to test them too far.  Last week was quite an unusual monologue because the whole second half of it was sort of made up on the spot, and I don't know if I should do that.  The first half was about front seat romance when I was a teenager--and then I decided I'd tell more about this woman who was sitting in the front seat.

Somebody had told me a story about putting a waterbed in a mobile home and filling it up.  The waterbed was in the back bedroom, and when it was filled up, the front end of the mobile home went up in the air and pulled out the gas coupling.  That night it froze.  The waterbed expanded when it froze and pushed out the rear wall of the mobile home.

Well, that had seemed to me to be a pretty good story and I had it filed away.  Then with the boldness of the born liar, I just launched into the tale.  Of course it requires a great deal of detail, and that's the part that makes you sweat.  It's all pretty easy to summarize, but when you get to telling it you have to figure out where they hooked the water hose up, and where the woman was at the time and what happened afterward, and who said what.  But it was OK.  It didn't embarrass anybody too much, and eventually it came to the end.

 "Far From Lake Wobegon" first appeared in the May 12, 1992 issue of Style Weekly.