A Word on Words; 2617; Garrison Keilor

ellen johnson well once again welcome to world words i guess garrison keillor our host of a prairie home companion and author of the lake wobegon days leaving home other stories twelve books about i thought it was nine minutes and i looked i wrote a book learning how to dance and fifteen minutes a day and and i can spell correctly and so can you either write your writing and grocers my book i'm angelic visitations that also has tips on how weight loss and they're not working and now and now a wooden board will be the envoy hassan probable the only flies on top of all the big stack well it's a novel and i was an english major this was what i was educated to do yet john paulson great grandson of young dolphin minnesota boy like garrison keillor

radio man like there's a killer in less than you might think and the next question was going into what i call as in jena leader know i think i think i avoided thinly veiled autobiography a fiction writer doesn't really needed to start with a little bit of a little bit of truth black slacks and a blazer flagon ago the star was during ramadan and then you can create the rest of which are so grave most interesting i would say so it's a it's a fascinating tale my guess is the veteran of the readers to recognize that you are and where you

came from and john is and where he came from and then find an outlet for and there will be wondering about how much of verisimilitude we'll just have to wonder they are wondering about the wrong thing i think there's no reason to wonder about it so it's a particular kind of a comic book canada scatological book in in in many ways which is a favorite kind of humor in lake wobegon and he doesn't hesitate a little bit on on the radio mubarak but in a novel you can you can let people have their say freeman charlie is his fellow seems to me in the written by some guilt as

joel rose on the lawyers think they carry more guilt others but this menace or the scandinavian lutheran background what's fair share your own joel show you know not as much as i am so that boys you're entitled to your view as you produced a great literature from it and we have to just make do with what little bit we have a like moscow because you know we are good people live in so it ha ha ha ha ha i heritage might not include women to get work but he yeah he goes away find a better life in other plays leslie correspond yes to enclose she expects that he's going to marry her and make her happy and he knows that we can't do either

want them to extract yourself from romance that has gone that far you can negotiate your way out of it you can't explain your way out somebody has to leave town and other and at him and he goes off misses a lucky move for him to leave minnesota and he goes off and finds himself a good job at home at university as you have the un finds himself in a way at a private liberal arts college for the academically challenged children a financial gift of parents and then have plenty of money they don't get along pretty well until he comes up close to his fortieth birthday and three things have shallow the thirties have been for him much too easily and no

crisis you didn't sign up for any great cause in which he was prepared to suffer you just knew a lot of very nice people who had good taste in vinegar recipes wonderful coffee as radcliff like oh will gunn plays a divorced at london and when you know it's upstate new york in an upstate new york is there's a lot there's a clear lovely a minnesotan going to upstate new york wants to these river valleys and around the finger lakes and we come upon these gorgeous little towns beautifully preserved victorian towns and it is quite a it's quite a real

place but he doesn't quite set down roots though he's from minnesota and we're very reserved people when we're not the warmest people you'd ever hope to find when we were not huggers swear a handshake goes a long way with us sometimes we just not that other people and on and he remains a lake wobegon person even out in on the fringes of of new england and he finds i'm alone on our house a place that he wants to reassure create of all things he wants to fall into a restaurant dnc has all sorts of

misbegotten ideas because he because he needs magnificence in his life we all do but the real magnificence in his life is is a woman who walks through the door there was five feet twelve inches tall and and stunning and a historian and a new englander and quite a formidable person that you know i think that one of what is you know what this program's about his soul to explore how writers write n blues developing poorly where they come from and before we go to that the stunning young woman can we just deal for a few minutes with her stunning rather who shows up one day and church in is in atlanta and i'm looking out at a

below is looking for a for a place themselves where o'hearn is where his heart come from howard islam is the name is in an odd sort of own eighties figure someone who grew up in the inner in the seventies and was waylaid by then he was a mime for about eight years and then he decided to go to law school is that he is alone is a good man and the worst since the well is the it is in the end up lawyer with high ideals a dangerous person and pages for instance but there comes a moment when howard i'm an hour is is the army is very very well and he has answers for almost everything all the time that becomes a moment he did talk about human the book where the

project is in financial trouble and john is someone looking to find some way to honor and howard goes into sort of a into song rag bag and pulled out a document and uses words and briefcases without that can avoid a mole and it carries a stove through a plastic very bad sign ha if your lawyers have their sign well air howard a harley know not anyway like i can i was a moon allowed no dislike each other but it was a great idea for a restaurant isn't and i think you know it could articles and other sites or against a restaurant based on the idea that vegetables right out of the garden on what an entirely different species of food from from vegetables that are even a few hours out of a guard jacket

so they really make a restaurant in a farmhouse and the diners will look up from the table and a world class you should not end until see land propelling will bow towards the back of the house not your salad coming i think it's a great it's a great ironies and novel concept and howard so lego at the bank when fourteen i know well some ways some of them start this one out is a limit you admired them right back right we'll wish we will rue the day we will rule is that hiccup that about well as all the leader because so she says she doesn't come along with life and he has good taste very good tyson i will observe coral is i don't know carlos well enough to know

whether he had good taste or not but he's seen them today's regina russo of forty men but she's a case surprisingly well when raising good humor they're perfect for each other made for each other and yet when he proposes marriage hsu suggests the dome she likes things the way they are to see him about every other weekend which breaks his heart for the woman of your dreams to say that a little bit of it goes along and you know then she goes off on our own to about on this and i believe in the remarkable thing about the books is you learn something with every book i read an idea i didn't know what i was going through what i learned a lot about you i think reading that book not if they're not be the most useful knowledge

will the senator is not the most useful but i did not know that the susan b anthony had a lover and was also the rose law after he was a norwegian natural path who who were treated people with a combination of book called babs hike along ex and a teammate from party leaders so on they got through it as punishment favorite rocking about to mention a half off the ground they were on they were and high end and high form irregularities he was the epidemic problem of the day and the nineteenth century people were afraid to drink the water availability going to tell the truth about what would and so as one of the rove wrote that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation he was writing about something quite specific law

existential property that i never said i learned something after learning that is what you know when he had the cabinet walden he did form beans almost exclusively he was a company will and i really didn't have a lawyer with a pleasant one you know if you do if you just think for a moment about the us middle age that john moving on middle aged john paulson suddenly faced with reality of financial distress and i know where it's going to go for his or his soul as i don't know where the appeal was going to go bum what you created a very funny story about one of his aides a sunday school teacher from

among the midwest are armed and read stories like this and in newspapers you know back before newspapers got so high minded stories about the small town malefactors undone and she is one of order and that type of that they unmarried sunday schoolteacher and small town bank teller where's wire rimmed glasses ties her hair back in a bun roses hydrangea is has two cats and she absconds to work to a blind sorry swiffer wet for a few hundred thousand dollars and what a lemon says dada pair of rural section of one aside a midwestern sunday schoolteacher of a disgraced ministers of the scoutmaster one is good

there is something about the writer's roots that develop or that he keeps coming back to his roots first just because he's on second leaders away again political order explain his roots for the benefit of southern writers and we have them that one outcome believes that were attached in an article article lot of our roots song some of the things that we were brought up to believe were brought up to make ourselves useful and cruel and to mind to manage the manners are important and were brought up to avoid self pity i think in the midwest you're brought up to be a stoic be cheerful if you can be

bought above all avoid self pity atwood care that really keeps us in line i have no idea what keeps you in line here but winter we learned very early years not very personal experience there but he also says colds you and that's an essential part of this so of this character this may make him seem less introspective but bug know but the truth is that is lacking in self pity or drink wine you know as you get as yet all in gaza can be applied to an aging as well this is not a personal problem aging and we should not talk about it too much a little nervous seven my hero and the goal of yours is not selling your worry about all needed

something i worry about a lot of it is of their keeper talked about allies with alla he has a thing about the goal of the fall us well he heaves thinks about it in his own case as well he gets up in the morning and he takes a shower and he looks at himself and he forces himself to look at himself in a mirror to assess the damage and to see where his body is is headed its it's gone downhill without hope of recovery is never gonna be a winsome youth again but he reminds himself as as i keep reminding myself that to be sullen or unhappy it looks ok only undergone but it looks terrible on older person who you just look as if you have indigestion you look as if you had

too many knockwurst relaunch so you have to you have to brighten up as you get older everything on my cheek i did get a better job only bag you know then i did it i sense though that that i sense though that the funeral so that has a place in the story that is the deltas and tells him that aging is all right the funeral clothes or religion is all right

i well i thought about that i thought thought to have then and there in the end tomorrow missouri and the family handling that i thought well i clearly understand so i'm not sure he understands why he goes home he says at some point the first reform he says if i'm in the sand anywhere from fifty seven tongue in cheek we considered contemplating considered contemplating committing to send birthright which is the center's well that as we catholics education for a young races that occasion i also thought they were owed there are lessons in now the field but also in their life

you've had him was thinking of the occasion for you had intended one point falling by by jane the former girlfriend she will a lot of my standup working on their head down and a couple of drinks in and she says would you like to move the truth is anyone that would be a betrayal of the woman he knows is the love of his life and to be truly loves to be true self and so he forces himself to walk away and even the lovers the legal now for a couple months lawyers for one embryo would never knew he goes home it takes a cold shower and he sings just as i am without one plea but the bible and we showed for many it does everything you can and then he goes back a little bit joe thinks again about picking up the phone but he doesn't do no you know

what's so our listeners a moral mystery awfully awfully again negotiate with with whats in you know in turn turned tail and take your heels you know many different i've been here it seems to me that having written some itself that humor is the office is the toughest art form literature body coastal actually you clearly

there tends to be about about us the natural funnel of the lake above you write with such facility and i wonder if you struggle over the process of writing well i think in any kind of writing a certain amount of bumping around and in the writing is really the art of rewriting and i think that's when real talent was not as a writer but as an editor and a person who can edit my own stuff and throw things away and that's something you learned and through a store zipping hard now and they sell a lot of fun and it's entertaining to set in dillon and if you can

ever write anything that gets that it's you yourself to laugh out loud than that no but you know i really don't i read these books of common new age spirituality and put me that seems tough for mr ford reading list of laughter oatmeal mostly really depressing and they knew it i'll mention well ali akbar khan but what there was one there just a few weeks ago right where you are now and i mean i can imagine a new age spirit was a regular you know it's still hard to struggle good light notes the opposite view i mean it has no it has no irony whatsoever of the

gospels of filled with irony and comedy when new age spirituality is an attempt to re write on religion make it more advantageous to ourselves and it's cheap it's a terrible cheap you know because also lessens writing and our and so lawless think the right messages you do not very well i hope that there's some message and there but a lot of it caught and delivering them no sermons know i don't want the clock deliverance around the globe if marijuana deliver a sermon on a war could go on i can buick and be working on a little book where i'm working on all sorts of things i am i am was slow to publish a book on i am

was an english major in and grew up with such reverence for books that it took me years to every get up the courage to do on a night have others minor hit and catch up you know i want to try to prove that a man can do his best work in his late fifties and sixties