Thursday, November 4, 2010

Book 30 - Lake Wobegon Days - Garrison Keillor

Today's book is another that has been sitting on my bookshelf for nearly three decades. I don't remember why I even bought it, or if I bought it at all. I wasn't even a big fan of Garrison Keillor back then, although I now listen to "A Prairie Home Companion" on a fairly regular basis. Well, whatever the reason for having the book, I finally got around to reading it.

Book 30 - Lake Wobegon Days - Garrison Keillor

As I mentioned above, I am a fan of Keillor's radio program, but that hasn't always been the case. Keillor's humor moseys along at it's own pace, not really being concerned with getting anywhere quickly, and I think that it is a style that doesn't really start appealing to you until you get a little older. At least that's how it works for me. Now I love listening to his skits about Guy Noir, or the cowboys, and even his news from Lake Wobegon, which is a regular feature of the program. Lake Wobegon is supposedly a small town in Minnesota which does not appear on a map due to surveying errors. In reality it exists only in the mind of Keillor, although it bears a strong resemblance to any number of small farm towns of the region. It's fictional existence does not prevent Keillor from bringing the town to life, and in Lake Wobegon Days, he paints an elaborate picture of the town and it's people.

Keillor starts off with a fairly extensive history lesson on the founding of the town, once known as New Albion, and on its early settlers. He then talks about the role Protestantism played, gently lampooning the worship practices of the various splinter sects, before launching a Walden-esque journey through the four seasons, with a brief intermission between winter and spring to discuss the reporting of news in the town, and wraps up with a chapter that focuses on the power of preaching, among other things.

There is no overarching plot to the book. Instead it ambles along, presenting vignettes that describe the people of the town, and their way of life. It frequently time shifts from Keillor's boyhood to the present, and is rife with asides that are often presented in the form of footnotes, a technique which I found a bit distracting. One such footnote, an extensive manifesto written by a former town resident criticizing his upbringing, occupies the bottom half of 20 pages. In it's defense however, I found this manifesto to be one of the best parts of the book.

While the book paints a vivid picture of small-town life in Minnesota, I was disappointed with the lack of a cohesiveness, which made it hard for me to finish. If you are a fan of the radio show, especially "The News from Lake Wobegon" segment, you might enjoy learning some of the history of this imaginary town, and you might like hearing some of the early stories of the families that inhabit the place, but for me it just wasn't that compelling. Still, it was a popular book when it came out, so feel free to not accept my judgement of the book and to read it yourself.

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