Garrison Keillor: A Voice of America

Here's a short quote from this book: "The ... narrative overflows with familiar icons of childhood and small-town American life - daydreams and disappointments, abseball and Boy Scouts, lawn ornaments and storm windows, Main Street and Founder's Square. But Keillor works his local-color material so that it debunks the same sentimentality and nostalgia that it evokes. ... in the final analysis the narrator's praise for small-town America is about as trustworthy as the boy's booming baritone." Such a complex fella. Keillor left Lake Wobegone for a clear and understandable reason: he was stultified by the environment and the atmosphere where "artsy" types were viewed with deep suspicion and contempt. However, this was the ground he stood on, unlike so many others, and it became his lifelong meal ticket...