Love Me

Garrison Keillor has the most endearing ability to make us look at ourselves and not be too ashamed. It's ok, most of us are mediocre. We cannot help it, relax. But we must never take ourselves too serious either. Aside from the great study of human folly, this book must contain the funniest description of writer's block. I got LOVE ME from the library and ended up copying all the pages on which "Larry Wyler" converses with his boss William Shawn,the real editor of New Yorker magazine. Readers, if you want to become writers, too, then read this book for all its wistful insight about trying to write well. ENJOY!

A meditation on the nature of true love, and all the changes we go through (oftentimes self-inflicted) to realize what that truly means. Filled with absurdist plot twists and parodies of literary icons, I was surprised to find myself laughing out loud in spots. A quick read, cool and refreshing as a nicely chilled glass of Bordeaux. A five-star Keillor.

Get this if you need to laugh.If you find yourself on the dark side of middle age and have found yourself wondering what was it all about,anyway?(your life),you need this book.Wildly romantic,immensely tender-hearted,and wickedly funny.Perfect for a read by the fire.Garrison is a wondrus human,and this book is not to be missed.

Reading these other 12 reviews, I am disappointed in the reaction to this brilliant book. Granted, if you're already a Keillor fan, you're in heaven as you read the lines and hear Garrison's voice insinuate the pauses and hesitations, the stuttering and comic inflections, that make his radio show a 25-year enduring icon of compassionate comedy.His theme is a bit odd -- a young writer dreaming of one day joining the New Yorker fulfills that dream, only to be beset by the Mafia, a "can't live with it, can't live without it" marriage, and terminal writer's block. Within the story is another story, that of the protagonist as lonely hearts editor. The letters he receives, and the replies he sends, are hysterical, odd, and clever.Don't overanalyze the humor and hyperscrutinize the plot. This is just plain funny stuff, with the occasional poignant and touching revelation about what it means to be a human wrestling with one's devil of an ego. It's vintage Keillor, and vintage fun.

Reading this novel reminds me of eating dark chocolate-deliciously sexy with slightly bitter undertones.Carl Hiaasen is correct in his NY Times review when he says this is a Norwegian novel because of the self-effacing, socially responsible depiction of the wife Iris, a woman toally unimpressed with wordly fame, but also, I think, because the trajectory of the plot is reminiscent of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, the young artist who abandons faithful Solveig to wander the earth in search of adventure and returns, after many years of dissipation, a broken man to her forgiving arms. As Iris represents Solveig,Tony Crossandotti(cross the t's and dot the i's), the Mafioso who has taken over the New Yorker, could be a stand in for Ibsen's Troll King.Although the novel is hysterically funny, especially when he makes fun of some famous literary figures such as William Shawn and John Updike,and sex guru,Dr.Ruth, the undercurrent is the melancholy theme of impotence and loss of creative power.This novel is definitely among his best.