Me by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente

Me:By Jimmy Valente is one a Keillor's funniest books to date. He takes an obvious non-fictional character and makes him into this hilarious haughty person that still can warm the reader's heart. I loved it and hope you read it soon.

Garrison Keillor's is a master of comparrison. He creates excellent word pictures with hyperboles and ellaborate similes and metaphors. For me, Garrison's writing style is a model. As for the content of the book, Garrison creatively and colorfully portrays the Governor without overly criticizing the Governor.

I've always thought that Garrison Keillor was a bit too folksy for me, but I have a new appreciation of his wit and humor. This book is a quick read and makes a great weekend escape. No, it is not a literary masterpeice for all time, but it's not supposed to be. It's merely a satire on one of the popular personalities of the day. I often laughed out loud. Don't bother reading this book if you take politics or Minnesota too seriously or if you simply have no sense of humor.

I about fell off my exercise machine laughing while reading this book. Since the rest of the media seems unable to accurately profile to substance of Jesse Ventura, this book fills the void in the form of fiction.

Every now and then, a writer discovers the perfect subject for his talents. That's the case with this book. I think Keillor must have written this book about as fast as his fingers could fly over the keyboard, because the nature of the subject matter allowed him--no, really encouraged him--to just throw caution to the winds and charge at his subject with gleeful energy. Keillor in the past has had trouble finding the right sort of persona to voice his sometimes acerbic observations on the Midwestern character. No such problem here. Like the real Jesse Ventura, Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente is a self-invented man. Like Ventura, Jimmy is a cartoon. He is much too large to be a real human being. His voice is not human. His behavior is cartoonish, over-the-top and extreme. He inhabits a world full of cartoon characters (the other professional wrestlers), all of whom stand for strange and spooky little corners of the human imagination. The "sport" of wrestling is a cartoon of good and evil, misdeeds and retribution. Jimmy Valente's war, Vietnam, was a cartoon version of an ordinary war. In other words, everything about Jimmy Valente is bigger than life, and that gives Keillor full license to let his imagination run riot. He never had to worry about being excessively colorful or bizarre, because his subject is so cartoonish that "anything goes."The result is a laugh riot, and clearly Keillor has no nasty agenda with respect to the extremely odd but oddly likable man who currently is his governor. One of the fun little jokes Keillor has is his inclusion of dialogue between Jimmy and his ghost-writer, Garrison Keillor. In those exchanges, Jimmy usually puts down his amanuensis with trenchant humor and a clear sense of who he is.I have not enjoyed everything Garrison Keillor has written, although I've enjoyed most of it. This book is just a treat. Read it when you've got someone around so you can can read to them some of the more outrageous lines.