Sunday, December 18, 2005

Garrison Keillor is fascinating

Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion is not entertaining or amusing to me, but it is fascinating because it almost is. I never seek it out, but when I happen across it on the car radio, I always listen. Some shows, on TV or radio, are immediately and obviously not enojyable, so I quickly move on. But with Garrison I always get the feeling I'm on the cusp of enjoying it. It's like a barely foreign language: if I would just listen a little bit longer or cock my head just so, I would get it, and hours of NPR entertainment each week (and 30 jillion hours of archived delights) would be mine. But it never happens (or hasn't yet), and so I arrive at my destination confused and unsettled, a wheezy, twisting voice of middle America haunting my steps.

2 comments:

Wm said...

I like Garrison Keillor's writing but I detest him on the radio. It's his voice; not just his radio voice --- but also his writer's voice. On the page, it comes off as small, mean, and runty. Nevertheless, this diminutive mendacity works for him. It's beyond a savage wit -- its a feral wit. "The Book of Guys" more or less made up my mind that I like reading him.

On the air is a different story. He tries so hard to sound avuncular and welcoming, that it almost (but not quite) masks the basic core of judgemental hostility that he feels to all things and all people: something he blames on "midwestern sentiment" of topping discomfort with the world on with discomfort with ones self. That's a bunch of BS, he's just a grim grump! If that weren't enough to make his show this side of excruciating, he add touches of banality and a helathy dollop of REALLY REALLY corny music that he pretends is a national treasure although his smugness is barely restrained.

Keillor is on during my drive to my guitar lesson and I've learned to turn him off either by switching to the all Regatone station, or just by turning off the radio completely and listen to the (comparitively) soothing sound of my exhaust cracked manifold rattling sickly. I'd rather listen to the impending sound of an $800 car repair than listen to that nonsense.

"Be well. Do good work. And keep in touCHHH."

Wm said...

More on this theme: here. By the way, the secret word I had to write was

"cccguut" Try saying that three times fast.