K
Keillor, Garrison
Identification American radio humorist and
writer
Born August 7, 1942; Anoka, Minnesota
As creator and host ofA Prairie Home Companion,
Keillor revived the variety show for American live radio and
mastered that venue for poking fun at people and institu-
tions. The gently satirical yarns at the core of his 1980’s
musical radio program—along with Keillor’s humorous
books, essays, and literar y sketches—explored the foibles of
ordinar y life and created a sense of shared, if flawed, hu-
manity.
Garrison Keillor’s musical variety show became
weekly Saturday night fare on Minnesota Public
Radio after its 1974 debut in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Written almost entirely by Keillor during its initial
thirteen-year run,A Prairie Home Companionwas na-
tionally broadcast by 1980 and, by 1987, had reached
some 279 public radio stations and 4 million listen-
ers. It featured skits, parodies, mock commercials,
self-deprecating poems, and songs by eclectic musi-
cal guests, but the show’s acclaimed centerpiece was
Keillor’s unhurried monologue, the “News from
Lake Wobegon”—folksy, benevolent stories about a
Minnesota farming hamlet. Characterized by down-
home musings and rural midwestern flavor—and
reminiscent of classic American storytelling by Mark
Twain, Will Rogers, and James Thurber—the tales
followed taciturn bachelors, preachers, and a circle
of self-contained midwesterners grappling with mar-
riage, small-town politics, youthful hijinks, and sea-
sonal rituals. The stories avoided neat conclusions,
allowing dark and bittersweet moments to mix with
nostalgia and reflection.
Unlike mainstream comedy of the 1980’s, Keil-
lor’s live humor was understated, wholesome, and
anachronistic. His shy, first-person narratives forged
an intimate connection between radio personality
and audience; as audiocassette recordings (in-
cluding a Grammy Award-winning recording), they
helped make Keillor a celebrity and an American
cultural phenomenon. Newspapers and magazines
of the time claimed that yarnspinning alone did not
explain Keillor’s enormous success; history and na-
tional identity also contributed: Modern urbanites,
the media posited, craved the vintage sense of place
and belonging that Keillor offered.
Of four books Keillor wrote in the 1980’s, the de-
cade’s two favorites drew on his radio vignettes and
anecdotes:Lake Wobegon Days(1985), released as
Keillor’s face graced the cover ofTimemagazine, was
the year’s top-selling hardcover work of fiction; its se-
quel,Leaving Home(1987), was nearly as popular.
Stories and verse Keillor wrote forHarper’s Magazine,
The Atlantic Monthly, andThe New Yorkerwere re-
printed inHappy to Be Here(1982) andWe Are Still
Married(1989). From 1987 to 1992, Keillor was a
staff writer forThe New Yorker, renowned for its finely
crafted humor about little people driven mad by
modern annoyances. Like his oral tales, Keillor’s
magazine fiction favored the amusingly dated over
the pretentious or excessive. In print, however, Keil-
lor showed less sympathy for his subjects, especially
for politicians.
In 1989, Keillor started a new radio program,
American Radio Company of the Air, featuring Lake
Wobegon yarns, as well as observations of city life by
an adopted New Yorker.Impact By resurrecting comic radio programming
that had entertained Americans for decades before
television—and reaching a vast audience through
multimedia marketing—Keillor sparked interest in
the Midwest and seemingly shortened the divide be-
tween rural and urban Americans in the 1980’s.Further Reading
Lee, Judith Yaross.Garrison Keillor: A Voice of America.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991.
Scholl, Peter A.Garrison Keillor. New York: Twayne,
1993.
Wendy Alison Lamb