Garrison Keillor

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Garrison Keillor
Born	August 07, 1942 (age 64) Anoka, Minnesota

Garrison Keillor (born Gary Edward Keillor on August 7, 1942) is an American author, humorist, columnist, musician, satirist, and radio personality.

He is best known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion (also known as Garrison Keillor's Radio Show on BBC 7 and in Ireland).

Contents 1 Biography and personal life 1.1 Ancestors 2 Career 2.1 Radio 2.2 Writing 2.3 Bookselling 3 Awards and other recognition 4 Criticism 5 Keillor in popular culture 6 Bibliography 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Biography and personal life

Keillor was born in Anoka, Minnesota, and raised in a family belonging to the Plymouth Brethren, a fundamentalist Christian denomination he has since left. He is six feet, four inches (1.93 m) tall and is of Scottish ancestry. Keillor is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. He is currently an Episcopalian,[1] but has been a Lutheran[2]; he often uses his religious roots in his material. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in English in 1966. While there, he began his broadcasting career on the student-operated radio station known today as Radio K.

Keillor has been married three times:

• To Mary Guntzel, from 1965 to 1976. The couple has one son, Jason, born in 1969.
• To Ulla Skaerved (a former exchange student from Denmark whom he famously re-encountered at a high school reunion), from 1985 to 1990. Keillor is mildly notorious for having dumped his long-time lover and PHC producer Margaret Moos to marry Skaerved. The marriage failed when Keillor had an affair with his Danish language teacher.
• His current wife, violinist Jenny Lind Nilsson (b. 1958), from his hometown of Anoka, whom he married in 1995. They have one daughter, Maia, born in 1998.

The Keillors maintain homes on the Upper West Side of New York City and in St. Paul, Minnesota.

[edit] Ancestors

Keillor has many note-worthy ancestors including Joseph Crandall (who made progress in the studies of Native American languages), who was also an associate of Roger Williams (who founded the first American Baptist church as well as Rhode Island) and Prudence Crandall (who founded the first African-American women's school in America).

[edit] Career

[edit] Radio

Keillor began his radio career in November 1969 with Minnesota Educational Radio (MER), now Minnesota Public Radio (MPR). He hosted The Morning Program in the weekday drive time-slot, 6 am to 9 am, which the station called "A Prairie Home Entertainment." During this time he also began submitting fiction to The New Yorker, where his first story, "Local Family Keeps Son Happy," appeared September 19, 1970. ^[1]

Keillor resigned from The Morning Program in February 1971 to protest what he considered an attempt to interfere with his musical programming. The show became A Prairie Home Companion when he returned in October.^[2]

Keillor has attributed the idea for the live Saturday night radio program to his 1973 assignment to write about the Grand Ole Opry for The New Yorker, but he had already begun showcasing local musicians on the morning show, despite limited studio space for them, and in August 1973 The Minneapolis Tribune reported MER's plans for a Saturday night version of A Prairie Home Companion with live musicians. ^[2][3]

A Prairie Home Companion debuted as an old-style variety show before a live audience on July 6, 1974, featuring guest musicians and a cadre cast doing musical numbers and comic skits replete with elaborate live sound effects. The show was punctuated by spoof commercial spots from such fictitious sponsors as Jack's Autoharp and Powdermilk Biscuits, "the biscuits that give shy people the courage to get up and do what needs to be done." ^[2] Later imaginary sponsors have included Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery ("If you can't get it at Ralph's, you can probably get along without it."), Bertha's Kitty Boutique, the Catchup Advisory Board [sic] [3], which touted "the natural mellowing agents of ketchup," the Duct Tape Council, and Bepopareebop Rhubarb Pie, "sweetening the sour taste of failure through the generations." The show also contains parodic serial melodramas, such as The Adventures of Guy Noir, Private Eye. After the show's intermission, Keillor read clever and often humorous greetings to friends and family at home, submitted by members of the theater audience. Also in the second half of the show, the broadcasts showcased a weekly monologue by Keillor entitled The News from Lake Wobegon, based in part on Keillor's own hometown of Anoka, Minnesota. Lake Wobegon is a quintessential, but fictional Midwestern, small town "where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." The first show was in 1974, and the program became successful. It ran until 1987, when Keillor decided to end it; he worked on other projects, including another live radio program, "The American Radio Company", for several years. In 1993 he began producing A Prairie Home Companion again, with nearly identically-formatted programs, and has done so since. [4] On A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor receives no billing or credit; his name is never mentioned, except occasionally by a guest addressing him by his first name.

Keillor is also the host of The Writer's Almanac which, like A Prairie Home Companion, is produced and distributed by American Public Media. The Writer's Almanac is also available online and via daily e-mail installments by subscription.

[edit] Writing

Keillor has written many magazine and newspaper articles, and nearly a dozen books for adults as well as children. In addition to his time as a writer for The New Yorker, he has also written for The Atlantic Monthly, and Salon.com.

He also authored an advice column on Salon.com, titled "Mr. Blue". Following a heart operation, he resigned on September 4, 2001 in an article entitled "Every dog has his day":

Illness offers the chance to think long thoughts about the future (praying that we yet have one, dear God), and so I have, and so this is the last column of Mr. Blue, under my authorship, for Salon. Over the years, Mr. Blue's strongest advice has come down on the side of freedom in our personal lives, freedom from crushing obligation and overwork and family expectations and the freedom to walk our own walk and be who we are. And some of the best letters have been addressed to younger readers trapped in jobs like steel suits, advising them to bust loose and go off and have an adventure. Some of the advisees have written back to inform Mr. Blue that the advice was taken and that the adventure changed their lives. This was gratifying. So now I am simply taking my own advice. Cut back on obligations: Promote a certain elegant looseness in life. Simple as that. Winter and spring, I almost capsized from work, and in the summer I had a week in St. Mary's Hospital to sit and think, and that's the result. Every dog has his day and I've had mine and given whatever advice was mine to give (and a little more). It was exhilarating to get the chance to be useful, which is always an issue for a writer (What good does fiction do?), and Mr. Blue was a way to be useful. Nothing human is beneath a writer's attention; the basic questions about how to attract a lover and what to do with one once you get one and how to deal with disappointment in marriage are the stuff that fiction is made from, so why not try to speak directly? And so I did. And now it's time to move on.

In June 2005, Keillor started a syndicated newspaper column on Salon.com called "The Old Scout."

Keillor wrote the screenplay for the 2006 movie version of A Prairie Home Companion, which was directed by Robert Altman. (Keillor also appears in the movie.)

Keillor also recently published a collection of political essays as Homegrown Democrat.

[edit] Bookselling

On November 1, 2006, Keillor opened an independent bookstore in the historic Cathedral Hill area of Saint Paul, Minnesota. "Common Good Books, G. Keillor, Prop." is located at the southwest corner of Selby and N. Western Avenues, (Blair Arcade Building, Suite 14, in the basement, below Nina's Coffee Cafe). The Cathedral Hill area is located in one of the St. Paul neighborhoods called Summit-University. For coverage of the bookstore opening, see this article that appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

[edit] Awards and other recognition

• In 1994, Keillor was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. [5]

[edit] Criticism

In 2007, Keillor wrote a column which, in part, criticized "stereotypical" same-sex parents, whom he said were "sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers." [6] In response to the strong reactions of many readers, Keillor apologized, saying

I live in a small world...in which gayness is as common as having brown eyes. Ever since I was in college, gay men and women have been friends, bosses, associates.... But in the larger world, gayness is controversial...and so gay people feel besieged to some degree and rightly so.... My column spoke as we would speak in my small world and it was read by people in the larger world and thus the misunderstanding. And for that, I am sorry. [7].

[edit] Keillor in popular culture

• Keillor is the voiceover artist for Honda UK's "the Power of Dreams" campaign. The campaign's most memorable advert is the 2003 Honda Accord commercial entitled "Cog". The two minute television ad features a complex system of car parts that react with each other to create a chain reaction. The commercial ends with Keillor asking, "Isn't it nice when things just work?" [8] Since then, Keillor has voiced the tagline for most if not all Honda UK advertisements, and even sang the voiceover in the 2004 Honda Diesel commercial entitled "Grrr". His most recent advert was a reworking of an existing commercial with digitally added England flags to tie in with the World Cup. Keillor's tagline was "Come on England, keep the dream alive".
• His style, particularly his speaking voice, is often the subject of parody. The Simpsons parodies Keillor in an episode where Homer is shown watching a Keillor-like monologist on television, and upon hitting the set, exclaiming "Stupid TV! Be more funny!", which has become one of The Simpsons' oft-quoted catchphrases. [9] In practice, Keillor rarely reads his monologue directly from the script, but the monotonous intonation and style of dress caricature Keillor successfully. One Boston radio critic likens Keillor and his "down comforter voice" to "a hypnotist intoning, 'You are getting sleepy now'", while noting that Keillor does play to listeners' intelligence. [10]
• In the UK, his commercials have been parodied especially his song (for Honda): "Hate something, Change something, Make something better" (clip available below).
• Keillor was featured in the Venue Songs of the band They Might Be Giants, supposedly inspiring John Flansburgh and John Linnell with "Midwestern Pledge Drive Funk" songs he had written, like "When Doves Cry," "Powdermilk Biscuit Rain," and "Factory's A-Closin' in the Quaint Fictional Lutheran Town."
• Keillor lent his voice to an animated version of the Norse god Odin in an episode of the Disney animated series "Hercules." His role as the chief god was no doubt influenced by the fact that he often references his Norwegian ancestry, as well as many residents in the Midwest. William H. Macy (of Fargo fame) also voiced two warriors in Vahalla with Minnesotan accents.

[edit] Bibliography

Keillor's work in print includes:

• Good Poems for Hard Times (2005), ISBN 0-670-03436-3
• Homegrown Democrat (2004), ISBN 0-670-03365-0
• Love Me (2003), ISBN 0-670-03246-8
• Good Poems (2002), ISBN 0-670-03126-7
• Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 (2001), ISBN 0-571-21014-7
• Me, by Jimmy Big Boy Valente (1999), ISBN 0-670-88796-X
• Wobegon Boy (1997), ISBN 0-670-87807-3
• The Sandy Bottom Orchestra (with Jenny Lind Nilsson, 1996), ISBN 0-7868-1250-8
• The Book of Guys (1993), ISBN 0-670-84943-X
• A Visit to Mark Twain's House audio (1992), ISBN 0-942110-82-X
• WLT: A Radio Romance, (1991), ISBN 0-670-81857-7
• We Are Still Married (1989), ISBN 0-670-82647-2
• Leaving Home (1987), ISBN 0-670-81976-X
• Lake Wobegon Days (1985), ISBN 0-14-013161-2; a recorded version of this won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-musical Album in 1988
• Happy to be Here (1982), ISBN 0-06-811201-7

[edit] References

1. ^ Lee, J. Y. Garrison Keillor: A Voice of America, pages 29-30. University Press of Mississippi, 1991.
2. ^ ^{a b c} Garrison Keillor, page 30. University Press of Mississippi, 1991.
3. ^ "Keillor to Quit Daily Show, Others Leave KSJN, Minneapolis Tribune, Aug. 24, 1973, 14B.

• Keillor, Garrison. In search of Lake Wobegon. National Geographic. Dec. 2000.
• Lee, Judith Yaross. Garrison Keillor: A Voice of America. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991. ISBN 978-0878054572.
• "Lights! Camera! Retake!". Telegraph (2003). Retrieved Jun. 7, 2005.

[edit] External links

• Garrison Keillor at the Internet Movie Database
• A Prairie Home Companion radio website Garrison Keillor's public radio show
• A Prairie Home Companion movie website The movie written by Garrison Keillor and directed by Robert Altman
• Minnesota Zen Master - a detailed profile of Garrison Keillor, published in The Guardian, March 6, 2004.
• Audio Interviews with Garrison Keillor by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio
• Kingdom of the Frown - A feature article from The Reykjavík Grapevine on Garrison Keillor.
• At Home With Garrison Keillor: Where All the Rooms Are Above Average New York Times June 1, 2006
• Garrison Keillor to Open Bookstore The Book Standard September 14, 2006