Garrison Keillor’s sleepy-voiced radio monologues from the A Prairie Home Companion radio show might be the only way you know the native Minnesotan, but he’s also an author of more than 17 books. He’s published numerous short stories and poems since being published in the New Yorker in 1970, he hosts A Writer’s Almanac daily on NPR stations around the country, and posts regularly to his blog on the Prairie Home website. He’s also a daily columnist at Salon.com, which makes you wonder how he finds time for the rest of his life.
But despite all the books he’s written, Keillor hasn’t had anything made into a movie. Robert Altman directed a fictional feature film version of A Prairie Home Companion, but to a Keillor fan it came off as more of a parody of the radio show than anything else. So where are the movies? Here’s a guide to the five Keillor books I’d really like to see on the big screen.
WLT: A Radio Romance
For some reason I’ve always been fascinated with old time radio shows. I have hours and hours of The Jack Benny Show on my computer, and I love the way they used to perform everything live, complete with a sound effects man to provide all the noises. Which is basically what A Prairie Home Companion is like. Keillor must be in love with that world as well, since WLT is about a radio station (originally set up to advertise sandwiches in a restaurant) that puts on dramas, comedies, reports the news, and covers sports in the 1920s/1930s. It’s full of broad comedy, but the ensemble cast and goofy situations are oddly charming. Think WKRP in Cincinatti during the Great Depression.
The Book of Guys
This is a book aimed squarely at middle aged men, and it seems perfect for a movie adaptation. After all, women get movies like Steel Magnolias and First Wives Club. But where are the movies about middle aged guys facing the reality of their lives? And if you say Wild Hogs, I will personally track you down and haunt your dreams. It can probably be argued that most movies are perfect for men of that age, but this book is filled with stories about men who are just trying to live normal lives, and learn how to deal with old age and women along the way. It’s often hilarious, plenty times poignant, and doesn’t get preachy or treacly.
Lake Wobegon Days
This is the one that started it all, and Keillor has now published seven Wobegon book, creating an entire wealth of information about a fictional town in Minnesota, complete with a huge cast of characters. It even landed him on the cover of Time in 1985, and that was just after the first book was published. The fact that it became such a runaway hit must mean that there a nostalgic yearning hidden in all of us that wants to turn to a simpler life and time. When I first started listening the “The News From Lake Wobegon” on Keillor’s radion show, I thought that it was something my grandparents would have been interested in. Then, somehow, it stuck, and I couldn’t get enough of it. This was when I was a college student living in Austin, spending my spare time partying and trying to see how much I could drink in one evening, which is quite a juxtaposition.
Happy To Be Here
This was actually the first book of Keillor’s that I ever read. I think I found it at a used bookstore in Texas, and recognized his name from the radio show. I didn’t want to be one of the bandwagoneers of Wobegon, so I avoided those books. Happy To Be Here is a collection of Keillor’s short form writing, but it’s full of gems like a WLT short story, “Jack Schmidt: Arts Administrator” which is a comic detective noir story about a government employee, and “The Drunkard’s Sunday.” A good writer could string most of these 29 short pieces into a funny script that focuses on the humor that exists in banal everyday life. The writing is as dry as you’ll encounter in The Onion, but it came out in 1982. Contrary to popular blogosphere belief systems, sarcasm did indeed exist before the internets were switched on.
Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
Keillor left Lake Wobegon alone from 1989 until 1997 when he published Wobegon Boy, finally returning to the fictional city and its denizens. Although half of Wobegon Boy takes place in New York City, where the title character moves to after landing a job with National Public Radio. He returned to Wobegon again four years later with Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, which follows poor teenage Gary as he stumbles his way through a summer in Lake Wobegon. There’s a scene with his cousin Kate (who he has a giant crush on) in a bathroom stall that manages to cross a few lines while remaining funny. Think The Wonder Years, but set in the 1950s, and a little raunchier. That’s right, the guy who pushes Sleep Number Beds can be pretty raunchy from time to time, and he has quite a talent for writing about sex. Who knew?
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