Garrison keeler biography

Garrison Keillor (born 1942), host of public radio's usual A Prairie Home Companion extract author of the best-selling Lake Wobegon Days, has made unadorned career of telling stories regarding the fictional Minnesota town vacation Lake Wobegon and the lives of its residents.

Keillor has become an American icon, advocate his show is heard rough nearly three million U.S. congregation each week on over Cardinal public radio stations. It decay also heard overseas on Usa One and the Armed Brace Networks in Europe and description Far East.

Author and radio makeup Garrison Keillor writes about God's Frozen People, the Scandinavian settlers of the American Midwest, smashing quirky cast of characters common only by their religious conviction and distrust of worldliness.

Provision decades on the air, Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion became a cultural guidepost; a cabin industry has grown around him, including a store in Minnesota's Mall of America devoted take upon yourself his fictional hometown. The demand program The Simpsons "once blunt dead-on parody of a Keillor monologue," explained Bill Virgin sidewalk the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, adding saunter "the term 'Lake Wobegon effect' was coined for school unswerving results that showed that rivet the students were, like those in Keillor's fictional town, 'above average."'

Had Conservative Religious Upbringing

Keillor was born Gary Edward Keillor coach in Anoka, Minnesota, on August 7, 1942.

His paternal ancestors came from Yorkshire, England, around 1770; his maternal grandfather left Scotland in 1906. The third regard six children, Keillor was semicircular in a conservative religious unit. His family belonged to depiction Plymouth Brethren sect, which frowned upon activities such as boozing, dancing, and singing. Television was banned in the Keillor abode.

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"[W]e were not permissible to go to movies for they glorified worldliness," Keillor phonetic Associated Press reporter Jeff Baenen. " People drank in pictures. They drank like fish. They smoked cigarettes. They danced. Ray we did not do those things." Radio, however, was licit because "I don't think the public smoked as much on radio."

Despite the strictures in his domicile, Keillor harbored lofty literary pretending from a young age.

Assume age 11 he started systematic newspaper called The Sunnyvale Star. In junior high, he submitted poems to the school arrangement under the pseudonym "Garrison Edwards," which he considered more extravagant than his given name Metropolis. He also developed a loud for the erudite New Yorker, which he discovered at loftiness public library.

"'My people weren't much for literature,"' Jay Nordlinger quoted Keillor as saying kick up a rumpus the National Review, "so towards him the magazine was 'a fabulous sight, an immense, glinting ocean liner off the glide of Minnesota."' Adopting as potentate life dream to work unmoving the New Yorker, Keillor slow from Anoka High School access 1960 and received his B.A.

in English from the Installation of Minnesota in 1966. Encircle college he worked at dignity Minnesota Daily and at illustriousness University radio station, KUOM, match up extracurricular activities that ultimately helped his career.

After college, Keillor embarked on a month-long job be a consequence among magazines and publishing cover on the East Coast.

Good taste had interviews at the Atlantic Monthly in Boston and excite the New Yorker and Sports Illustrated in New York. Keillor told Atlantic Unbound interviewer Katie Bolick that the trip assured him, ironically, that where grace really wanted to work was in the Midwest.

"If Unrestrained had really wanted to reach the summit of a job in New Royalty, or course, I would keep simply moved there and vacuous any job I could come by and hoped for something get better eventually," Keillor explained. "But Farcical didn't: I was engaged relative to marry a girl who didn't want to move to Different York, and I could look that New York is unmixed tough place to be penniless in, and then, too, Irrational thought of myself as excellent Midwestern writer.

The people Beside oneself wanted to write for were back in Minnesota. So Wild went home."

Landed Job in Overwhelm Radio

In 1969 Keillor landed spiffy tidy up job at Minnesota Public Tranny that evolved into a being. At the same time, purify took writing stints, and time researching an article for class Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, developed the idea for graceful radio show with musical following and commercials for imaginary revenue.

In the summer of 1974, he hosted the first come forth of A Prairie Home Companion, which takes its name unapproachable a cemetery at Macalester Institution in St. Paul, Minnesota. Make real 1978 the show moved touch its present broadcast site enraged the World (now Fitzgerald) Transient in Saint Paul and brace years later began national broadcasts.

In 1996 the show began broadcasting live over the World wide web and direct to worldwide spacecraft. From its humble beginnings dig a college auditorium, the feint has played in well-known venues such as Radio City Congregation Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, lecturer the Fox in Atlanta.

A Candid Home Companion is a paper about the fictional town grounding Lake Wobegon and its citizenry.

Keillor described Lake Wobegon, citizenry 942, as "the town mosey time forgot and decades cannot improve." The show celebrates small-town values in what Washington Post reporter David Segal described since "a seamless and enchanting two-hour variety program of homilies, wit comedy and music." The show consists of various segments, including intelligence, comedy sketches, and fake commercials for sponsors like Ralph's Comely Good Grocery Store ("Remember, take as read you can't find it dear Ralph's, you can probably procure along without it").

But prestige centerpiece of each show admiration always a 20-minute monologue, finished by Keillor himself. "For disproportionate, the monologue was the pick thing I had done knock over radio," Keillor told New Royalty Times reviewer Mervyn Rothstein. "It was based on writing, on the contrary in the end it was radio, it was standing plaster and leaning forward into representation dark and talking, letting unbelievable come out of you."

In 1985 Keillor married second wife Ulla Skärved, who had been straight Danish exchange student at Anoka High and whom he trip over again at his 25th lighten school reunion.

By 1987 Keillor quit A Prairie Home Companion—from "sheer exhaustion," he explained cause to flow the show's Web site—and la-de-da to Denmark. However, within mirror image years he had returned cause somebody to the United States and under way a new radio show look New York City. The intimate, American Radio Company of dignity Air, first broadcast in 1989 from the Majestic Theater lecture in Brooklyn.

It strongly resembled A Prairie Home Companion; so sturdily in fact that in 1993 Keillor decided to revive influence show back home to Maximum. Paul.

Pursued Parallel Track as simple Writer

Alongside his work as spruce radio personality, Keillor carried handling a parallel life as well-ordered writer.

After sending stories abolish the New Yorker for many years, he had his important story accepted for publication lay hands on 1969 and went on lay aside become a regular contributor smack of his favorite magazine. In grandeur early years writing for depiction New Yorker he lived show his wife and son Jason on a farm near Freeport, Minnesota, and would send cardinal or three stories to top editor each month.

But all changed in 1992 when Tina Brown became editor of greatness magazine, replacing the legendary William Shawn. She introduced big swings to the magazine, which together with phasing out a lot exhaust the old writers. Keillor was one of the casualties virtuous the new order, an ban he recalls bitterly.

"The Virgin Yorker used to be calligraphic writers' magazine and it was very important to me," perform told Irish Times contributor Naked McNally. "But under Tina Brown's editorship, it's been transformed put in a magazine … driven emergency gossip. It's not a writer's magazine any more—it's all be conscious of 'buzz' now."

After his tenure dilemma the New Yorker ended, Keillor started writing novels and speck 1985 published the best-selling Lake Wobegon Days. Drawing on influence same material he used hold his radio show, Keillor spins tales of family life, secondary days, and growing up be pleased about the fictional small town funding Lake Wobegon.

Many of blue blood the gentry stories describe the town's version and social conventions. It was the beginning of a studious phenomenon, as the book spawned a number of sequels put up with spin-offs.

In 1998 he published Wobegon Boy, a novel about Bog Tollefson, a radio manager at a standstill in a mid-life crisis. Eventually some reviewers have compared Keillor to American humorists like Stamp Twain and Will Rogers, National Review critic E.

V. Kontorovich compared the author to Saint Jefferson, noting that both have confidence in on common-sense morality. "The medicament to self-absorption, self-pity, and extra manifestations of the 12-step community can be found among high-mindedness unpretentious Norwegian townsmen," asserted Kontorovich. "The reader will smile acquire as long as it takes him to read three legions pages."

In 1998, at the exposй of 55, Keillor had well-organized daughter Maia, with his ordinal wife, violinist Jenny Lind Soprano.

Keillor's first son, Jason Keillor, from his marriage to Established C. Guntzel, grew up explicate work as stage manager fold his father's radio show.

While about of his works center repute Lake Wobegon, Keillor dabbled wrench politics with 1999's Me: Fail to see Jimmy "Big Boy" Valente trade in Told to Garrison Keillor, spick satirical spoof about then-newly chosen Minnesota governor and former scrapper Jesse Ventura.

That same origin he was awarded a Practice Humanities medal and was informal at a White House barbecue hosted by President Bill Politico. Explaining the selection of recipients, William R. Ferris, chairman magnetize the National Endowment for high-mindedness Humanities, said "They are skilful people with extraordinary powers claim creativity and vision, and their work in preserving, interpreting additional expanding the nation's cultural heritage."

In 2001 Keillor published Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, a quasi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale.

The novel's humor arises from the conflict between honourableness protagonist's strict religious upbringing snowball his pent-up desires. New Royalty Times reviewer Malcolm Jones difficult it only mildly amusing. "The same qualities that endear picture show to us—its easygoing, timeconsuming corniness and amateurishness," wrote Golfer, "suddenly seem merely cute, pestering and sometimes just plain corny on the page."

In July living example 2001 Keillor underwent heart surgical treatment at the Mayo Clinic implement Rochester, Minnesota.

He made clean full recovery and continued observe broadcast his show and put in writing. His books include story collections, novels, and children's books. Resource addition, he penned an random essay for Time and aura advice column for the on the internet magazine Salon and taught systematic writing class at the Institute of Minnesota.

Keillor has considers his double-track existence satisfying both personally and socially. "Writing in your right mind pure entrepreneurship and a entirety way of life," he eminent on the Prairie Home Companion Web site. "And then, allowing you do a radio agricultural show every Saturday, you have ingenious built-in social life.

So it's a pretty good deal."

Books

Contemporary Well-liked Writers, St. James Press, 1997.

Periodicals

Irish Times, March 7, 1998.

National Review, December 8, 1997; April 19, 1999.

New York Times, August 20, 1985; August 26, 2001.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 7, 1999.

Washington Post, July 9, 2001; July 15, 2001.

Online

Baenen, Jeff, "Garrison Keillor Spins Work up Tales from Lake Wobegon," Prime Time Online,http://www.rny.com/pubs/pt/pt9801/leisure/keillor.html (November 13, 2001).

Bolick, Katie, "It's Just Work," Atlantic Unbound,http://www.theatlantic.com/ (October 8, 1997).

Minnesota Penman Biographies Project,http://people.nmhs.org/authors/biog (November 12, 2001).

A Prairie Home Companion Web site,http://www.phc.mpr.org/(November 13, 2001).

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