Columns
From the New York Times, Time magazine, and the complete Chicago Tribune syndicated columns
From the New York Times, Time magazine, and the complete Chicago Tribune syndicated columns
April was an awfully good month for me, so good that I’ve been walking around St. Paul, looking up into the branches of trees, making sure there isn’t an anvil roosting in one of them that’s waiting to fall and kill me and thereby serve justice. I’m a happy old man in love with my wife and in touch with good friends and I’ve been on the road doing good shows at which, among other things, the audience sings beautifully some songs they and I have known by heart since we were in grade school and now, on top of all this, my book Cheerfulness, in which I attempt to defend the title attitude against our present Age of Dread & Gloom, has gotten a long, intense, brilliant review by Meghan O’Gieblyn in Middle West Review, the spring issue. Only a fellow writer can know what this means. A lot.
I’m still writing books but haven’t been reviewed by anybody in ages, maybe because I’m an Old White Male and our time is up, or maybe I’ve written too many books, and I’m okay with unreviewing — going way back to Veronica Geng’s caramel custard review of Lake Wobegon Days in the New York Times in 1985, the reviews have been warm and sweet, which is nice for the publisher but for me, the hardworking writer, are unremarkable, like a friend’s cat climbing into my lap: not the equivalent of good conversation. But O’Gieblyn’s essay is a brilliant and engaging piece of work and I feel honored that she went to so much trouble. It pleases me that she quotes funny lines from the book and not pretentious ones: she could easily have used my own words to make me look like a hack and a bore. She does use the word “schtick” in connection with my radio monologue, but I don’t mind: in stand-up, schtick is simply useful, like the handheld microphone. She says that my willful optimism seems somewhat strained at times, and she writes, “There is, alas, no shortage of holes in the book’s logic that could be exploited by an attentive critic”and she goes ahead and sticks her finger in some of them, but she also says, “It’s hard not to conclude that Keillor has reached the sunny equanimity of enlightenment.” (I’ve made it as hard as I could, Meghan.) And then she says, “The prose throughout the book is both sharp and buoyant, and often arrives, somewhat unexpectedly, at profundity.” I was aiming for buoyancy. Profundity is well above my pay grade; it’s Ms. Gieblyn’s territory, not mine. To me, this sentence from a writer so sharp as she is worth more than any prize given by a committee. “Sharp and buoyant” is a nice phrase for promotion, but what makes it meaningful to me is the brilliance of Meghan O’Gieblyn.
Read MoreI went out West to Idaho and Washington to do my show in Boise (soft s) and Spokane, and was surprised by how vibrant, bustling, handsome both cities are, and walked out onstage and sang Van Morrison’s “These are the days of the endless summer, these are the days, the time is now” and they seemed to like it okay, so I hummed a note and they sang “America the Beautiful” with me and then we did “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” for the Republicans in the crowd and they sang it full-out, four parts, and then, for contrast, “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” and we were on our way.
It’s an age of dread, the news perpetually discouraging, TV and media merchandising ugliness, and either you join the Greek chorus of gloom or you go with the American choir of cheerful resolve, and I choose cheerfulness. I am capable of dismay: I’m dismayed by the Working From Home syndrome that is leaving our big office buildings half empty. I call up an office to get answers to difficult questions and I hear Death Chute singing “Vanilla Windows” and a guy says, “Yeah?” and a dog barks and a woman yells, “Put it on headphones!” This is what Allied Federated has come to. I’d prefer to get a woman named Mildred who is an authority on health coverage and who is looking at me across her desk. But never mind me, I’m old.
Read MoreThis is not a sermon, just a fact: since I cut out alcohol 22 years ago, I’ve often awoken in the middle of the night with beautiful ideas, which is a golden gift for a writer, better than emeralds. Tuesday night, for example, I woke at 3 a.m., next to my sleeping wife, arose, dressed, slipped out of our hotel room in Minneapolis, and sat in the lobby with my laptop and started writing a book with a ten-word title about happiness. I’m a happy man, I am qualified. Last week I did two shows, just outside D.C. and in Vermont, two serious locations, and I made those people laugh so hard, they were glad they’d brought an extra pair of pants. I went to Minnesota hoping to solve a Medicare problem that I’d spent years on the phone about, listening to mind-numbing music on Hold, waiting to talk to a clueless functionary working from home, TV blaring in the background, dogs barking, and in Minnesota I went to an office, sat across the desk from a human being, the way we used to do, and he solved it in a matter of minutes. And he thanked me for my patience. Life is good.
I’ve been waiting a long time to become as old as I am and it was worth the wait. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back to being young again. I did dumber things than you’d think possible for a university graduate. That’s why I excused myself from the jury — paying off a porn star and claiming it as a business expense? Heck, I’ve made accounting mistakes, too. But — this is the beautiful 3 a.m. idea — you’ve got to have some disasters, the kind you walk away from, to notice the bluebird on your shoulder. My disaster was a series of falls I took while walking around Manhattan. I’m 81. I used to have a good jump shot from the free-throw circle, I have hit for extra bases in softball, but that was a long time ago. Now, as I walk through LaGuardia, men driving passenger carts stop and offer me a ride. I decline. They say, “Are you sure?”
Read MoreSchool choice — the right of parents to get state subsidy of the private education of their kids — was not around back in my time, my dears. Rich people could send their heirs to Foxcroft to be taught table manners and a privileged accent and the rest of us got on the bus and went to P.S. 101 and learned to scrap for what we wanted. We got mac and cheese for lunch and the rich kids got pasta à la fromage, so we learned to accept our lot while many rich kids wound up in expensive psychiatric retreats weeping about their narcissist parents who left them in the care of cruel nannies. I feel lucky to have avoided that.
And now conservatives fear their children coming under the influence of liberal teachers and being taught bad things about colonialism — and progressive parents want their kids to avoid football culture and the teaching of aggression and want to send Prairie and Sierra to Chamomile Academy where parents sit in the bleachers watching soccer games and shouting “Be gentle!” and “Respect each other’s differences!”
Read MoreJoyful moments have been chasing me all week, the gorgeous singing of “O for a thousand tongues to sing” at St. Michael’s last Sunday, the happiness at 8 a.m. of little kids on their way to school on Columbus Avenue, the pleasure of singing with my pals Heather and Christine the Grateful Dead’s “Brokedown Palace,” the euphoria of an eight-month-old great-nephew as spoonfuls of pablum were brought to his mouth, and of course the arrival of spring itself after this weird unwinter and now tulips and jonquils and hyacinths in the park, plus the surprise of hearing a woman in Maryland whistling impressively through her front teeth. It’s not all raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but I must say, it’s darned joyful.
Ask a Midwesterner, “How are you?” and we tend to say, “Not bad” or “It could be worse,” feeling it’d sound glib or boastful to say, “Delighted,” and we men in particular tend to adopt an easygoing grumpiness as suitable for all occasions, but I think it’s bad luck not to acknowledge that I am very fortunate to have added my tongue to the other 999 at church, to lift my voice with the two women’s in trio to an audience in Vermont, to see that ecstatic little boy finding the joy in pablum that the Dead tried to find in acid. I am tired of conversations with fellow libs that start with ritual lamentations about the horrors we read about in the paper. We are right to be aware of the horrors, but the display of outrage at cruelties I haven’t experienced strikes me as show-offy. Donate money to organizations that relieve suffering. Volunteer at the food shelf, visit the sick, tutor the needy children, do good where you can, and count your blessings.
Read MoreEight a.m. is a fine time to go out for a walk in New York City because you get caught up in the happiness of little kids dressed up for school, holding a parent’s hand, jazzed by the hubbub of life around them, curious and eager, jabbering about everything they see on the way, completely in the moment. Teenagers tend to be solemn, practicing their looks of angst and disdain, but the jubilation of little kids is inspiring. (It helps that I’m not responsible for any of them.) I walk down Columbus Avenue to pick up a couple bagels and coffee (black, thank you) and that first happy impression of the day sticks with me no matter what. I remember Estelle Shaver, my first-grade teacher, now consorting with archangels in Glory. I was shy, bookish, an observer, which she encouraged and which, as it turned out, saved me from a career in politics or operating a Ponzi scheme or becoming a psychic with curative powers to prevent Parkinson’s, pancreatitis, and panic attacks. I lacked the confidence to work the con.
Now I’m an old man, in no rush, keeping an eye out for curbs and crevices and treacherous slabs of sidewalk, hoping not to make a spectacle of myself, knowing that in New York I am surrounded by writers, real or imagined, who would find the crash of a tall elderly author rather satisfying. Once I was swift afoot and long astride, and now I amble along, accepting distractions, my barber Tommy, a sculptor of hair, at work in his shop, and the newsstand, a historic relic, in the Online Age, and the security woman in her yellow vest at the schoolyard gate, and these beautiful children, apartment kids growing up on crowded streets, learning social skills. I had the Mississippi River and woods to go wander off alone in and so I picked up a pencil and a Roy Rogers tablet and wrote, as I am doing now.
Read MoreThere never was a bad nap. I pass this wisdom on to you, as an old man who has experienced more disappointment than you’ll ever know and it took me 75 years to learn how to deal with it: you lie down, close your eyes, and wake up feeling better.
I used to eat Wheaties because they sponsored “Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy” on the radio back before the rest of you were born and a men’s quartet sang, “Have you tried Wheaties? They’re whole wheat with all of the bran. Won’t you try Wheaties? For wheat is the best food of man.” Jack traveled the world foiling the evil plans of villains, and Wheaties were made by General Mills, based in Minneapolis, and Jack was based on a student at the University of Minnesota, which I intended to attend (and did, and graduated with a B.A.), and I was loyal to it for years, but last year, the most profitable in General Mills’s history, they jacked up the price of Wheaties to $8 while reducing the food content, and I felt betrayed and I haven’t put a spoonful of the Breakfast of Champions to my lips. The cereal in the box is worth about a dime, the box itself about a quarter, and the rest goes to enable a battalion of execs to own homes in Minneapolis and Aruba and Aspen and fly to Paris for a weekend. Nothing to do with foiling evil plans.
Read MoreI did my solo stand-up act in Ohio last week and in the midst of a story, the auditorium shook with a blast of thunder. I paused. The audience laughed. Another roll of thunder. And I started singing, “How Great Thou Art,” with the line, “I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,” and the audience joined in en masse, they knew the words, they sang it so beautifully, the chorus drowned out the thunder. I was telling a story about me as a teenager necking with a girl in a car and when thunder struck again, I looked up at the ceiling, addressing the Lord, and said, “It was her idea, it wasn’t mine. She unbuttoned my shirt.”
I loved that audience dearly and gave them a good ninety minutes and afterward a distinguished man stopped by to shake hands. Back when, he’d heard me on the radio. I said, “I detect an air of authority about you. You’re the president of something.” He said he was a retired Army major; he’d commanded a tank battalion. “Where?” I said. “Vietnam,” he said. I said I’d never heard of tanks used in Vietnam. He said, “That’s because they would’ve sunk four feet down in the Delta and so they were useless. When we got there, we became infantry.”
Read MoreIt was plain and simple joy to sit in a packed church on Easter Sunday and sing the Alleluias and listen to the story of the women finding the tomb empty and wait in a long line for Communion. We Episcopalians have been known to marry existentialists, hedonists, individualists, pantheists, Baptists, and disAnglified sophisticates, and it’s lovely to have them all under the tent to celebrate Christ’s Resurrection regardless of what doubts may flutter in their heads. I grew up among separatist fundamentalists, a joyless and judgmental lot, and this was entirely different, public happiness openly shared. The women at the tomb where his body had been laid were afraid but there was no fear among us on Sunday morning, and in Manhattan, where one’s mind easily turns to dark scenarios, this joy is palpable.
And after Communion, we stood and sang a beloved Catholic hymn whose chorus, “And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up on the last day,” brings many of us to tears, and though Episcopalian, members of the church of the wingtips and tweed vests, in our wave of feeling we raise one arm like storefront Pentecostals, and I think of my dead brother, my grandson Freddy, my parents and my wife’s parents, and feel the glow of faith that we will be reunited. This faith is not an intellectual feat; it feels miraculous and I carry it around all day.
Read MoreI spent last week gadding about the Carolinas doing shows and enjoying the South, eating eggs and grits and hearing the waitress say, “Can I get you more coffee, darling?” and encountering Republicans, a tribe rarer than Mohicans on the West Side of Manhattan where I live. I miss them. My uncles tended Republican, believing in personal responsibility and fiscal reality, and at church on Palm Sunday, at coffee hour, I heard the word “taxes” uttered contemptuously and a gentleman in his sixties was saying, “Everything government touches, it messes up,” a genuine living Republican. Twenty minutes before, at Mass, he had been forgiven his iniquity, and I wanted to put my arms around him.
I am comfortable in the South. I’m okay with not talking politics with crazy people. Yes, in the rural areas, they display the Confederate flag, but I’ve got junk in my closet too. I see no need to remove statues of Civil War heroes: just paint their uniforms olive drab and enlist them in the U.S. Army. A good summer job for teenagers.
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