{"id":10808,"date":"2016-03-03T00:13:58","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T07:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=10808"},"modified":"2016-03-03T00:13:58","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T07:13:58","slug":"keillor-our-ages-twain-stops-in-billings-on-goodbye-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/03\/keillor-our-ages-twain-stops-in-billings-on-goodbye-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"Keillor, our age’s Twain, stops in Billings on goodbye tour"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Garrison\"<\/a>

Claudia Danielson<\/p>

Garrison Keillor, as close to Twain as we’re likely to get these days.<\/p><\/div>\n

Not too long after I reviewed a performance of \u201cA Prairie Home Companion\u201d in Billings in 1996, a friend suggested that Garrison Keillor was our generation\u2019s Mark Twain. The thought has disrupted my listening to the radio show on odd occasions over the years, and it came rushing back when Keillor took the stage at the Alberta Bair Theater on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

He was dressed in an off-white suit that, despite the red tie, red athletic shoes and red socks, evoked memories of Twain himself, or at least of Hal Holbrook, who brought his one-man Twain show to the Alberta Bair the same year that \u201cA Prairie Home Companion\u201d played here.<\/p>\n

There were at least traces of Twain in Keillor\u2019s one-man show on Wednesday in what is billed as his farewell \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d tour. He is retiring from his long-running radio show in July, and the last performance at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn., was held Saturday.<\/p>\n

Like Twain, Keillor has an unfailing sense for the pathos and absurdity of rural American life. But by the time Twain had reached Keillor\u2019s age of 73, his humor was darkened by searing commentary on religion, slavery and politics.<\/p>\n

Keillor offered a much gentler view of American life, with only a couple of references to politics: mentions of Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz too obscure to recreate here, and a benign comment on America\u2019s polarized politics: \u201cLiberals are vague\u2014they don\u2019t know what they want\u201d and \u201cConservatives want it to be 1958, except for science, which they want to be medieval.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mostly, Keillor sang the praises of modern life. \u201cHappiness is in the small things,\u201d he said, and pointed out a roster of things that have made life better: GPS, which tells you where to turn left, \u201cbut if you don\u2019t, there\u2019s no recrimination\u201d; soft butter, unlike the hard butter of his youth, which had to be spread on bread that was like Kleenex; mind-altering drugs for dental work (\u201cI\u2019m very grateful that I have three more wisdom teeth\u201d); and today\u2019s \u201ctotally awesome\u201d way of thinking about the world, which has replaced the \u201csort of\u201d way of thinking in his fundamentalist youth in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Keillor, who was younger than many in his sold-out Alberta Bair audience, flawlessly tapped into not only his own past life but the lives of his listeners. He began the show with a half-sung, half-rapped song that paid tribute to such radio predecessors as \u201cFibber McGee and Molly,\u201d \u201cBob and Ray\u201d and Fred Allen.<\/p>\n

Then he led the audience in a medley of songs to which almost everybody knew the words: \u201cMy Country \u2018Tis of Thee,\u201d \u201cAmazing Grace,\u201d \u201cThe Battle Hymn of the Republic,\u201d \u201cHome on the Range\u201d and the Beatles\u2019 \u201cI Saw Her Standing There,\u201d punctuated by a fairly eerie \u201cwhoo\u201d from the audience.<\/p>\n

Much of the show was an extended visit to Lake Woebegon, the fictional Minnesota town in which Keillor set many of weekly radio monologues. He talked about his parents, who married when their first child already was well on his way.<\/p>\n

\u201cSin and shame welded these two people together,\u201d he said, and they stayed together for 64 years, celebrating their anniversary only on the 50th.<\/p>\n

He mentioned his childhood nickname of \u201cWiener,\u201d part of the legacy of a crueler age.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sort of turned me against education in my formative years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He talked about his high school speech teacher, who suggested that the nearsighted Keillor give speeches without his glasses, so that he would feel like he wasn\u2019t speaking to classmates but to a Renoir painting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen someone gives you the gift of talking to people you cannot see,\u201d he said, \u201cyou have taken the first step toward radio.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he talked of his Uncle Jack, who drank too much and cheated on his wife but loved poetry and would recite Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s \u201cAnnabel Lee\u201d on fishing trips.<\/p>\n

Twain, by the way, hated Poe\u2019s writing only a little less than he hated Jane Austen\u2019s. \u201cI could read his prose on salary,\u201d he once wrote of Poe, \u201cbut not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toward the end of the show, Keillor reflected on death, which as he ages begins to seem like \u201cthe most boring thing that could ever happen to you.\u201d But he said that we all reflect on our legacy, and he was aware that radio leaves no legacy whatsoever. Writers usually suffer the same fate, leaving behind only unread books on library shelves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have written a whole bunch of novels,\u201d Keillor said, \u201cand I can read parts of them without suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, he said, he hoped to be remembered for his limericks, and he rattled off four or five original limericks, including one that incorporated \u201cPocatello\u201d and another that used \u201cBillings.\u201d Unfortunately, I have forgotten them all.<\/p>\n

Keillor ended the show the same way he began, leading another medley of classic songs: \u201cRed River Valley,\u201d \u201cGoodnight, Irene\u201d and \u201cSwing Low, Sweet Chariot\u201d before ending with \u201cHow Great Thou Art\u201d and \u201cAmen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crowd leapt to their feet with a standing ovation, and he returned to the stage for a final bow. He is all of the Mark Twain we\u2019ve got, and we hated to see him go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not too long after I reviewed a performance of \u201cA Prairie Home Companion\u201d in Billings in 1996, a friend suggested that Garrison Keillor was our generation\u2019s Mark Twain. The thought has disrupted my listening to the radio show on odd occasions over the years, and it came rushing back when Keillor took the stage at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":10809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1377,103,3930,1693],"class_list":["post-10808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-a-prairie-home-companion","tag-alberta-bair-theater","tag-garrison-keillor","tag-mark-twain","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}