Keillor mellows with age on page

[spicedogs]

Garrison Keillor’s latest book, “Liberty,” will be forgotten within two years.

So predicts the author himself.

And he doesn’t sound at all depressed about it.

Asked whether it’s his best work thus far, Keillor says he doesn’t think in those terms.

Asked whether he tried to make it his best work thus far, Keillor says he doesn’t write in those terms.

“I used to think that way when I was an English major,” says Keillor, referring to the endless ranking and re-ranking of writers and writing. “I had a keener critical sense back then. But those days are gone. What used to be called literature is now entertainment. I think all the giants have passed from the Earth. Those who remain are simply trying to engage the reader or listener for a brief time.

“One should not think about what’s better and best, especially in relation to one’s own work. One should assume that all of it will be forgotten two years later.

“And the idea doesn’t bother me at all,” he says.

In “Liberty,” Keillor returns to Lake Wobegon, the mythical Midwestern town he broke ground on more than 30 years ago and has since built brick by fictional brick with his weekly radio addresses and occasional stories and novels.

Keillor may have created Lake Wobegon, but he may not wholly own that creation if fans’ devotion counts for anything. In fact, the city’s happenings are closer to the way some of Keillor’s listeners live than how Keillor currently does.

“Well, it may exist apart from me, but I have to work hard to get back into it,” he says. “I have been a city person for a while now. I lead a peripatetic life. I see a lot of airports and hotel rooms, so I have to work hard to get my imagination to go back there. I never know if I succeed.”

Then again, some of Keillor’s most avid fans are metropolitans who have never spent time in a small Midwestern town or any small town not located in Europe.

“People have enormous imaginations, and radio appeals to that. So long as you don’t fill in all spaces,” Keillor says. “You have to leave a certain emptiness. ‘A man walked down the street in twilight and stopped briefly under a streetlamp before walking off into the dark.’ People put in what they know. They prefer it that way.

“If you become fussy and add a lot of adjectives the way writers do when they’re trying to impress, you leave the listener out. A good thing about becoming an older person is you acquire the courage to be simple. Simplicity opens the door for listeners and invites them in.”

No studies have been done on this, probably, but one assumes that fans of Keillor’s radio show “Prairie Home Companion” possess opposing political predilections.

The same cannot be said of Keillor’s weekly newspaper column, one assumes. Keillor’s column is unabashedly and unmitigatedly left-leaning. He allows that the column may alienate some fans of the radio show.

“That may very well be,” he says. “But I think one should feel free in print. Print is all about freedom. The reader can put it down at any point. The reader has complete control. I don’t feel that way about the radio show.

“I am not interested in telling people what I think on the radio show,” Keillor says. “Print is about free expression. People are much too sensitive about being offended. I’m an old liberal, and anyone who knows me knows that.”

The old liberal expressed admiration for Barack Obama in this interview, which was conducted before the Republican National Convention.

“I do think Barack is a terrific candidate,” he says. “There’s no way a person can look at him and not be impressed. I have great hopes for him. If he gets elected, he would be the only president in my lifetime with the ability to put words on paper. The only one. People say JFK wrote ‘Profiles in Courage,’ but I doubt that.

“The ability to write speaks to a kind of basic intellectual clarity. A man who needs someone else to put words down on paper for him is someone who can only think in broad terms.”