A magnificent throwback to old-time radio—a medium that employed scripts, versatile voices, musical guests, unapologetically homey commercials (in this case, for fictitious products), and the listener’s imagination—premiered on this date 35 years ago, at the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College, in Saint Paul, Minn. Twelve people came to the show, producing total sales of less than $8, according to legend.But, as I noted yesterday about Seinfeld, an entertainment powerhouse does not always start out big. So it has proved with Garrison Keillor, whose A Prairie Home Companion became an institution before long.
At the time of its premiere, with the airwaves dominated by mindless pop songs, broadcasting the show at all must have seemed like a hopelessly cute anachronism. Today, in the era of screaming talk-radio mavens, two hours of wit and entertainment every Saturday night from the Midwest , in a sly tribute to vintage Americana, represents an act of defiance against the fates.
The fact that Keillor can continue to pull the show off, week after week, is astonishing enough. But that he has produced several shelves’ worth of books over the years is beyond amazing. If he had never become a radio legend, these, by themselves, would have secured our respect and attention.
(Given the name of this blog, I would be much remiss in not hailing Keillor for renovating St. Paul’s World Theater and rechristening it The Fitzgerald Theater, after my great literary hero—tune in tomorrow on this point in the blogosphere for more on Great Scott, by the way.)
Several years ago, through the help of a friend, I was able to secure tickets for a broadcast at New York’s Town Hall, when the show was on tour during December. I would have been curious, in any case, to see how a radio show was put together before an audience.
But to see the whole thing done in such style, at Christmastime, with the mellifluous voice of Keillor and the great aural effects provided by his crew in conveying the news about Guy Noir and the denizens of Lake Wobegon—well, it was something to behold. My great thanks, again, to the friend responsible for putting the tickets into my lucky hands.
The web site for A Prairie Home Companion contains a cornucopia of riches—very much including podcasts of the show, in case you’re unfortunate enough to miss a segment (as happens all too often with me, since I’m usually driving somewhere when I get it on my car radio). But don’t leave the site without checking out, on the lower right-hand portion of the page, “The View From Mrs. Sundberg’s Window.”
The Web site is only partially correct in noting that “Mrs. Sundberg,” a regular listener, “shares her thoughts about Saturday’s show.” Actually, though those thoughts might start there, they quickly take you to places you never expected.
In the passage below from a couple of weeks ago, for instance, she talks about the loss of her best wooden spoon “while whipping up a batch of snickerdoodle dough.” And then she considers her loss further:
“Of course you can't hold on to everything, and even if you could, why would you want to? I think the trick is to dwell not on what you lost but on what you gained by having had it. There isn't much that lasts forever. Not childhood, not wooden spoons, not lilacs. Not memory, even. Things and people come and go, and you hold on to what you can, and let go of what you must. As long as you manage to laugh once in a while, and take a road trip now and then, everything ought to turn out just fine.”
Writing that good is so much more than the result of talent; it’s also the product of someone observing everything she can, mulling it all over, and, most important, getting the tone just right. Passages like this, once you get over the lump in your throat, also leave you gasping in admiration.
And somehow, without ever meeting this person, you sense an infinitely warm and wise heart to go with the obvious intelligence. Not a bad addition to the universe encapsulated by A Prairie Home Companion.
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