Lake Woe: Garrison Keillor's dark hometown |
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| Abstract: | This article refines the appreciation of a bitter undercurrent in Garrison Keillor's radio monologues, “The News from Lake Wobegon.”; It contends that Keillor's depiction of the dark side of Lake Wobegon should be considered of equal importance to the light side. The essay describes how Keillor creates a somber mood through a variety of vocal techniques such as his tone of voice, his rate of speech, his use of pauses, and the words that he leaves unspoken. Keillor is a writer whose finest artistic medium is radio, and whose art resonates with satiric criticisms of intolerance, selfishness, and inadequacy. The pervasiveness of this harsh undercurrent aligns Keillor's stories with a tradition of small town Midwestern literature begun by Mark Twain and including Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, Ray Bradbury, and Sinclair Lewis. Keillor makes a unique contribution to this literary tradition when he utilizes the power of radio to evoke emotions and to bestow meaning through the sound of the spoken word. His monologues also affirm the psychic journey of listeners who have moved away from small towns to large cities and who feel estranged from their populist roots. |
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