Ludo,
I have amended my letter somewhat and added a few new thoughts. First, ours is an age when nearly everyone can be bought for the right price, whether it is with money, political power, or social persuasion of numerous ordinary kinds. This is no time for tears or thinking better not to have been born, but a time for comforting the human spirit in an aftermath of nearly incomprehensible comedic tragedy.
Now, as to your question about Garrison Kiellor: I have listened to many of his radio broadcasts in the past and I have read a number of his more recent newspaper commentaries. When I first began to listen to A Prairie Home Companion, I thought that the monologues were skilfully edited and recorded but slightly tedious. He arranges and projects his monologues in a learned monotonous manner, using country commonplaces, events, people, and places such as the fictional town of Lake Wobegone, Minnesota. They are quite believable. It makes me believe that rural Minnesotans are actually like they are in Kiellor's imagination. Certainly it is a draw for many of his listeners. I am afraid that it will do little to drive away the impression for many that Minnesotans are generally politically and socially addlebrained. Which we know is nonsense but hold to the illusion of truth.
As time went on I listened while I worked, like the good sort of elfin that I am. One day I put down my hammer and the shoes I was working on because my early fascination with Kiellor's radio discourses was slowly beginning to crumble. That his programs still sells to audiences all over, as I understand it, is not much of a factor. We are all of us slow to rise our minds from listening to the dead. I think that Kiellor unknowingly projects (to use an old term) a kind of learned Bohemianism, a picture of a free and irregular life that is only supposed to affect someone in the arts and not the rest of us. This is an uncomplimentary bogy in writing but compelling to many of his listeners, for they are distracted by the stories or by his praise in the marketplace. The ready answer for us is that there exists a place for cultural analysis, fairly without animosity.
Many of Garrison Kiellor's committed listeners are simply unable to disengage. More recently upon reading his newspaper commentaries, I believe that I have found him to be less a humorist and more the appalling cynic. His bona fide in the radio programs I do not question, but his good faith in the written comments I do. His one-sided and overused interpretations of many people and their motives are beginning to wear. Particularly, if those same do not measure to a preconceived opinion found only in more nervy, wire strung individuals, and far worse, he writes as though he owed no person anything. Kiellor's inhumane view of others with differing viewpoints contradicts his learning and the image he attempts to project of himself as the all-around good guy with the humorist's look upon life.
There appears to be no economy of style or judicious wording present in the commentaries. It is all a dark look at other people and their psychological frame of reference and nothing at all of who we are in this human thing together. What is really being presented is a faux beauty. A variety of smoothed-over vulgarities and sycophantesque masks in place of a jack-pudding face of imagination is what I am reading. Once all of the groups in Kiellor's repertoire in which it is easy to make a joke about without troubling himself are gone, what is left? It is easy to make jokes about characters in a piece of fiction but an incredible stretch to go from there to making constant and offensive cracks about living people in an ongoing public forum. It is not only that, it is stupid and in bad taste. He manipulates his readers and bullies his antagonists by evoking a subtle hostility towards them.
The road from humor to criticism often follows a mean path. We should not often flatter ourselves into believing we are modern reincarnations of Mark Twain. Too soon desperation sets in, and we find that unlike Twain we are no longer funny. Mark Twain was not a desperate man. If we don't think that he was natural, we don't think. Here I break with Garrison Kiellor. The bare facts speak for themselves: that he holds no moral righteousness is most persuasive. I find him in his writings smooth and smug, and condescending to those he dislikes. His focus is artificial and it is here also that the demons lurking in the pit of his imagination are beginning to falter. They are becoming unruly and disobedient and he no longer has what is needed to tame them. The major newspapers have pretty much a monopoly in the area of who will appear in print. Kiellor's commentaries appear because of their beneficence towards him and it is unlikely to be any other way. It is inevitable that the press blows hot and cold.
Do not be discouraged or criticize him more than is needful for that will be harmful to you. That there are so many people today who publicly poison the wells of civility without any remorse, and who will make no concessions of any kind towards the people they kick is not to be underestimated. They are drinking the pure waters of terrorism. They make a show of being grand gentlemen and ladies; some do not even pretend to that elevation but make much of being coarse and crude. In my judgment they use the hands of authority to abuse, condemn, and ridicule. In his writings Kiellor makes astounding statements that are obviously not true. Should Kiellor hold too long on his present course of condemnation of people like yourself he will find no safe haven. Eventually his support will falter even if it does not completely fade away. Certainly, at the very least, he will die like all of us are destined to do, and he will be buried with honors by his peers. His abuse then will come to an abrupt and perhaps unwilling end. Ludo, it is much safer to be kind than to be totally condemning.
I am sure that Kiellor will be remembered for the distinctive style of his early A Prairie Home Companion work. In that I wish him well. As a critic he is bitter and vehement. It's too early to tell how he will end up. I think that he is nearing seventy years of age and habits die hard, especially if we do not turn them while we still can; that is, while we are young enough to know better and not old enough to be arrogant in the place of sense and duty. Nostalgia is not all that it is made up to be. Sometimes it is a pile of tripe. Perhaps Garrison Kiellor has abandoned his dreams. His is not really a warm and fuzzy personality.
Giovanni
P.S. If you are going to quarrel don't quarrel over goat's wool, Ludo. It's all or nothing.
Think of Aristotle's example of a syllogism:
All men are mortal.
Demetrius is a man.
Therefore Demetrius is mortal.
I have amended my letter somewhat and added a few new thoughts. First, ours is an age when nearly everyone can be bought for the right price, whether it is with money, political power, or social persuasion of numerous ordinary kinds. This is no time for tears or thinking better not to have been born, but a time for comforting the human spirit in an aftermath of nearly incomprehensible comedic tragedy.
Now, as to your question about Garrison Kiellor: I have listened to many of his radio broadcasts in the past and I have read a number of his more recent newspaper commentaries. When I first began to listen to A Prairie Home Companion, I thought that the monologues were skilfully edited and recorded but slightly tedious. He arranges and projects his monologues in a learned monotonous manner, using country commonplaces, events, people, and places such as the fictional town of Lake Wobegone, Minnesota. They are quite believable. It makes me believe that rural Minnesotans are actually like they are in Kiellor's imagination. Certainly it is a draw for many of his listeners. I am afraid that it will do little to drive away the impression for many that Minnesotans are generally politically and socially addlebrained. Which we know is nonsense but hold to the illusion of truth.
As time went on I listened while I worked, like the good sort of elfin that I am. One day I put down my hammer and the shoes I was working on because my early fascination with Kiellor's radio discourses was slowly beginning to crumble. That his programs still sells to audiences all over, as I understand it, is not much of a factor. We are all of us slow to rise our minds from listening to the dead. I think that Kiellor unknowingly projects (to use an old term) a kind of learned Bohemianism, a picture of a free and irregular life that is only supposed to affect someone in the arts and not the rest of us. This is an uncomplimentary bogy in writing but compelling to many of his listeners, for they are distracted by the stories or by his praise in the marketplace. The ready answer for us is that there exists a place for cultural analysis, fairly without animosity.
Many of Garrison Kiellor's committed listeners are simply unable to disengage. More recently upon reading his newspaper commentaries, I believe that I have found him to be less a humorist and more the appalling cynic. His bona fide in the radio programs I do not question, but his good faith in the written comments I do. His one-sided and overused interpretations of many people and their motives are beginning to wear. Particularly, if those same do not measure to a preconceived opinion found only in more nervy, wire strung individuals, and far worse, he writes as though he owed no person anything. Kiellor's inhumane view of others with differing viewpoints contradicts his learning and the image he attempts to project of himself as the all-around good guy with the humorist's look upon life.
There appears to be no economy of style or judicious wording present in the commentaries. It is all a dark look at other people and their psychological frame of reference and nothing at all of who we are in this human thing together. What is really being presented is a faux beauty. A variety of smoothed-over vulgarities and sycophantesque masks in place of a jack-pudding face of imagination is what I am reading. Once all of the groups in Kiellor's repertoire in which it is easy to make a joke about without troubling himself are gone, what is left? It is easy to make jokes about characters in a piece of fiction but an incredible stretch to go from there to making constant and offensive cracks about living people in an ongoing public forum. It is not only that, it is stupid and in bad taste. He manipulates his readers and bullies his antagonists by evoking a subtle hostility towards them.
The road from humor to criticism often follows a mean path. We should not often flatter ourselves into believing we are modern reincarnations of Mark Twain. Too soon desperation sets in, and we find that unlike Twain we are no longer funny. Mark Twain was not a desperate man. If we don't think that he was natural, we don't think. Here I break with Garrison Kiellor. The bare facts speak for themselves: that he holds no moral righteousness is most persuasive. I find him in his writings smooth and smug, and condescending to those he dislikes. His focus is artificial and it is here also that the demons lurking in the pit of his imagination are beginning to falter. They are becoming unruly and disobedient and he no longer has what is needed to tame them. The major newspapers have pretty much a monopoly in the area of who will appear in print. Kiellor's commentaries appear because of their beneficence towards him and it is unlikely to be any other way. It is inevitable that the press blows hot and cold.
Do not be discouraged or criticize him more than is needful for that will be harmful to you. That there are so many people today who publicly poison the wells of civility without any remorse, and who will make no concessions of any kind towards the people they kick is not to be underestimated. They are drinking the pure waters of terrorism. They make a show of being grand gentlemen and ladies; some do not even pretend to that elevation but make much of being coarse and crude. In my judgment they use the hands of authority to abuse, condemn, and ridicule. In his writings Kiellor makes astounding statements that are obviously not true. Should Kiellor hold too long on his present course of condemnation of people like yourself he will find no safe haven. Eventually his support will falter even if it does not completely fade away. Certainly, at the very least, he will die like all of us are destined to do, and he will be buried with honors by his peers. His abuse then will come to an abrupt and perhaps unwilling end. Ludo, it is much safer to be kind than to be totally condemning.
I am sure that Kiellor will be remembered for the distinctive style of his early A Prairie Home Companion work. In that I wish him well. As a critic he is bitter and vehement. It's too early to tell how he will end up. I think that he is nearing seventy years of age and habits die hard, especially if we do not turn them while we still can; that is, while we are young enough to know better and not old enough to be arrogant in the place of sense and duty. Nostalgia is not all that it is made up to be. Sometimes it is a pile of tripe. Perhaps Garrison Kiellor has abandoned his dreams. His is not really a warm and fuzzy personality.
Giovanni
P.S. If you are going to quarrel don't quarrel over goat's wool, Ludo. It's all or nothing.
Think of Aristotle's example of a syllogism:
All men are mortal.
Demetrius is a man.
Therefore Demetrius is mortal.
