Author | Garrison Keillor |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Series | Lake Wobegon |
Genre | Short story |
Publisher | Viking Penguin |
Publication date | 1987 |
Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Pages | 244 |
ISBN | 0-670-81976-X |
OCLC | 16227460 |
813/.54 19 | |
LC Class | PS3561.E3755 L43 1987 |
Preceded by | Lake Wobegon Days |
Followed by | We Are Still Married |
Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories is a short story anthology written by Garrison Keillor, a humorous fictional account of life in small-town Minnesota set in the fictitious heartland town of Lake Wobegon. It was first published in hardcover by Viking Penguin, Inc. in 1987.
The book is a collection of thirty-six of the author's "News from Lake Wobegon" monologues from his radio program A Prairie Home Companion , slightly revised for print publication. They are prefaced by "A Letter from Copenhagen." At the time of the book's initial publication, Keillor had left A Prairie Home Companion , and this was apparently a farewell to Lake Wobegon. He would, however, return to the program and to creating Lake Wobegon monologues in the 1990s.
Spalding Gray, reviewing the collection in The New York Times, called its contents "perfect bedtime stories ... exactly the right length and mood to put you out at the end and not in the middle, so you can slip off with a well-rounded sense of joyful completion." He found them "primarily wholesome American images that often begin with a description of local weather and glide through a landscape of meat loaf, roasted wieners, homemade jam and unconditional love, all falling cozily into place like a Norman Rockwell painting," but "also perversely peppered with such contrasting earthy items as the autoignition of flatulence, cutting the heads off chickens, cancer and 68 dead pigs all on their backs with their legs turned up toward the sun. ... At their best these stories are contemporary folk tales of American comic-karma, always demonstrating that you reap what you sow. ... At their worst many of these stories are like honey-coated breakfast cereal. They give you a sugar rush only to let you crash by midmorning." He concludes "Leaving Home will most likely make Garrison Keillor's fans love him all the more. For you who don't like him or have not taken the time to shape an opinion, I recommend that you at least go to a bookstore and open the book to a story at random and read it while standing up. They're short enough to do that without getting tired. For some of you, they will make you remember the home you never had." [1]
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, singer, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He created the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) show A Prairie Home Companion, which he hosted from 1974 to 2016. Keillor created the fictional Minnesota town Lake Wobegon, the setting of many of his books, including Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories. Other creations include Guy Noir, a detective voiced by Keillor who appeared in A Prairie Home Companion comic skits. Keillor is also the creator of the five-minute daily radio/podcast program The Writer's Almanac, which pairs one or two poems of his choice with a script about important literary, historical, and scientific events that coincided with that date in history.
A Prairie Home Companion is a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host, and the successor show was eventually renamed Live from Here and ran until 2020. A Prairie Home Companion aired on Saturdays from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota; it was also frequently heard on tours to New York City and other U.S. cities. The show is known for its musical guests, especially folk and traditional musicians, tongue-in-cheek radio drama, and relaxed humor. Keillor's wry storytelling segment, "News from Lake Wobegon," was the show's best-known feature during his long tenure.
Avon is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 1,396 at the 2010 census. It is part of the St. Cloud Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Freeport is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 632 at the 2010 census. Freeport is part of the St. Cloud Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Spalding Gray was an American actor, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and performance artist. He is best known for the autobiographical monologues that he wrote and performed for the theater in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as for his film adaptations of these works, beginning in 1987. He wrote and starred in several, working with different directors.
Lake Wobegon Days is a novel by Garrison Keillor, first published in hardcover by Viking in 1985. Based on material from his radio show A Prairie Home Companion, the book brought Keillor's work to a much wider audience and achieved international success selling over 1 million copies. Like some of Keillor's other books, it is unusual in that it could be said that the audiobook preceded the publication in written form.
Thomas Alan Keith was a radio personality who worked for Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was the engineer for Garrison Keillor when the latter began his early morning radio show from the St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota studio. Keillor wanted dialogue during the program and Keith was about the only other person around at that early hour. Keith was one of the primary sound effects performers for the radio show A Prairie Home Companion and was often an actor in sketches written by Keillor. Keillor created the persona of Jim Ed Poole for Keith on the old early morning show. Jim Ed was said to have grown up in West St. Paul, Minnesota and graduated from Henry Sibley High School.
A Prairie Home Companion is a 2006 American musical comedy film directed by Robert Altman and is his final film. It is a fictional representation of behind-the-scenes activities at the long-running public radio show of the same name. The film received mostly positive reviews and was a moderate box-office success on a small budget. The film features an ensemble cast including Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Garrison Keillor, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Meryl Streep, and Lily Tomlin.
Guy Noir is a fictional private detective regularly featured on the public radio show A Prairie Home Companion. Voiced by Garrison Keillor, the character parodies the conventions of hardboiled fiction and the film noir genre. Guy Noir works on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building in a city that "knows how to keep its secrets", St. Paul, Minnesota.
Aunt Flo is a popular euphemism referring to menstruation. It may also refer to:
Bert & I is the name given to numerous collections of humor stories set in the "Down East" culture of traditional Maine. These stories were made famous and mostly written by the humorist storytelling team of Marshall Dodge (1935–1982) and Bob Bryan (1931-2018) in the 1950s and the 1960s and in later years through retellings by Allen Wicken.
Lake Wobegon is a fictional town created by Garrison Keillor as the setting of the recurring segment "News from Lake Wobegon" for the radio program A Prairie Home Companion broadcast from St Paul, Minnesota. The fictional town serves as the setting for many of Keillor's stories and novels, gaining an international audience with Lake Wobegon Days in 1985. Described as a small rural town in central Minnesota, the events and adventures of the townspeople provided Keillor with a wealth of humorous and often touching stories.
Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon is a novel by Garrison Keillor, a humorous fictional account of life in the fictitious heartland town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. It was first published in hardcover by Viking Press in September 2007.
The Morning Show, initially called The Morning Program and then for a time A Prairie Home Entertainment and A Prairie Home Morning Show, was a weekday morning drive-time radio program produced in St. Paul, Minnesota and broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio's KCMP and other stations of the MPR network.
The Lake Wobegon Trail are two paved recreational rail trails in central Minnesota, named after the fictional Lake Wobegon in Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion". Each trail is marked with mileposts every 0.5 miles (0.80 km), corresponding with the mile markers of the former railroad lines. Snowmobile use is allowed on the trail in winter, conditions permitting.
Happy to Be Here is a collection of short stories by Garrison Keillor, first published in hardcover by Viking in 1981. It is Keillor's first attempt at publishing a full-length book. Many of the stories first appeared in magazines Keillor wrote for between 1969 and 1981.
Leaving Home may refer to:
We Are Still Married: Stories & Letters is a collection of short stories and poems by Garrison Keillor, including several set in the fictitious heartland town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. It was first published in hardcover by Viking Penguin, Inc. in 1989. An expanded edition was published in 1990.
Live from Here, formerly known as A Prairie Home Companion with Chris Thile, is an American variety radio show known for its musical guests, tongue-in-cheek radio drama, and relaxed humor. Hosted by Chris Thile, it aired live on Saturday evenings. The show's initial home was the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2019, the show moved to The Town Hall in New York City, where it remained until its cancellation the next year.
Richard Olsenius is an American photographer, videographer, and music composer whose 50-year career has taken him around the United States, throughout South America and across the Arctic. His work, has appeared in newspapers, magazines, books, art galleries, museum collections, films and stage presentations.