WLT: A RADIO ROMANCE
by Garrison Keillor
Viking; 401 pages; $21.95
When Garrison Keillor reinvented the radio variety show some years ago with his Prairie Home Companion program Saturday evenings on public radio, the driving emotional force was a shameless, moony nostalgia for the never-was. But misty reminiscence taken straight out of the bottle is saccharine. What gives Keillor's wamblings about Midwestern small-timers their cutting edge (they continue on his new American Radio Company show) is a rare mix of exile's longing and eye-rolling exasperation. Were we really that awful, and was it really that grand?
These are the elements, more...