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For all of its informality, the show is precisely planned, a reflection of its creator. He is an inward man, tightly wound. Divorced in 1976 after eleven years of marriage to Mary Guntzel (whom he met at the University of Minnesota), Keillor lives with their 16-year-old son Jason in St. Paul and, according to friends, spends most of his time working. Even when he is not working, he is working. He wanders away from a Christmas party at Roy Blount's house, and walks for a while alone through the snowy streets of Mill River, Mass. That Saturday his monologue turns an unexpected corner, and there one of his characters is, walking alone through the snowy streets of Lake Wobegon.
There is a bitter quality to some of his recollections of Lake Wobegon, only partly softened by humor. In his book he claims that an angry son returned to the town intending to nail 95 complaints about his repressive parents to the door of the Lutheran church. The 34th of these accusations is that the parents made it impossible for him to accept a compliment. It is Keillor talking, no question. Someone says, "Good speech," and he mumbles, "Oh, it was way too long. I didn't know what I was talking about. I was just blathering." Actually, he confesses, "good" is not good enough. "Under this thin veneer of modesty lies a monster of greed. I drive away faint praise, beating my little chest, waiting to be named Sun God, King of America, Idol of Millions. I don't want to say 'Thanks, glad you liked it.' I want to say 'Rise, my people.'"
Part of him does want to say that. The rest of him knows he does, and knows also how to turn this unworthy greed into a story. But the stream that fills Lake Wobegon, in Mist County, on no map, in central Minnesota, flows from another source. A story told by a master about his long-gone childhood is a marvelous kind of time machine, and listeners really can learn how those folks talked who are vanished now, and what they wore, what they did when the great snowstorms came. Keillor knows that childhood is the small town everyone came from. He talks again of his uncle Lew: "It seems to me that the presence of children is the redeeming feature in storytelling, his and mine too. Without them, it's all pleasant enough, but it's just nostalgic. And I'm not really very interested in that. For children, who have a great deal of curiosity about what happened before they came along, I'm willing to work hard." --By John Skow. Reported by Jack E. White/Chicago