Carry on up the lake

Spectator, The, Mar 7, 1998 by Barrow, Andrew

WOBEGON BOY by Garrison Keillor

Faber, L16.99, pp. 305

This is rather a confusing book: selfconfidently shapeless, overpoweringly well informed and occasionally very funny. On the surface, it is about a middle-aged American of Norwegian descent who runs a radio station, invests unsuccessfully in a new country restaurant and keenly pursues a curly-haired girl named Alida. The action takes place mainly in a little place in upstate New York called Red Rock and in a small Midwest town called Wobegon, where our hero's Lutheran family have lived for several generations.

Many of us, of course, already know quite a lot about Wobegon, the imaginary community which the author put so firmly and famously on the map 13 years ago. Many of the characters in that earlier volume reappear here, including the narrator's mother, who gets this new book off to a good start by asking her glum son, `What's the matter? Did the dog pee on your cinnamon toast?'

With a mother as witty and imaginative as this, it's hardly surprising that her little boy has developed such fine verbal skills of his own. This book is awash with jokes, gags, poems, witticisms, sophisticated slang, dazzling dialogue, lethal observations and other cleverness. Yet, as you would expect from an author whose first name is Garrison, the whole thing hangs together very impressively indeed and each extra anecdote adds further bulk and magnificence to an already extravagant edifice.

Yes, but my first reaction to this book was, I regret to say, mild irritation. Is Garrison Keillor really `the funniest American writer still open for business' (Time) and `the best humorous writer to come out of America since James Thurber' (Observer)? If this is the case, why wasn't I laughing, or even smiling, rather more?

In my view, the author has too much to say about everything and does too much of our thinking for us. There were even times when I was annoyed by his Americanisms, by his use of words like 'yakking' instead of 'talking'. And even as late as on page 282, the narrator dares to declare, 'I wish I could fast forward . . .' Surely this lazy, unimaginative phrase is almost as 'antique' these days as our hero now professes to find the `cool hipster lingo' of Kerouac?

Enough of this carping. The narrator may start off a bit bombastic - he describes himself as a consumer of fine wines - but he soon emerges as an attractively desperate figure with almost everything and everyone against him. The radio station flounders, the restaurant never opens, the girl refuses to marry him and he seriously considers drowning himself. It is, of course, at this point that the narrative suddenly becomes a great deal more gripping. Am I entirely alone in not being remotely interested in how someone graduates `from tricycle to shiny new twowheeler' but very interested indeed in the moment they start wearing a plastic mouthpiece to stop them grinding their teeth at night? Wasn't it Anthony Powell who observed that all really successful fictional autobiographers show a marked degree of self-pity?

Anyway, there are lots of gloomy characters in this book besides the narrator. Among them are a hopeless lawyer who is reduced to carrying around his business papers in a plastic bag and a wealthy spinster called Miss LeWin who's more interested in her ill cat than in putting money into an ailing radio station. `Snowball is sleeping,' says the vet who interrupts Miss LeWin's meeting with our hero. `I've sedated her. Her vital signs are good and that's all we can hope for. I'll be back after lunch.'

Lunch and dinner, incidentally, feature frequently in these pages. The bratwurst, knockwurst and liverwurst may be laughed at but sweetcorn `as God intended it', a chicken soup of `dizzying goodness' and a `downright tasty' cassoulet are described and consumed with real affection. Never mind about the 37 tubes of Jimmy Dean sausage that our hero finds in his father's freezer and the fridge at his sister's house in Wobegon which he finds `stuffed tight with an incredible array of inedibles'.

Many readers will welcome this second glimpse of Wobegon and a second chance to eavesdrop on the armchair philosophers and cynics who fill its famous Chatterbox Cafe. In this new volume of semi-fictionalised reminiscence, Garrison Keillor has a great deal to say about the Norwegian Lutheran heritage and about the great Norse warriors, adventurers, inventors and explorers who settled in places like Wobegon long ago. Indeed, it is the comparison that our hero makes between his ancestors' nobility and purpose and his own `wimpy wasted life' that drives him so close to despair.

There is a marvellous picture, too, of the narrator's eccentric father, whose `life of worry' has apparently kept his metabolism `whirring like a humming-bird's'. The family home in Wobegon is full of warning signs such as `Mind the Top Step. Carpet Tends to Bunch', `Pantry Light. Do Not Yank' and the more familiar `Hold Handle Down While Flushing'. The father's visit to his son's home in Red Rock is well worth waiting for. He roams around, moving things and clucking to himself. In the bathroom, he asks, `You tile this yourself?' but doesn't wait for the reply.