 |
|
|
Post to the Host Send your own post to the host.
To the Host: Andrea -- This is the beautiful problem that confounds us all, Andrea, and we must face it every morning with as much wit and bravery as we can summon up. What you do, exactly, is get out of bed, pee, put water on to boil for tea or coffee, put bread in the toaster, choose between the apricot and blueberry yoghurt, eat slowly and thoughtfully, take a shower, and put on clean clothes, and by this time you likely will know what comes next. Merce Cunningham faced this problem and so does Michelle Obama and Brett Favre and the Queen of Tonga. If I believed in the efficacy of long-range planning, I'd recommend it, but I believe in luck and improvisation and the gyroscope in your heart and the built-in b.s. detector that English majors are supposed to acquire, having created so much of it in our term papers. You don't have ENGLISH MAJOR tattooed on your forehead so don't consider it a limitation. Just remember that your youth and energy and confidence and ambition are great assets in this world: you are needed somewhere. Remind yourself every day to do things that make you cheerful, which might include strenuous physical exercise or meditation or simply being with friends who make you laugh. Have a good life, in other words. They say that one good tactic in finding happiness is to help people who are worse off than yourself. I wouldn't know about that, but I know people who recommend it. And now I am going to go work on my novel, which is confounding me, and I wish you were here to tell me what to do with it. HEY. There's an idea. Be an editor. Why not? Start out by going over this letter and cutting out all the clichés and reducing it to the one sentence that actually makes sense. And then tell me what that is so I can go do it myself. Permalink» | Comments (23) »
When did the rhyme go out of poetry? It used to be that poems rhymed and used a prescribed number of lines that were formed in a special way. Now it seems that all one needs to do is write down one's thoughts in a curious and clever way and call it a poem — and it is a poem. So when did this sea change occur and why? Charles C. -- It began in Berkeley Permalink» | Comments (6) »
To the Host: After a long day, a good story teller has a miraculous way that soothes the effects of the day's hard work and gives motivation to go through the next day until the next story. In Somalia , a good story teller is referred to as "Sheko Hariir" which translated to "The man/woman with silky stories." Silk feels nice against the body (for those who wear it, I never did), so is a good story against the soul. I experienced that many times growing up in Somalia (usually in the dark of night without seeing the face of the story teller). I am glad PHC is there to deliver the same feeling in the U.S. It is a blessing that show is not on TV. It would ruin the experience. Thank you,
It is awfully kind of you to write, Omar. When I fly back to Minneapolis-St. Paul, I take a taxi home from the airport, and often the taxi is driven by a Somali and when I tell him where I live and how to get there, he looks into the rear-view mirror and says, "Are you on the radio?" I'm honored by these listeners and I think of them whenever I tell a story with strange elements in it — like ice-fishing, or Norwegian bachelor farmers, or Lent — and I wonder what the Somali cabdrivers will think of that. But now that I am a Sheko Hariir, I will not worry so much. Thanks for writing. Permalink» | Comments (4) »
Post to the Host: Thank you. Bret C. -- You are indeed an English major, Bret, and your letter is one of the few in the history of PTTH that I did not edit even so much as a comma. How could one not be moved by the sight of teenagers showing their animals at the state fair? I especially remember the llamas at the Iowa State Fair and the tenderness between this large gentle and somewhat ludicrous animal and the girls who had raised them, slender Iowa farm girls stroking the long llama neck and looking into its big brown eyes. The Iowa fair was a beautiful thing. Permalink» | Comments (3) »
Dear Mr. Keillor, I'm a young man searching for his purpose, having chosen higher education as his route (education and history major, thank you very much). While I've given my life to the study of the past, my soul belongs to fiction. I wanted to know; how did you find your voice? Where did you get the confidence to speak and write not just with, but in your own style? Like most young writers, I'm my own harshest critic: how can I weather the doldrums of my own insecurities and break into fiction?
– Don't work too hard at finding your voice. Find the voices of other people first — people around you, your family, the silent people taken for granted, the people who ride the bus to work, the misfits — see if you can get the interior voice of one of them down on paper, and keep trying until you think you've broken through. This is the doorway to fiction, and it starts with inspired journalism. Listening to people and trying to imagine them speaking openly and honestly in the recesses of their souls. As you are able to bring other people to the page, you'll find more and more confidence, and your style will emerge. Writers are people who write, not people who think about writing, and the less you dwell on your own insecurities, the better. Distract yourself by taking notes. Absorb your surroundings — they are stranger than they may seem, and you'll realize that when you put them down on paper. Permalink» | Comments (6) »
I'm curious as to what person(s)(living and not so much)you would like to sit around the campfire with drinking iced chamomile tea. Also, thank you for the deep joy. Take care, Melissa M - Living: Brave adventurous young women of the biking/backpacking ilk who have seen some of the world close up, on foot, and have stories to tell about it. They didn't just Google New York, or Jerusalem, or Finland, they went and walked around and met people willy-nilly and had small encounters that loom large in the retelling. I've had my chance to talk, and I have listened to all of the third-hand opinions I need to hear — tell me what you saw and did — I am all ears. Not So Much: all of my dead uncles and aunts — I have a thousand questions for them that never got brought up at family reunions and Thanksgivings: why were we the way we were, so suspicious of Outsiders, so quick to judge, so formal with each other? why didn't grandma ever hug me? why did I never tell you how much I love you? And tell me about those moments of intense longing that led you to marry each other and produce us. Permalink» | Comments (1) »
Post to the Host:
-- You might guess so, Jon, and you would be wrong. Methodism never took root in this town. Neither did Episcopalianism, Seventh-Day Adventism, spiritualism, ventriloquism, or Chisholm. Small towns generate intense social pressure and minorities tend to get overshadowed and choked out. The big city is more fertile for individuality, as you no doubt are aware. Religion in Lake Wobegon is tribal, and you're either Catholic, Lutheran, or (in our case) Sanctified Brethren. The Brethren survived there as a tiny minority because they are Separatists by nature and feel that isolation and ostracism are only proof positive that they're on the right track. Methodists are more sociable, and whatever Methodists we might have had crossed over to the Lutheran church for the company. As for funerals for the unbelievers, Pastor Ingqvist takes that on as a personal mission, and Father Wilmer is not so rigid about these things either. Permalink» | Comments (0) »
To the Host: Or maybe tracking details would get in the way of a good story. Tom B. -- There is such a book, Tom. It's a looseleaf binder, black, and it's called "Lake Wobegon Factbook" and there's one copy at the office and one at home. Various diligent fact-trackers have kept this book up and I tend not to use it so much because it's full of inconsistencies, having recorded my inaccuracies over the past 35 years. So I mostly ignore it and focus on the characters whom I know well and allow the others to recede into the mists. Though just the other day, in Avon, a woman said to me, "I miss Ella Anderson!" Who I would be happy to bring back, except that I am pretty sure she died. What I need now is a Family Factbook, a detailed guide to my cousins, their spouses, their children, their children's children and THEIR spouses and children. I love my family but it has grown beyond reason, which is why the suburbs have burgeoned and overgrown the potato fields. It's fine that people are doing genealogy but what we need is a guide to relatives living now. And not only their names and birthdates but what they do for a living, what they believe, where they've been, and whether they have a sense of humor or not. Permalink» | Comments (2) »
GK, Loved the show too. Matt J. -- Meeting people isn't a skill, Matt, so much as just good manners. A book signing ought to be done in a certain way if you're going to do it at all. It's not nice for the author to sit behind a table unless he is elderly or infirm — it makes him look like the security guy. The author is supposed to stand out in the open so that he can pose for pictures with anybody who wants to do that, and so that he can bend down and eyeball young children. The author is supposed to sign anything that anybody brings him. The author takes no breaks and he signs books until the line is gone. And the author is supposed to be friendly to each person and make eye contact and be pleased to see them. I've done book signings that went on for six hours and that is physically taxing, but it's worth it. I sit in a room alone and write a book and I am curious who is going to read it. Deeply curious. A book is personal, and here, facing me, is the other person. So I take my time. And if he has a one-year-old daughter, then that's easy. Your daughter is your ticket to special treatment wherever you go, Matt. I know. I used to have a one-year-old. Take her to Italy and you will be royalty. Permalink» | Comments (9) » | | | |
Post to the Host Archives | |
 |
|
|
