Word: stationed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...change of scenery, Degas eagerly agreed to accompany his brother Rene, newly established as a New Orleans cotton merchant, back to the New World in 1872. A transatlantic passage and a snaky voyage through the eastern United States dropped the Degas brothers at the New Orleans train station, where Edgar Degas met his cousins, the Mussons, for the first time, Rene, who had married a Musson daughter, had warned the family to expect a "g-r-r-r-eat artist," but Degas was cousin first and artist afterward to the Mussons. Their warm acceptance gave him the freedom of painting...
...characters Keillor creates are often caricatures, but that is exactly what makes them so funny to read about. He takes people whom the modern world would normally take seriously--John's co-workers at the radio station, for example--and outlines them in 3-word descriptions. John's beer-drinking buddies from back home, however, are punctuated with long and often hysterically funny anecdotes. "Bug lotion has no effect whatsoever on those Florida flies," one old man mentions over beers at the local bar. "A crucifix helps, but you have to hit them really hard with it." The locals become...
...however, cannot hide the gaping flaws of the plot and main characters in Wobegon Boy. Almost halfway through the novel, a magazine with a front-page picture and article appears one day, depicting John as a "portly Lutheran Lothario" who "tried to 'psychologically seduce'" women at the public radio station where he works. However, up to that point in the book, readers are lead to believe that John is kind, quiet, in love with his girlfriend Alida, and not coming close to stepping on anyone's toes along the way. This sudden, almost violent disclosure of persecution makes the reader...
...attempting to crack jokes again, the sour aftertaste of the unresolved and uncomfortable scenario stays in one's mind. The liberals are portrayed as unsympathetic whining yuppies, but John himself is far from innocent. When trying to entice a rich elderly lady to donate her fortune to his radio station, he describes an opera--which, incidentally, bears a startling resemblence to the Tony- and Pulitzer-Prize winning Rent--produced by his main competetor for the money. After describing it with much disgust, John declares that "people writhing around...singing political slogans does not constitute opera." Other potentially humorous moments...
...scene in the novel, though a much less politically charged one, is the issue of Alida, John's adored girlfriend. She is described time and time again as beautiful, brilliant, and full of personality. She also eludes John's proposals of marriage repeatedly. Then, as suddenly as the radio station scandal arises, she agress to be his wife. One could believe that this is nothing more than Keillor's deus ex machina for the story--she has to say yes eventually, but it has to take a while to build suspense...