Word: wobegone
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...exists only as bits, with no shipping or packaging required, the pricing is sweet. The Franken book on cassette, for instance, costs $12.57 plus shipping at Amazon.com But Audible's version costs only $6.95. Better still, you can buy a la carte stuff, such as Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon monologues for 75[cents] each. The opportunity to cherry-pick content and exchange small sums of money online will become more and more attractive, to both consumers and authors. (I would happily read my columns to you if I got, say, a dime a download...
...programs, could use simplification. On my maiden voyage, I thought I had set up three Keillor monologues, a chunk of Franken and some Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But for reasons that are still unclear to me, though the program manager said I had downloaded 20 min. of Wobegon, all I got was the last few minutes of it. Oh, well--at least the Franken survived...
...look past these expected barriers, Wobegon Boy can prove to be quite an entertaining read. But the question remains--can the average, non-Midwestern reader appreciate Keillor's morality-twinged humor...
Keillor's charmingly lucid writing, 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...
Despite all of these issues and complications, however, Wobegon Boy is still for the most part an entertaining and even warm-hearted read. Keillor's affection for his fellow Midwesterners, while still being able to poke great fun at them, is unmatched in his field. Conversations between elderly relatives is compared to a Samuel Beckett play, an uncle in politics claims that "bribery [is] simply a case of the free market at work simplifying the decision-making process," and the modern-day world always provides fodder for laughs. When one of John's aunts complains about her fatigue, another relative...