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    Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
    Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
    Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    Lake Wobegon Summer 1956

    Written by Garrison Keillor

    Narrated by Garrison Keillor

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A Grammy® nominee.Fourteen-year-old Gary, a self-described "tree toad"-lover of a perfect lawn, the soft-porn masterpiece Carnal Cuties, his Underwood typewriter, and, above all, his rebellious cousin Kate"-lives through one amazing Lake Wobegon summer. Gary preoccupies himself by spinning fantastic yarns about boogers, talking dogs, conversations between God and Jesus, and especially melodramas featuring himself as hero and Kate as distressed damsel. When the real Kate makes a terrible mistake, Gary learns a lot about love, heartbreak, and what is really means to rebel.In Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, Garrison Keillor describes the making of a writer who comes of age in classic Wobegon style. It's just what his fans have been waiting for: trademark wit, brilliant humor, great storytelling, and an extended stay in "the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJul 16, 2001
    ISBN9781598873306
    Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
    Author

    Garrison Keillor

    Garrison Keillor, born in Anoka, Minnesota, in 1942, is an essayist, columnist, blogger, and writer of sonnets, songs, and limericks, whose novel Pontoon the New York Times said was “a tough-minded book . . . full of wistfulness and futility yet somehow spangled with hope”—no easy matter, especially the spangling. Garrison Keillor wrote and hosted the radio show A Prairie Home Companion for more than forty years, all thanks to kind aunts and good teachers and a very high threshold of boredom. In his retirement, he’s written a memoir and a novel. He and his wife, Jenny Lind Nilsson, live in Minneapolis and New York.

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    Reviews for Lake Wobegon Summer 1956

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      I don’t like Garrison Keillor’s politics very much. But I love the monologues, possibly because they remind me of me. This is no exception; small town, nuclear family, coming of age, Eisenhower is president, confused about sexuality and religion and loyalty and honesty and convinced nobody else is (the protagonist, Gary; not Eisenhower. At least not as far as I know).
      Gary is 14. He makes flatulence and mucus jokes, lusts after girls, has a copy of High School Orgies hidden under the sink, and, since he’s a member of the Sanctified Brethren, wonders if God is going to smite him for all this. When I was 14 I made the same jokes and had the same lusts, although I had a Playboy and it was in the closet, and I was a Missouri Synod Lutheran and therefore possibly slightly less smiteworthy. Alas, you can’t go home again and do it over.
    • 5/5
      Garrison Keillor has always been one of my favorite authors and is probably my favorite book of his. This is a classic coming of age story. The writing is quite hilarious! I really recommend it.
    • 4/5
      7/31/03 This is just a classic book that will have you laughing out loud. Funny, easy read and brings back the old days.
    • 5/5
      I've read several Keillor books and this is my favorite. It's hilarious.
    • 3/5
      Much lower than my usual rating for a Garrison Keillor book and it's so long since I read it that I can't specify why. All I can remember is that it simply didn't really grab me at any point. I think I prefer the usual Lake Wobegon structure (or lack of) where we move between different personal stories in a seemingly random way. Focussing on one character all the way through was strangely less engaging.
    • 1/5
      This did not amuse me, much to my surprise and disappointment. Are his other books different/better I wonder?
    • 1/5
      Not only is it trashy and boring it's not even funny.
    • 4/5
      A touching and honest coming of age story.
    • 5/5
      Gary's forays of sexuality and writing and baseball are recounted for a summer of growth and change.
    • 4/5
      I've long been a fan of Garrison Keillor, and that was the original attraction of this book. This novel felt a little uneven for my tastes, though. Highlight for me included his newspaper accounts of the Lake Wobegon Whippets - written in beautiful, over-literacized English. Another was his descriptions of the childhood days he spent with Grandma and Aunt Eva. There was such a sweetness there.Good, but not great.
    • 4/5
      I first discovered Garrison Keillor while milking cows in Minnesota in 1972. He had a morning radio show and without fail played "Help, Help Me Rhonda" every single day his show was on. It became a kind of joke. But it was a fun show to help pass the time while having manure swished in my face. Ever since, I've been a devotee of the Lake Wobegon section of his current radio show (can't stand most of the music, so now I get just the Wobegon section as a podcast.) They are a delight, as is this quasi-autobiographical set of memories recounted by Gary who is obsessed with the illicit magazine, High School Orgies (you know the one with the two teachers, unable to control their mutual lust, doing it in the library.) And the time when the principal was speaking to the class and let one rip that had to be absolutely the most vile and smelly fart ever, causing our Gary to giggle, whereupon he was asked what was so funny, and he had the temerity to tell them it was because of the fart. The teacher is livid and then there is the conversation with Mother. (One should always have a clean backup joke for just such occasions.)

      Gary learned he had a talent for writing and discovered he could fend off the local bullies, (who had a cumulative IQ of about 12) by writing salacious poetry, or puns on the order of "Anne of Green Buggers," or "Buggers in the Willows," -- you get the idea.

      I loved the scenes with The Sister haranguing his father to get Gary to dry the dishes when, as everyone knows, water evaporates, so why dry them, is Gary's strategy. Meanwhile, Gary is reading High School Orgies on the swing on the front porch, having it hidden in the P volume of the encyclopedia, a gift from a relative who gave a different volume from a set of the encyclopedia to each relative for Christmas. (This was a tactic my mother used. For Christmas one year, she game me volume one of Montaigne's essays -- in French -- and volume two to my brother. In high school Montaigne was not high on my reading list, but you get the idea.)

      The book is an affectionate, mocking look at a conservative small town in the Midwest during the fifties. It did bring back some memories. (I hid my copy of Fanny Hill under a loose floorboard in the third floor bathroom.) It's not Keillor's best effort, but entertaining nevertheless.

      Note: If you are a sanctimonious prick you will probably not enjoy this book. It has its share of scatological and masturbatory references. There is no plot. Get over it.