donn@sdchema.UUCP (05/02/84)
I notice that no one has mentioned this book yet. (Perhaps that's because it has no PHC material in it (so why are you posting here, dummy?).) HAPPY TO BE HERE (Penguin, c1983, 276 pp., trade paperback) is basically a collection of Keillor's New Yorker stories, with a few other tidbits thrown in. Some of the stories are nostalgic, some are juvenile, some are parody and many are hilarious. 'Don: the True Story of a Young Person' is a news-from-Lake-Wobegon style piece about a 17-year-old boy named Don who lives with his parents in a quiet town and just happens to be a guitarist in a punk-rock band started by his high-school friends; the trouble starts when the band gets excited when asked to play at the President's Day County 4-H Poultry Show dance and the drummer bites the head off a live chicken... 'Around the Horne by Bill Horne' is a parody of baseball columns and new-age psychotherapy all at the same time. 'The New Washington: An Inside Story' is a Parade-magazine style parody of tourists in Washington -- or is it Hollywood? 'My Stepmother, Myself' is a parody of women's self-help texts transposed to fairy tales. 'The People's Shopper' satirizes holistic groceries, and 'Your Transit Commission' opens your eyes to the NEW TRANSIT EXPERIENCE. 'Shy Rights: Why Not Pretty Soon?' is an almost forthright manifesto about why normal people should give more consideration to shy people (but not at the expense of anyone else, of course). My favorite is 'Jack Schmidt on the Burning Sands', subtitled 'a "Jack Schmidt, Arts Administrator" Adventure'. Jack Schmidt is a hard-boiled ex-detective turned Midwestern Arts Administrator, the sort of person who squeezes cash out of confused philanthropists so that impoverished prose poets and modernist sculptors can earn a buck contributing to the 'Title IX Poetry Center' and the 'Twin Cities ArtsTrip'... Didn't you ever wonder where all that bad public-supported wall-graffiti or street theater came from? People like Jack Schmidt, that's who. A quickie excerpt: [M]iddle of February, a public schools executive called me who once had harsh words for my Past Tents touring arts history program but who now was in deep trouble. 'Schmidt,' he confided, 'last fall we got thirty thousand dollars from HEW to develop a black culture project...' 'So I heard,' I interjected. 'Anyhow, it's now five months later, our steering commitee is spinning its wheels, and I'm looking at the first of May. If I don't have a project on paper by then, we have to give back the money.' He sounded like the president of the Northfield bank, hearing horse hooves and seeing masked riders pull up to the hitching rail. I promised to do what I could, but five minutes later, when lightning struck, I knew the idea was too good for him, and I was not about to go halves on it. By five o'clock, I had it typed up and the envelope shipped eastward dappled with Special Delivery stamps and with me for a return address. It was a nice piece of work. 'Blues in the Schools' I wrote after Name of Program, and after Description: A twelve-week experiential interdisciplinary folk arts residency program to furnish students in intermediate grades with authentic blues experiences through one-day, in-school lecture-demonstrations by recognized professional blues resource persons for the purpose of creating a deeper awareness of the richness and diversity of the American blues heritage. To this I attached a two-page single-spaced supporting statement that I entitled 'Meeting the Expressional Needs of the Pre-Adolescent.' It was a beaut. Insofar as I understood it myself, it said that kids today are so expertly parented, they don't know why they are so miserable. The blues would show them why. This would make them happier. (Of course, I wrote it more scholarly, more 'bel canto', with more feints and passes and capework than I have space to include here. You'll just have to believe me. I may talk like a tough, but when it comes to money, I can write terrific.) Schmidt comes up with an idea to siphon off millions in Arab oil money and almost buys the farm... I wonder how much of this sort of thing Keillor has had to do in the past? Buy it, Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn
brent@itm.UUCP (Brent) (05/07/84)
X
Indeed, my favorite story in the book is the first Jack
Schmidt story. Detective turned arts administrator. I can
imagine the origin of the idea going something like: a disgusted
MPR administrator storms through the office after fighting for
funds and yells "You have to be a detective these days to find
money!!" and Garrison going from there.
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Brent Laminack (akgua!itm!brent)