The Plowboy Interview GARRISON KEILLOR

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And I guess you could call it a script in the sense that I wouldn't mind sitting down and reading it into a microphone. I wouldn't be ashamed of it. I just don't think it's as good as what I can do without those notes.

I put the notes away before I start talking, but I try to have the first part of the story in mind. I use a standard opening every week. I say, "It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon." Then if I can't think of the beginning of the story, I add the phrase, "my home town." And if I still can't think of something, I say, "here in Minnesota." And then if I still can't think of anything, I start talking about the weather, and the weather leads me into something.

No, I usually have most of it somewhere in my head, but not always up in the front of my head, you know. Sometimes it's back in the—what do they call that little tiny remnant of a kind of reptilian brain in the back of your mind?

PLOWBOY: The hypothalamus, perhaps?

KEILLOR Is that it? I thought it began with a p. Or am I thinking of the pituitary? No, that's in your throat, isn't it? Of course, sometimes my ideas are in my throat-stuck in my throat.

PLOWBOY: How do you approach writing your short stories, as opposed to the monologues?

KEILLOR I just write what I need to write. I have a deadline for the monologues. I do one every week. On our current schedule I know that I will do 46 monologues in the next year, and that they will be somewhere between 15 and 25 minutes in length. I write stories for the New Yorker only when I feel a real need to write one.

PLOWBOY: I've heard it said that New Yorker readers smirk knowingly when they read one of your stories, but the same people laugh aloud when they hear you on the radio. Do you approach humor any differently in print than on the air?

KEILLOR Well, I certainly don't write things for the purpose of making people smirk. What is a smirk? A kind of knowing smile? The feeling that you're in on a joke that other people wouldn't get?

I think I try to write things for people to laugh out loud at, but it's not that easy to laugh out loud at printed material. I can't think of that many writers who have made me laugh out loud: P.G. Wodehouse, S.J. Perelman, E.B. White, Robert Benchley. And Roy Blount made me laugh out loud. How many is that?

PLOWBOY: Where do you get your best ideas?

"If I could pick a point in my life I wouldn't mind going back to, that would be it . . . about 9:30 or a quarter to 10 this morning. It was good. "

KEILLOR I get mine early in the morning, usually, if I get them myself. But I get a lot of ideas from other people. Most writers do. You don't have to get a complete idea from somebody else. Some times, just a little fragment of something is enough to get you going.

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