The Plowboy Interview GARRISON KEILLOR

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PLOWBOY: What do the people in Lake Wobegon think about the popularity of the show? Are they surprised by what you say about them?

KEILLOR I think some of them tune in from time to time and are alarmed at things that I say and don't consider them to be very truthful at all. But I grew up in a great tradition of oral fiction, starting with the Sons of Knute, who go out fishing every May and are out until September. Also, the deer hunters and the farmers in Lake Wobegon are all notorious liars. The town is full of them, and I try to keep up.

PLOWBOY: You come from a family of storytellers, don't you?

KEILLOR Yes, storytellers who are a lot better at it than I am, because when you put it on a stage, it becomes more artificial than if you're talking to people in a room. Telling stories on stage has practically destroyed me as a storyteller sitting in a room with people.

PLOWBOY: Who taught you how to tell stories?

KEILLOR I don't think I know how to tell stories yet, but I certainly sat and listened to a lot of people tell them in my youth. My problem is that I have to tell a different one every week, and I think you don't really learn to tell a story well until you've told it ten or twelve times. Most of the older relations I heard tell stories when I was a kid could tell them over and over and over again and we never got tired of listening to them. Most of them would have maybe three or four stories in their repertoires . . . say, about a house that burned down when they were young or about my grandfather running the Model T off the road. They'd tell these stories again and again until they finally got them polished so well they were professional.

PLOWBOY: What do you consider to be the most important elements of a good story?

KEILLOR There has to be something recognizable in a story. It can't be utterly alien. People have to be able to identify with things in it. When you start out writing stories, of course, you want to be as original as you can possibly be and set yourself apart from the rest of the world. That may be important for becoming a writer who wins prizes, but I don't think that's very important in storytelling. Stories you tell ought to be as common as dirt and yet try to raise people up a little bit.

The most important thing in telling a story, though, is the necessity of it—the urgency of it. If it's not necessary, the structure you create won't do a thing. If you come from a minority, you come from a strange background. Then when you come up against the great flood of mass culture on radio and television and in magazines and newspapers and books, you have to explain your background to people. You have an urgent need to explain what it is that sets your people apart . . . exactly how they talk and exactly what things look like and the truth about what happened.

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