Wlt by Garrison Keillor (1991)

WLT: A Radio Romance                 

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews
The glory days of Midwest radio prove the ideal subject for old radio-hand Keillor, now writing at the height of his awesome power, which could make a homesick cat laugh. Brothers Ray and Roy Soderbjerg set up station WLT (With Lettuce and Tomato) in Minneapolis in 1926 to draw crowds to their wilting sandwich restaurant. The station proves a gold mine after the two reluctantly agree to allow commercials, and the brothers turn their somewhat divided attention (Ray's chief vocation is sex, Roy's inventing the unnecessary) to the new medium. The novel takes off on a sustained joyride as a hilarious bunch of characters are hired to fill the air with the cornball, pseudo-pious, pseudo- populist fare that held the Midwest in thrall until television offered a superior snow job. Keillor continually contrasts the smutty, lust-filled lives of the cast and crew in the studio with the wholesome, homespun drivel they broadcast. On air, for example, Little Becky is a winsome angel, but look out--the chain-smoking child star will perform the crudest of practical jokes on the unwary. A blind sports announcer, a crushingly cheerful songstress confined to her wheelchair by polio and fat, and a dissolute group of gospel singers are just some of the superb oddities that people Keillor's pages. A straight man to these comic figures and the novel's hero is young Francis With, who comes of age at the station and goes on to great things. The comedy is as broad as it comes, but it also has a depth that includes poignancy, particularly as it records the station's downhill slide. Humor and insight into the heart of raunchy America don't get any better than this. 

Review:                     Hysterically Funny

We want to keep Garrison Keillor in the box he's made for himself. The prudish reviews below testify to that.

But, haven't you been listening? Keillor smokes Pall Malls. He likes to drink. His greatest aspiration as a young man was to hang out with the literary degeneracy in New York City, and he realized his dream.

You could say he made his tight-cornered bed and now he must lie in it, and you could be dead right. However, in this book, he decided to tell a dirty joke or two and see what the public said about it.

Myself, I liked it. In fact, I like WLT about the most of anything he's written. You get such an image of the other Keillor, who likes a drink and a smoke and a dirty joke. A sexist Keillor who thinks men and women should be attracted to one another and have sex now and again. It's just right.

That particular Keillor cannot survive today, though. The archetype is out of fashion to a fatal degree. He wants us to love it, but we've been too conditioned for other qualities. Strangely, these new qualities are just as loutish and brutal, but they're somehow acceptable.

Radio is dead, but we do have satellite...   

   The book is in a very good used condition. The dust cover is slightly damaged on the edges.    

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