An afternoon at the library

Jewish World Review ^ | Dec. 15, 2025 | Garrison Keillor

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

There are so many advantages to being an old man that I wonder why I put it off for so long . One is that the Proust Reading Group has stopped inviting me to join and another is the number of dreadful stories in the news that for a man my age come under the heading "Not My Problem" such as the shortage of goods due to shipping backlogs, freighters lined up for miles waiting to unload in ports, people unable to find what they need.

I have the opposite problem: too much stuff, need a ship to come up the Hudson River to 96th Street and haul it away. We have twenty fancy dinner plates though we live in a two-bedroom apartment and the days of grand dinner parties are far in the past. She and I now form a majority. Four is a family, six is a crowd.

I chose the right parents, evangelicals, so, yes, I am haunted by guilt and regret, but on the other hand, there was no fetal alcohol syndrome and for a kid who aims to be a writer, the King James is excellent tutelage, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, beat out Disney characters and crime novels.

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TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: garrisonkeillor

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

A little bit of Garrison Keillor goes a looooong way, but this is worthwhile.

[allendale]

Garrison Keillor is a bit off his rocker politically. Let’s just say that despite the advantages of an upright, stable upbringing, exposure to classical values and practices, he managed to fall down the wrong chute and was not an asset to the American nation. At his comical core, he hated America especially his fellow white Minnesotans. Yet for the most part people raised in a traditional stable setting of family and educated in the classical manner have an advantage that far ouweighs almost everything else.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

There was always the undercurrent in Keillor’s commentary that conservative Lutheran values were the underpinnings of Minnesota nice, eh, and the Scandinavian social welfare state. But social welfare undermines, degrades, and ultimately destroys the conservative Lutheran values in a generation or two. Keillor enjoyed the benefits of Luther conservative values without being bothered by its burdens of personal responsibility and accountability. He was as much a free rider on the social welfare state as any Somali fraudster.

[logi_cal869]

...and yet more evidence of the ‘true pandemic’...

[GingisK]

No library activity in the entire article! I will, nevertheless, add that browsing a big library is wonderful. I could camp out in the engineering library at Georgia Tech.

[Persevero]

Like many easy to like Americans, he enjoys the benefits of a Christian heritage without the commitment to Christ. He seems to be acknowledging that.

[The Great RJ]

Keillor’s musings reminds me of an essay by French existentialist Albert Camus called “The Myth of Sisyphus” where Camus concludes that Sisyphus is happy with his futile fate.