Transcript of Book Beat radio feature on Garrison Keillor Don Swaim Collection (MSS #117), Mahn Center for Archives & Special Collections, Ohio University Libraries Broadcast circa February 19, 1983 Book Beat Reel 2, February 1983. Track #16 (Transcribed Track #16) swaim_broadcast_bookbeat_02_16_16.txt - Garrison Keillor seems to be most at home on the flatlands of the prairie. I'm Don Swaim with Book Beat. ♫ Algona, Altoona, ♫ Amana, and Ames ♫ Iowa calls itself wonderful names ♫ To Mount Ayr and Mount Pleasant ♫ I take off my hat ♫ It's hard to be high in a state that is flat [audience laughing] - That's Garrison Keillor singing on his National Public Radio broadcast Prairie Home Companion, which is heard every Saturday night from Saint Paul, Minnesota. His humor is also reflected in a collection of stories and essays called Happy to Be Here. - Good heavens, down at the Chatterbox Cafe here this last Tuesday it was, a couple of the old boys fell asleep over breakfast. They just tipped over, went face first into the waffles. [audience laughing] Dorothy heard a kind of a snorkeling noise. [audience laughing] Snoring in the syrup, well- - Garrison Keillor is somewhat critical of his fellow Midwesterners. He says they suffer from a certain lack of curiosity, coupled with a feeling of smugness and complacency, but he says his neighbors are great readers. - Books are, are sacred objects. I don't know that the tastes are so different from elsewhere in the country, but I would suspect we may be more serious readers out there, serious in the sense that people would much prefer history and nonfiction in general to the sort of light, frothy entertainment that I write, for example. - And, says Keillor, the people he knows are deeply religious. - Certainly, the part of Minnesota that I come from always has been, and I assume always will be. What else is there to order and to inspire a person's life? ♫ Daisy, Daisy ♫ Give me your answer do - Traditional music, books, religion, the old values of middle America, all part of Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion and his book of stories called Happy to Be Here. With Book Beat, I'm Don Swaim. ♫ I can't afford a carriage ♫ But you'll look sweet upon.