Keillor Country

Garrison Keillor may come across as a sweet guy on A Prairie Home Companion, but he has a temper. He unleashes it against Bernard-Henri Levy in The New York Times' Sunday book review.

Levy's American Vertigo is being sold as the greatest outsider's take on the U.S. since de Tocqueville. Keillor will have none of it. He doesn't think some continental genius on a road trip will get the country that Keillor rhapsodizes regularly (and often ironically) on his weekly show.

The review is pretty amusing in its contempt. Whether he's right or wrong, I can't say until I've read the book (which Keillor is trying to prevent).

I'm reminded a bit of a piece years ago in TV Guide by Sherwin Nuland on the Seinfeld episode where George's fiancee Susan dies from licking cheap wedding invitation envelopes that George had picked out. George, who'd been looking the whole season for a way out, is not too displeased with the result. I thought the episode was well done (and, I believe, time has proved me right). Anyway, Nuland, who'd recently written the bestseller How We Die, thought it was tasteless. I remember thinking Nuland apparently believes he owns death, and anyone who wishes to comment on it from now on better get his permission.

Perhaps that's what Keillor thinks. He's annoyed some upstart French intellectual dares to try to comprehend us. Keillor has written often and well about America, and this review is a warning shot to all amateurs trying to horn in on his territory.