I read this book over Thanksgiving break in Minnesota; it seemed like a very fitting time and place. And with a fair amount of expectation, too - Lake Wobegon is a famous symbol of salt-of-the-earth rural life, populated by simple folks who are the very incarnation of heartland values, and so on and so forth. I wanted to see what all the fuss is about.

As far as that goes, I think this book is too long by a fair stretch. Where a handful of short stories would have illustrated this charming little universe (and it is charming, after a fashion), we have instead a whole book of vignettes, and I must say, I found it to be quite a slog toward the end. Perhaps that’s a comment on the format more than the writing - I’m just not partial to plotless books like this one. The characters and scenery are well-drawn, the idea of a landscape imbued with honest simplicity and comic averageness made plain. (I believe the best known expression about Lake Wobegon is that it’s a town where all the women are good-looking and all the men are above average, though I don’t know where that’s from - it’s not in this book.)

I will say, I found the political and religious commentary kind of interesting, and I think Keillor (whose attitude to people who don’t share his own religious views ranges from poking-fun-but-not-in-a-nice-way to just-short-of-bigoted) walks a very fine line. On the one hand he clearly admires his subjects and has a deep well of affection for rural Minnesota life. On the other hand he does take pains to critique this life, albeit in a sort of backhanded way: as when he suggests that the Lake Wobegon economy is not about enterprise and free market at all, but rather a sort of neighborly socialism; and as when he suggests, in a detached footnote that goes on for something like 25 pages, that traditional Lutheran values can actually be pretty repressive and cruel to those who don’t fit in. Whether Keillor is a liberal or conservative is perhaps besides the point; if I had to guess I’d say he votes Democratic most of the time but shakes his head disdainfully at modern politics. I think it’s fairer to say that he’s a ruralist who is not exactly blind to the dilemmas of small town life, but not exactly willing to see that life change very much.

I found this book charming, but really, not worth the time to read the whole thing. Probably it’s better to read to page 50 and then skip to that 25-page footnote I mentioned above, it’s kind of a doozy.