Be Brave and Take Hold of It: A Review of Pontoon and Garrison Keillor's Books in General

You can be a fan of Garrison Keillor without reading a word he has written. Most Garrison Keillor fans I know are that way. They saw the movie, they listen to his radio show, they love his voice and timing and wording, and they don't really need to sit down with his novels.

That's fine. His work seems to all be built on the same bittersweet humor, and whether you're watching him deliver it live, hearing him on NPR's A Prairie Home Companion show, or sitting down with one of his books, you're meeting the same people, hearing the same jokes, feeling the same chuckle-inducing sense of absurdity and nostalgia that blankets his stories.

But to those who have thought about reading a novel because they like GK on the radio or in his poetry anthologies or in the Robert Altman movie, I'd recommend diving in.

I just finished reading Pontoon this week. It's the ninth book by GK I have read, and it fits right in there. Like his better work, there are bits of high and low humor about sex, faith, death, coincidence, and revelation. He seems to be able to make fun of his characters and their ideas without bile, able to skewer and examine them and then send them back on their way.

His humor is in his ability to see how silly people are and can be, and the reason it doesn't get tiresome is because he seems to like them so much anyway. The fact that he keeps writing about the same town, and often the same people, seems to suggest that, with all their backwards ideas and quarrels and losses and blindnesses, they're worth coming back to.

Pontoon is not the greatest of his novels. But it's good to settle down with a hot cup of coffee and this book or any of his novels when you have some time and feeling to invest. It also has some passages that warrant several readings.

In one of my favorite passages, a jet-setting mom writes a letter to her alcoholic daughter that ends with this line: "Life is unjust and this is what makes it so beautiful. Every day is a gift. Be brave and take hold of it."

Those are some words to think about. Everything breaks. We can live with that fact or rage against it. GK gently, hilariously, and consistently suggests that we embrace it. Being prone to rages and despair, I find that suggestion calming and hopeful every time I read one of his novels.