Books, Arts & Manners: Jefferson in Minnesota

Wobegon Boy, by Garrison Keillor (Viking, 305 pp., $24.95)

THOMAS Jefferson’s ideal of democratic virtue, the yeoman farmer, is alive and well and living in Lake Wobegon. Jefferson argued that the Republic could not long survive without the common-sense morality of small landholders, whose moderation and literally down-to-earth attitude provides the necessary counterpoint to the avaricious urban merchants and speculators. Wobegon Boy, Garrison Keillor’s latest tale of the imaginary Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon, certainly suggests that the antidote to self-absorption, self-pity, and other manifestations of the 12-step society can be found among the unpretentious Norwegian townsmen of the place he has made famous through his vastly popular weekly program on National Public Radio, A Prairie Home Companion.

EK

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E. V. Kontorovich

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Wobegon Boy, by Garrison Keillor (Viking, 305 pp., $24.95)

THOMAS Jefferson’s ideal of democratic virtue, the yeoman farmer, is alive and well and living in Lake Wobegon. Jefferson argued that the Republic could not long survive without the common-sense morality of small landholders, whose moderation and literally down-to-earth attitude provides the necessary counterpoint to the avaricious urban merchants and speculators. Wobegon Boy, Garrison Keillor’s latest tale of the imaginary Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon, certainly suggests that the antidote to self-absorption, self-pity, and other manifestations of the 12-step society can be found among the unpretentious Norwegian townsmen of the place he has made famous through his vastly popular weekly program on National Public Radio, A Prairie Home Companion.