Today in the small town of Isle, Minnesota I found out some interesting Keillor trivia.
On the wall in my Mom's doctor's office was a framed letter from Garrison Keillor to Dr.Bracken (he was my Dad's doctor). The letter started with an apology to Dr. Bracken for reading Moby Dick.....Keillor never meant to encourage that. He said he read the first 30 pages, put it down for he only reads books that give him pleasure.
Here's his interesting quote: " I spent quite a bit of time in Isle when I was a boy and whenever I imagine Lake Wobegon I always see Isle - Isle, Holdingford and a little bit of Anoka."
Gosh, I could have been hanging out with him on Mille Lacs all those years ago........
He went on to recommend his favorite authors who he described as - " Christian comic writers, who write extensively about small towns and rural people." J.F. Powers, Carol Bly, Charles Portis and Flannery O'Connor.
After the Dr. appointment I took Mom to the grocery store where we ran into Dr. Bracken......talk about small town!!! I had a chat with him about the letter and Dr. Bracken went on to talk about some of his favorite authors and books.....I attached a review of one of those books below. Sounds like a great read.......Deb H.
Morte D'Urban
By J.F. Powers
Winner of The 1963 National Book Award for Fiction.
The hero of J.F. Powers's comic masterpiece is Father Urban, a man of the cloth who is also a man of the world. Charming, with an expansive vision of the spiritual life and a high tolerance for moral ambiguity, Urban enjoys a national reputation as a speaker on the religious circuit and has big plans for the future. But then the provincial head of his dowdy religious order banishes him to a retreat house in the Minnesota hinterlands. Father Urban soon bounces back, carrying God's word with undaunted enthusiasm through the golf courses, fishing lodges, and backyard barbecues of his new turf. Yet even as he triumphs his tribulations mount, and in the end his greatest success proves a setback from which he cannot recover.
First published in 1962, Morte D'Urban has been praised by writers as various as Gore Vidal, William Gass, Mary Gordon, and Philip Roth. This beautifully observed, often hilarious tale of a most unlikely Knight of Faith is among the finest achievements of an author whose singular vision assures him a permanent place in American literature.
