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Garrison Keillor on Humor | Blank on Blank | PBS Digital Studios

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    (tape rewinding)
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    (bluegrass music)
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    - [Garrison] There was a man
    sitting on his front porch
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    and the pastor came by
    and they sat and talked
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    about theology for a little while.
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    And the pastor asked the man
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    if he believed in infant baptism.
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    And the man said "Believe in it, hell,
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    "I've seen it done."
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    (audience laughing)
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    A humorist has to, has to, has to what?
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    What was I about to say?
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    (laughter)
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    I was distracted, if everyone
    would just be perfectly still
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    I'm sure I...
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    (laughing)
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    - When did you decide to
    become a writer, and why?
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    - I grew up in a fundamentalist
    Protestant family
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    that stressed that we
    were a select people,
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    and so we were to avoid
    contact with others
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    who did not share our faith.
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    We were isolated.
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    And, perhaps, growing up in this world,
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    first of all, one has a
    reverence for the word,
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    and for language, God spoke to us through
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    the word, and in our family
    this was the King James Bible.
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    It also, I think, gave books, fiction,
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    great power, because they were proscribed.
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    We were not to touch them,
    and my family was shocked
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    when I came home with
    a volume of Hemingway
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    when I was a boy, and I wanted to read it.
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    So there was a price to be paid for
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    being interested in
    fiction and in writing.
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    Pushing my family away.
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    Books and authors became my family.
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    It's a decision however
    that continually seems
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    temporary, that you're never quite sure
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    you've made it absolutely.
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    I'm only 52, so I made a
    sort of tentative chice
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    that has lasted this
    long, but, I could still
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    fall back on retail sales.
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    (laughing)
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    - Being considered a humorist,
    are you constantly aware
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    that it's time to come up with something
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    as clever as you've just described,
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    or to be comic in some way?
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    - I think that you're only
    obliged to be a humorist
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    from maybe the age of
    18 until you turn 30.
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    Past the age of 30, I don't think
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    there's any obligation
    to be clever at all.
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    After that, you, I think, are supposed to
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    settle down, be a good person,
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    raise your children, and
    be good to your friends
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    which you may not have been
    when you were very clever.
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    And try to atone for your cleverness.
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    Humor has to surprise us,
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    otherwise it isn't funny, and,
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    it's a death knell for a writer
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    to be labeled a humorist,
    because then of course,
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    it's not a surprise anymore,
    it's what's expected of him.
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    And when you come to
    expect humor of people,
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    you will never get it.
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    Looking for it, demanding
    it, expecting it,
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    what you do is to kill off every joke
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    you ever come across.
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    Humor in writing needs to come in
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    under cover of darkness and be disguised.
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    It has to surprise people.
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    You don't want to get that sort of
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    badoing, badoing, badoing sound
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    in your writing, that boing,
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    that gives you away.
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    Humor is not about problems with
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    airline luggage handlers, it's
    about our lives in America.
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    And it's about the ends of our lives,
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    it's about everything
    that happens after that
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    and everything that happened before.
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    - [George] Well you
    paint this lovely picture
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    of the piece going up and then
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    immediately appearing in the magazine,
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    I was wondering if sometimes,
    at the New Yorker they say,
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    "Well you know this is
    not quite up to snuff."
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    Or however they would put it.
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    - [Garrison] Well, you see though,
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    when the New Yorker turned down work,
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    they turned it down in such an elaborately
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    gentlemanly way, making
    apologies for their own
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    shortsightedness, and undoubtedly
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    it was their fault, but
    somehow, for some reason,
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    this fell short of the
    remarkably high standard
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    that you, by your own work
    have set for yourself.
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    (laughing)
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    They had a way of rejecting
    my work that made me
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    feel sorry for them somehow.
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    (laughing)
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    (tape rewinding)
Title:
Garrison Keillor on Humor | Blank on Blank | PBS Digital Studios
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Duration:
05:44

English subtitles

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