The story is of Larry Wyler, a middle-aged novelist who gets his
first taste of the literary bigtime in The New Yorker
and follows that up by making a big hit with his novel "Spacious Skies".
His activist liberal wife Iris declines to follow him there,
so he sets out on his own, struggling with writer's block and,
eventually, the mafia (who actually gained ownership of The New Yorker in a
poker game...) In the meanwhile, Larry starts doing an
advice column in his hometown paper, adopting the same pen name
the author Keillor did when writing for Salon.com, "Mr. Blue".
Through the story, we also follow the story of his estrangement
from his wife, a study of two people working out how they can
and can't relate to each other.
The novel is a pretty good read, a combination of Garrison's observant wisdom and advice set against some entertaining flights of fancy as he reinvents some of the New Yorker's well known figures. On the other hand, the pacing is a bit disjoint at times, dragging at some places and rushing with furious action at others.
Unless you're a big Keillor fan, I'd say this is a "wait for paperback" kind of book. If you haven't heard of the guy, I'd actually recommend his really wonderful "Book of Guys" first.
Addenum: The Best of Blue
I really miss Keillors's actual "Mr. Blue" Salon.com column, which he ended about two years ago. You can get some great quotes from it from a Blender Review of Mr. Blue I wrote in 1999, and here are some others I recorded, starting with a letter I wrote him when I was thinking about proposing to Mo and his response.Dear Mr. Blue,
My girlfriend and I have been friends for five years and living together for over six months now and talking about marriage. I'm crazy about her -- she means the world to me -- and I have no serious misgivings. In fact, it's that lack of misgivings that worries me: How do I know if I'm thinking about all the implications?
Concerned About My Calm
Dear Concerned,
What's to think about? You'll both get (1) older and probably (2) heavier and (3) duller and your love will be tried by (4) ugly little things you say and (5) sheer ennui and children who will cost you (6) sleep and keep you in a state of (7) paranoia and (8) self-doubt for years and (9) meanwhile there's the ebb and flow and gradual diminution of the sexual urge and (10) the fact that you look at your spouse sometimes and feel you married a complete stranger. But heck, a lot of that stuff happens to single people too. And if you marry a true friend, then it's vastly easier. And if you're crazy about her and she means the world to you, then how could you not?
--Mr. Blue
Of course, degeneration is programmed into our DNA: Nature seems to want us to reproduce and then fall by the wayside. But your generation wants to hang onto its youth into its 90s, on the theory that if you stay around long enough maybe you can get your life together.
--Mr. Blue
Happiness is a small and lovely achievement.
--Mr. Blue
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.
--Mr. Blue, 99-10-26
"Life is a struggle. Nobody gets through it unmarked."
--Mr. Blue
What is it to be in love? Well, I'm in love, and it means you feel you have sailed into port. At the end of the road, after each day of the petty struggle for power and glory, I get to be with this marvelous human being whose company is continually interesting, whom I admire, who can speak the truth to me, who I am loyal to and fond of to an excessive degree, whom I crave being naked with, and who reciprocates these feelings. There is deep bass drumming and there is also a high degree of civility, I believe. And it does exist. And it's worth your time and trouble to find a person you can be in love with. Surely there are many men you could be in love with, maybe as many as 214, and all you need to do is come across one of them when the stars are shining and the light is right for your complexion. He'll look at you and fasten himself to you for the rest of the evening and it'll be all you can do to shuck him and after a while you'll give up on it and marry him.
--Mr. Blue
"Writing is not heroic, it is methodical, like dentistry or throwing the discus."
--Mr. Blue
It's possible to be in love with three people at the same time, maybe four, but it does get to be time-consuming, and most of us don't require that much love.
--Mr. Blue
Romance is an act of imagination, and the human imagination is infinitely capable of great leaps, including forgiveness and renewal.
--Mr. Blue
The past doesn't go away. It keeps calling to us from the woods, and at vulnerable moments, at twilight on a fall day with a Chopin étude playing, it can be almost overwhelming. Those old voices weeping and whispering. I have my ghosts and you have yours. Tell me about it. Meanwhile, the day passes, we eat dinner, we put the dishes in the dishwasher, we clean up the kitchen, we pick up a book, life goes on. I believe that
All of the lovers and the love they made --
Nothing that was between them was a mistake.
All that we did for love's sake
Was not wasted and will never fade.
A friend of mine told me a few weeks ago: "You can't regret all of the things you went through in order to get to the happiness where you are now." The old love prepared you for this new one. The tortured and exhausting 10 years with him is a crucial part of your education and can't be separated from the rest and burned. It's quite reasonable to still miss him after only two years. You're not imprinted with him, though, and you know that. You've moved on. You're only enjoying a little sweet sadness. What would an autumn night be like without it? What an inhuman life a person must lead to never experience such feelings.
--Mr. Blue
The trade secret of a happy marriage, according to a friend of mine who recently celebrated his 35th anniversary, is: "You behave as though you were in a crowded lifeboat: You respect the space of the others, you don't make any sudden moves, you thank heaven for every minute you're alive and you keep any disastrous thoughts to yourself."
--Mr. Blue
"As we say in the trade, nothing bad happens to a writer, everything is material."
--Mr. Blue.
I don't pretend to understand the mysteries of relationships, but it seems to me that lust and passion and sex are how many men and women manage to fend off the natural shocks of matrimony and all that proximity and the inevitable bruises and the sagging heart.
--Mr. Blue
God grant him every mercy and God convince us of our phenomenal good luck in having ordinary lives.
--Mr. Blue, referring to a recent graduate diagnosed with "a degenerative disease with a brick-wall prognosis."
The purpose of conversation isn't to demonstrate one's glib intelligence; it's how we stumble and grope our way through the mists and arrive at something like intelligence.
--Mr. Blue
"Enjoy your life, my dear; it is the only one you'll have on this earth, and it's a good earth."
--Mr. Blue.
