Slate: “Yellow-dog Democrats like Keillor spend a lot of time whining about how America’s standing in the world has declined of late, but this is how he treats a guest who spends half his time combating anti-Americanism in France. Simply because [Bernard-Henri Levy] mentions a fact that has actually caught other eyes (the tendency of Americans to become riotously fat) he is addressed like this: ‘Thanks pal. … Thanks for coming. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. For your next book, tell us about those riots in France, the cars burning in the suburbs of Paris. What was all that about? Were fat people involved?’ One moans for shame that such a vulgar jerk is thought of, and even known overseas, as some kind of national entertainer.”
Hitch is spot on— Keillor is a pretentious and phony creep. And having him assess Levy’s book is an insult to the notion of honest intellectual inquiry
While Am Vertigo is not without faults—Marianne Wiggins did a smart job pointing them out in the LA Times a few weeks back, Levy is a thinker worth payimg attention to— as his recent piece in the Nation on the dearth of a Left in the US shows.
Assigning Keillor this book to review is a cynical and devious gesture having nothing to do with serving readers. Maybe it was the editor’s sense of entertainment, in which c ase I suggest he get out more often.
I’ve never understood the appeal of Garrison Keillor either. Aside from the fact that his flatline timbre puts me to sleep quite easily, his “humor” is wrapped in the same solipsistic, high thread-count counterpane one finds couples arguing over in the sticks. There is nothing self-deprecatory about the man at all. On general principle, I try to avoid egos like that.
Yes, but he’s such a Poetry Expert!
Poetry, my eye. That pretentious delivery of “The little squirrel hid his nuts in the yard” is hardly aesthetic excellence.