[technofiend]

I don't think GK hates anyone or anything but I remember the day I completely lost interest in PHC: it was the day an interview ran and the intro explained Garrison lives in NYC.

The thing is sometimes there's not much distance between an homage and a satire. Fred Armisen's Portlandia is a good example of a show that wobbles between gently poking fun and outright mean-spirited mockery.

Once I learned all the Prarie Home Companion episodes were written from New York City it became much easier to see some of those skits as GK laughing at Lake Woebegone residents rather than with them.

[HelloImDumb]

GK was 45 years old when he first did a show in New York. He moved back to St. Paul five years later. The show is typically touring around the country and the world. He has split his time since 1987 living in New York and Minnesota. How does the fact that he decided, in his middle age, to live in New York at various times. suddenly change his work into mean-spirited mockery?

I don't think you understand his work. You don't have to like it, but that doesn't mean you know what he's trying to say.

[technofiend]

It's obviously a matter of perspective: for me writing an opening monologue of "Well, it's getting colder here each night in Lake Woebegone" from a Starbucks on Broadway doesn't feel as sincere as writing the exact same words in St. Paul.

I understand he's trying to depict a bucolic lifestyle and portray himself as a resident and narrator of this fictional little town. But in my opinion if you're sitting at a remove from the area that inspires these stories it's possible for another perspective to color your view. Culturally NYC and St. Paul much less Lake Woebegone are vastly different.

Nobody's saying you have to agree with me, but I do get what he's trying to do. I just find it harder to believe it's anything but entirely fiction as opposed to a tapestry woven from an underlying truth with the names changed to protect the innocent, and for me that makes all the difference.

[modfodder]

So you don't read any Science Fiction or Fantasy.

It'd be one thing if he was born and raised in NY, but he grew up and spent most of his life in Minnesota. Surely as a writer he is able to invoke his past memories with sincerity in creating this fictional narrative. Or do you believe that as soon as he crossed the Minnesota border, all that was lost, and as he stepped into a NYC Starbucks he became a jaded cynical New Yorker.

[HelloImDumb]

I hate to break it to you, but it is entirely fiction. There is no Lake Wobegone. St. Paul is not a little town either. Sorry to further shatter your suspension of disbelief.

[jhbadger]

Yeah, exactly. St. Paul and New York City have more in common with each other than either do with rural communities in their own states.

[kaitai]

Don't worry; Garrison is plenty attached to St. Paul, getting in spats with the neighbors, enjoying his lovely house. All his love affairs started in Minnesota and that's something. I don't think they all ended here though.