PILGRIMS: A Wobegon Romance
Garrison Keillor
Viking Adult
Fiction
ISBN: 9780670021093
During one of those author-who-you-should-know interviews on public television a few years ago, I was about to change channels when I heard a rather arresting statement that went something like “writer X gently relaxes the reader into stark reality…” I’ve forgotten who they were talking about, but few things I’ve heard on any author before or since are better suited to Garrison Keillor and PILGRIMS --- the latest in his series of books rooted deep in the soil (or, should I say, soul?) of Lake Wobegon and the radio hinterlands of his Prairie Home Companion.
PILGRIMS has much in common with everything else that flows from Keillor’s seemingly inexhaustible and irresistible Midwestern imagination. But this time, in a spirit of reckless literary abandon, he transplants 12 unlikely Wobegonians --- including his semi-fictional self --- into the original hotbed of classical culture: Rome. Though Italy may seem about as far from their Minnesota Nordic roots as Betelgeuse, they travel amazingly well. Among the loose-knit cluster of pragmatic Lutherans and anxious Catholics is a carpenter, a couple of farmers, the usual busybodies and gossips, a car salesman, a priest, Wobegon’s mayor, two teachers, and a famous radio talk show host called Gary.
If this is all beginning to sound a little Chaucerian, you’re getting warm. Like his precursor (admittedly a far better poet), Keillor’s mainly prose novel gently mocks the pretensions of a religious pilgrimage by relating the more practical concerns, aspirations, misadventures and joys that bubble up along the way for some remarkable “ordinary” people. Typical among them is trip organizer and unlikely heroine Margie Krebsbach, a high school librarian who had never displayed any qualities as a leader in her life.
Every pilgrimage has an ostensible goal to distinguish it from mere tourism. After all, it would be hard to sell the concept of anyone in Lake Wobegon going off to Europe with nothing else in mind except to have fun and enjoy the scenery (both architectural and human). No way! The Catholics need approval and the Lutherans need justification, so like the good psychological theologian he is, Keillor gives them all a collective Purpose: to mount a picture of local war hero Augustus “Gussie” Norlander on his gravestone in a Roman military cemetery.
Understanding that piece of the “plot” is essential because the real journey of PILGRIMS starts not en route as it does with Chaucer’s intrepid lot, but from the moment Keillor’s Wobegonians land in a jet-lagged daze at Da Vinci Airport and plan the logistics of completing their mission. In many ways, the geographical and cultural realities of dislocation kick in right there on the tarmac with the first irritable group photo, the first arguments over whether to sleep or sight-see, and the first wrangle over whether to eat “native” or familiar.
Having set that machine in motion with all the predictable and humorous missteps that he invents with such maddening ease, Keillor goes beneath the surface of his seemingly placid and diffident characters to explore the ingredients of their hearts. And here’s where PILGRIMS gets really interesting. Keillor blindsides the reader (gently but insistently) with the stark realities of unfulfilled dreams, lost opportunities, dashed hopes, faded love, anxious futures, shattered ideals, uncertain faith, and the whole gamut of worries that travel with all of us wherever we go.
Margie becomes the focus of a tentative but determined journey back to her own future, a spiritual and psychological pilgrimage in which she learns to reclaim what she truly loves about herself and her life and shed the parts that weighed her down. Much of that redemptive action happens unbeknownst to her companions, who undergo their own private epiphanies at the same time. They all come together around the inescapable realization that even their Purpose evolves into something else. The late lamented “Gussie” turns out not to be the larger-than-life hero they were all expecting to honor. In fact, his life was not half-bad and about the same size as all of theirs.
And somehow, that not only works for Keillor’s homeward-bound Wobegonians, but it works for me, too. After reading PILGRIMS, you’ll be left with a big smile in your heart and perhaps just a wee tear in your eye. What could be more vintage Garrison Keillor than that?
--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch (paulinefinch@rogers.com)
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