Garrison Keillor got a mixed review from a newspaper in his home state of Minnesota, and he couldn’t resist the urge to vent about it on social media.
Racket reports that the author and humorist, best known for his radio show A Prairie Home Companion, took to Facebook to object to a review of his newest book, Boom Town, by Laurie Hertzel in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Hertzel, the newspaper’s senior editor for books, called Keillor’s novel “an odd book, an example of autobiographical fiction, or perhaps merely of hubris.” She praised Keillor as “a smooth writer,” but wrote that “if you're under 40, well, it might just leave you cold.”
In his Facebook post, which appears to have been taken down, Keillor wrote, “I broke my own rule against reading reviews of my work, and read an angry review of BOOM TOWN by Laurie Hertzel in the Star-Tribune that got some facts wrong and characterized the book as embittered and self-infatuated rather than comic.”
Hertzel told Racket that she stood by her review, and “didn’t get anything wrong.”
Keillor, once a public radio superstar, fell from grace in 2017 after Minnesota Public Radio cut ties with him over allegations of inappropriate behavior, which he has denied. His new novel focuses on a radio host named Garrison Keillor whose career is cut short after being fired for reading a ribald limerick on his show. It’s published by Prairie Home Productions, which Keillor describes on his website as a “small media company responsible for…projects and shows by Garrison Keillor.”
Although Keillor’s original Facebook post is no longer on the website, he posted a limerick last week that appears to address Hertzel’s review. It reads:
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
