“Maybe I Have 10 More Years. What a Gift!”

Garrison Keillor woke up in a Carrollton, Georgia, hotel room one recent morning and immediately realized that the idea for a swell new novel had blossomed in his brain overnight. Hours before, he was entertaining an enthusiastic local audience with tales of life in his famously fictional town of Lake Wobegon. Now, in the dead quiet well before dawn, he was typing on his laptop the beginning of what he believes he will title The LowBoys. “The first sentence is, I got into the music business in the hopes I would find a girlfriend who would love and admire me,” he tells me over the phone later that day. He laughs with delight. “It’s utterly brand new!”

Which, in a real sense, describes Garrison Keillor himself at this moment in his long, illustrious life. He is a changed man. No more heavy drinking in the hours following a sold-out performance, no more headlining at the Hollywood Bowl, no more racing between airports, no more dealing with corporate overseers, no more unhappiness at home. That’s all in the past. He is different, but contented, because he is, undeniably, old. That is what’s new. Time to begin shuffling off the stage. He is entirely