TannhausserGate - The Monday Morning Memo

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Snowy-haired Robert Frost came and filled Northrup auditorium, 4,700 seats, and recited his greatest hits by heart to the awestruck crowd. Afterward I stood by the back door and watched him emerge and shuffle down the walk and climb into his limousine. Nobody asked him for his autograph, it was enough to observe him up close. (He looked extremely old.) Our great alcoholic genius was John Berryman, a man of such towering intellect that I was afraid to be in the same room with him – one caustic glance and I would’ve gone up in flames. He wore a big beard that made him look like he was eating a sweater. He gave a reading of his Dream Songs, slumped against the lectern, speech slurred, a man on the verge of collapse. His greatness and his affliction seemed intertwined, an artist engaging with powerful dark forces in public, pain had driven him to alcohol and to poetry, and he could no more give up one than he could stifle the other. I thought, If this is what it takes to be a great American writer, then I am on the wrong street. I am not screwed up enough.

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- Garrison Keillor, The Keillor Reader, Introduction p. xxv

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