A First retrospective of the satirist, columnist, singer, storyteller, novelist, poet, and screenwriter, along with a new essay, "Cheerfulness," in memo-mother,, a list of Lake Wobegon precepts, "What Have We Learned So Far?," and a recollection of a series of fortuitous events that accidentally steered him to where he is todayùa dropped fly ball, a mitral valve problem, a ploy to impress a college classmate, an early-morning shift at a radio station, and a New Yorker assignment in Nashville.Mr. Keillor's ambition, he says, was to be a tragic genius and die young, as Buddy Holly did and James Dean and Janis Joplin, and thereby become immortal, honored for his enormous complicated talent that he hadn't had time to bring under control. "But I didn't have a complicated talent, nor was it enormous. Some people thought I did because I was shy and didn't make eye contact and kept to myself. Nowadays they'd say 'high-functioning end of the autism spectrum,' but back then oddity was interpreted in a kindlier fashion. Anyway, death didn't occur. I never needed to charter a plane in a snowstorm as Buddy did, nor did I own a fast car, so onward I went, and soon I was forty, which is too old to die young, so I headed down the long dirt road of longevity."Nearing his seventy-second birthday, Keillor has no plans for retirement. A play, Radio Man, is in production, he is at work on a musical about Minnesota, a full 33-show season of A Prairie Home Companion is on the calendar, and he is still writing sonnets. "I take vacations and after a day or two I wind up sitting at a yellow legal pad with a pen in hand, same as I did when I was fifteen," he says. "All my ambition is gone, burned away, but I'm still in the game, still contributing to the clatter and hubbub, the Niagara of wordage flowing through America." Read Less