We Are Still Married: Stories & Letters is a collection of short stories and poems by American author and radio personality Garrison Keillor. It was first published in hardcover by Viking Penguin, Inc. in 1989, with an expanded edition following in 1990.
Overview
The collection includes several pieces set in Keillor's fictional heartland town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. It comprises 61 prose pieces and 11 poems, organized into five sections: "Pieces," "The Lake," "Letters," "House Poems," and "Stories." The title story, "We Are Still Married," appears in the final section.
Publication Details
- Author: Garrison Keillor
- Language: English
- Series: Lake Wobegon
- Genre: Short story
- Publisher: Viking Penguin (US), Faber & Faber (UK)
- Publication date: 1989
- Pages: 330
- ISBN: 9780670826476
Contents (Selected Highlights)
The "Pieces" section includes works such as "The Young Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra," "The Current Crisis in Remorse," and "A Liberal Reaches for Her Whip." The "Letters" section contains "How to Write a Letter" and numerous other letter-form pieces. The "Stories" section includes "Meeting Famous People," "What Did We Do Wrong?," "My Life in Prison," and the titular "We Are Still Married."
Reception
Bill Henderson, reviewing the collection in The New York Times (April 9, 1989), wrote: "The worst I could probably say about the 11 poems and 61 prose pieces brought together in We Are Still Married ... is that I liked some pieces better than others, but—and this is more than one can say for most such collections—I liked them all."
Context
The collection was published three years after Keillor took a break from hosting A Prairie Home Companion and lived in Denmark and New York. It served as a reassurance to fans that he was still producing stories during the show's hiatus. The book is preceded in the Lake Wobegon series by Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories (1987) and followed by Wobegon Boy (1991).
