Five questions with Garrison Keillor, who performs Saturday at The Smith Center

Life goes on in — and beyond — Lake Wobegon for humorist, writer and story-spinner Garrison Keillor. Although Keillor, 74, signed off as host of NPR’s “A Prairie Home Companion” last July following a 42-year run, his comic voice has hardly gone silent.

Not with a weekly newspaper column and live performances, including Saturday’s “Just Passing Through” at The Smith Center, where Keillor will bring his observations — not to mention an audience singalong — to Reynolds Hall. In advance of his Vegas visit, we visited with Keillor — via email — to get his take on topics current and timeless.

Review-Journal: How has your life changed since the 2016 presidential election and its chaotic aftermath?

Keillor: Politics doesn’t affect me much unless Congress dumps Medicare or introduces censorship. I write a weekly newspaper column and if the attorney general establishes an Office of Media Responsibility, then I’d be obligated to fight that, and I’m not a fighter by nature. The Boy President is so easy to write about and so unpopular, he is an enormous boon to newspapers and also to churches, especially Unitarian, which have seen a big increase in attendance. People are praying for America who never did before.

RJ: Is it easier or more difficult to travel in your imagination to Lake Wobegon these days? Is it a welcome refuge or is it ever possible to escape the daily tumult?

Keillor: I live on a quiet street in Minnesota, on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi (River), and there isn’t so much tumult here that I am aware of. My sister-in-law gave her grandson an energy bar made from cashews, forgetting that he has a nut allergy, and the little boy spent the day vomiting in the ER — meanwhile, the grand-niece who lives upstairs is starting to learn to speak, and language-like sounds are coming in a big flood. This is what tumult looks like here. It’s basically Lake Wobegon except with The New York Times on our doorstep every morning. My sister is researching family history and uncovering secrets that were safely kept for an entire century or more — for example, ancestors we thought were Scots now turn out to have been Irish. This is an earthquake in our family. If I were still on the radio, that’s what I’d be talking about.

RJ: What prompted you to be so politically outspoken following the election? How has this affected your approach to solo stage performances?

Keillor: If you write a weekly column for The Washington Post, you will wind up writing about politics: It’s the local industry. I don’t do politics onstage for the simple reason that people believe what they want to believe and there’s no point in trying to change that: I’m in the business of amusement. If I were going to preach, I’d work from the Gospels, not from the news.

RJ: Have your pointed opinion columns affected your interactions with your fellow Midwesterners?

Keillor: I live in St. Paul, a city that went 80 percent for Hillary (Clinton), so if I were to sit in a coffee shop and say, “I think Trump is doing better than what people think,” there would be a deep chill in the air and people would edge away from me. Word would get around and the checkout clerk at the co-op would avoid eye contact with me and my Episcopal priest might stop by for a pastoral visit. Family members would get involved. Being a Republican where I live is sort of like driving your car into a tree after having 11 vodka sours: It’s cause for concern.

RJ: How has the constant news churn — not just in Washington, D.C., but around the globe — impacted your writing and performing?

Keillor: I am almost 75 and when you pass the three-score-and-10 biblical allotment, you start to lead a smaller life. I don’t watch TV at all and some days I barely glance at the front page of the paper.

When I go out to do a show, I always begin by singing “America” with the audience and if that goes well, we do “America The Beautiful” and a few others that we all know the words to. It’s very moving to hear a thousand people sing in harmony, which they do. This is a permanent pleasure and it’s as old as the hills. The stories from Lake Wobegon are mostly about childhood and growing up and the lucky breaks one suffered through …

So I don’t feel impacted by Trump at all. Multibillionaires are not part of my world. I was not chauffeured as a kid — I walked or took the bus or hitchhiked. I come from book readers. My people were offended by ostentatious display. We live in a different world and I am OK with that.

Contact Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.