Garrison Keillor's upcoming turn as the emcee for this year's National Book Awards is just the latest stop in what has been a whirlwind of activity for the popular author. Keillor spent the summer and early fall promoting his last book, Homegrown Democrat (Viking, July) and campaigned almost nonstop for two months for Sen. John Kerry.

While eager to discuss the presidential race a few days before the election, Keillor confessed that he did not know enough about the inner workings of the National Book Foundation to be able to comment at length on the controversy surrounding this year's nominees, particularly in fiction.

"I'm not on any committees, I'm not privy to the politics," he said. "But," he added, "controversy is good. The more fuss over literature, the better," an argument that NBF executive director Harold Augenbraum has also made.

Keillor said that any dialogue regarding the merit of this year's selections must begin with a discussion of the purpose of the National Book Awards. "Some see it as a recognition of lifetime achievement. Others see it as a magical tool for launching careers: taking an obscure, brilliant, young writer, putting a rocketpack on his or her back and launching him or her. When you are young, you crave all the attention and encouragement. When you are older and tooling along, you may not need as much attention or encouragement," he said. "There are different ways of looking at this."

Keillor's current project isn't a book (a children's book, Daddy's Girl, is set for April), but rather a DVD commemorating the 30th anniversary of A Prairie Home Companion. A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor: 30th Broadcast Season Celebration was taped at St. Paul, Minn.'s Fitzgerald Theatre on May 15. It is being released by River Road Entertainment on November 9 and is being distributed by Rounder Records. Itfeatures the usual combination of music and comedy sketches, including Keillor's signature "News from Lake Wobegon."

While the DVD will be sold in a variety of retail outlets, Keillor anticipates that the product will do best at bookstores. "The audience for A Prairie Home Companion is very literate, as public radio audiences tend to be," he told PW. "They haunt bookstores. You're most likely to find [this DVD] in bookstores, rather than at Pottery Barn or Costco or Sam's Club."

Keillor has used his access to the media to successfully promote his books, but he professes not to know much about marketing. "What I know about marketing, you could fit in your pocket. I have no idea why people buy books. Neither does anyone else in publishing. We're all stumbling around in the dark, trying to figure it all out," Keillor said.

While excited about embarking on another tour, the hectic pace Keillor has kept up while touring and politicking has taken its toll. "I'm nostalgic about a time in publishing before I came along. Writers just wrote books, autographed them for a couple of friends and had time to just sit and look out the window. They didn't go anywhere. Now, it's expected that authors do bookstore events. Writers who don't do it, like Anne Tyler or Cormac McCarthy, are distinguished by the fact that they don't," he said.

"I like doing it. I do. I do. But I'm an older person. All I want to do is sit at the computer and write."