Call me a pessimist, call me Ishmael, but I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals (U R 2 1derful), blogging like crazy, reading for hours off their little screens, surfing around from Henry James to Jesse James to the epistle of James to pajamas to Obama to Alabama to Alanon to non-sequiturs, sequins, penguins, penal institutions, and it's all free, and you read freely, you're not committed to anything the way you are when you shell out $30 for a book, you're like a hummingbird in an endless meadow of flowers.

Keillor had the stroke and was admitted to Saint Marys Hospital at Mayo Clinic, said Karl Oestreich, a spokesman for the Rochester, Minn. facility. He will remain there until Friday for tests "and upon his release will resume his schedule as previously planned," Keillor spokesman David O'Neill said. "He is up and moving around, speaking sensibly, working at a laptop," Oestreich said in a statement to The Associated Press. O'Neill said in an e-mail that Keillor "is doing well and the family appreciates the warm wishes."

In a statement, Keillor said he was "feeling ill" on Monday morning and drove himself to United Hospital in St. Paul, where he lives, then was transferred to Mayo "simply because they know so much more about me down there." Keillor, 67, underwent surgery to repair a heart valve at the Mayo Clinic in 2001. "I am in the hands of smart and compassionate people and plan to get out on Friday and get right back to work," including the opening of a new season of "A Prairie Home Companion," Keillor said. "And that's the news from here."