Garrison Keillor speaks in a dry voice with what he describes as a "flat affect." His stories are not sensational or extraordinary. He describes mundane things in a straightforward way. His morals of his stories are subtle, and he doesn't beat you over the head with them. He doesn't move much when he speaks, and he doesn't use props: He just stands there and remembers. Garrison Keillor is a master storyteller, and using nothing but his stories, he held Zellerbach Hall riveted for two hours last Wednesday.

After opening with a prayer for god (not to god, mind you), he began teasing the audience. He recounted his religious Minnesota upbringing, in which adversity was valued as a way to foster intelligence. He said that he had been brought up to regard a place in which the weather was always beautiful as "morally suspect."

And on it went. He talked about his daughter and how he wanted to enjoy her youth now before she locked herself up in her room, dyed her hair "an unnatural shade of black" and pierced her face as if "she had tripped and fallen face-first in the tacklebox." He recounted about his early adventures in New York, falling in love with an engaged woman and her telling him that his talent was in writing about Minnesota, as New Yorkers already know all about New York. "Bravery consists of being watched by a woman," Keillor said sagely. He reflected on obituaries and how it's sobering to know that one day you will be "held to account" by people who may not necessarily like you, and how our deaths aren't really as important as we want them to be.

What makes for good storytelling? If you search "Ira Glass on Storytelling" on YouTube, you'll get a series of videos in which the wry radio host elucidates the essential elements. Good stories need two things: a narrative and a message. The narrative: one thing leading to another, leading to another. You can tell the most boring story on earth, but if one scene pushes into the next, people will listen. The message: why people bother listening in the first place. It's the payoff for listening, the reward. Without the narrative, your message doesn't get across. Without a message, you're wasting your audience's time.

It's incredible how compelling a story can be if those two elements are in play. It's also fascinating how boring a story can be if they're not. An action film can be packed end-to-end with special effects and loud noises, but if one scene doesn't pull you into the next, the audience is bored senseless (see: "Die Hard 4"). A thriller novel can hook your for a few hours, but if at the end you're the same person you were at the start, you've gone nowhere. Keillor wasn't trying to thrill the audience on Wednesday or wow them. He just told stories.

Throughout the two hours of the performance, Keillor jumped from topic to topic and story to story. There was no theme that united the narrative, nothing except a series of stories told with exceptional skill. That's incredible. Nothing so unassuming should be so engrossing. High-profile performances are high-profile because they promise the audience a unique emotional experience-to make them laugh, cry, wonder, think. Keillor promised none of those things, and yet all were somehow delivered. It was a refreshing experience. It reminded the audience how much could be done with so little and how incredible even the most ordinary things can be.