Word: dionysus
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Courtroom as religious rite: Apollo--the law--sifts through the disorders of Dionysus--human nature in the wild, where Medea's children and Orestes' mother and Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman all are murdered. To re-establish order, the rational takes the irrational to court. Sometimes the result is itself irrational, but in the drama, you may see for a moment into the society's heart...
...probably should not concern itself with furthering any social agendas. But for The Book of Guys to champion humor, these stories would have to be funny. Keillor's humor consists chiefly of rank anachronism and clumsy juxtaposition: A Wild West cowboy buys a condo from a realtor; Dionysus hits 50, gets de-deified, and sees a therapist about his midlife crisis; Don Giovanni dispenses romantic advice from the Sportsman Bar, where he plays piano. Maybe these stories would be funnier if Keillor were telling them himself. Perhaps the humor of setting one story in a town called Piscacatawamaquoddy (and then...
Ariadne, her eyes large with compassion, tells her husband, "Dio, we need to talk about your drinking." Dionysus can't believe what he is hearing. "Look, I'm the god of wine, okay? I'm not the god of iced tea. I am the god of revelry, a crucial element of the fertility process. The dancing and drinking and whooping and wahooing is what makes the wheat grow, babes. That's what gives us the corn crop...
...good. After thousands of years of orgies with nymphs, Macedonian virgins, satyrs, hairy-eared sailors and lots of olive oil, Dionysus has turned 50. His hair has thinned, and what's left hangs like dry moss. Ariadne tells him that people drink to compensate for low self-esteem, and he says he has plenty of self-esteem; he's a god. Not after 50, you're not, is her chilling answer...
...goes The Mid-Life Crisis of Dionysus, a sly sketch from Garrison Keillor's American Radio Company show, and the ringing central gong of his amiable new collection, The Book of Guys (Viking; 340 pages; $22). But there's more, and worse. "Adolescence hits boys harder than it does girls," Keillor writes. "Girls bleed a little and their breasts pop out, big deal, but adolescence lands on a guy with both feet, a bad hormone experience. Your body is engulfed by chemicals of rage and despair, you pound, you shriek, you batter your head against the trees...