Dionysus At 50 and More Woe

By John Skow

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."

It's no 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.

So 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."

Yeah, right, thinks a guy reader with old scars on his forehead. So what if guys are bozos? Tell it, Garrison. He does: "Women know about life and social life and how to get along with others, and they are sensitive to beauty, and at the same time they can yell louder. They know all about guys, having been exposed to guy life and guy b.s. since forever, and guys know nothing about girls except that they want one desperately. Which gender is better equipped to manipulate the other?"

, Keillor, whose Lake Wobegon monologues established him as the funniest American writer still open for business, leaves off direct argument just as women readers are taking a deep breath and checking their 3-by-5 note cards, and craftily retreats to parable. Zeus, lolling at a seaside cafe, is confronted by Hera's lawyer, who threatens litigation. The father of the gods turns the twit into vinaigrette dressing, pours the stuff over salad, then tells a waiter the greens are wilted and should be fed to pigs. "And bring me a beautiful young woman, passionate but compliant, with small, ripe breasts." Alas, this is Zeus' last good move. In no time he transforms himself into an American tourist, a Lutheran minister from Odense, Pennsylvania. Zeus lusts after the minister's bored and contemptuous wife, who, of course, is not having any, and never mind that her puffy husband seems oddly different.

Hard times for guy dieties, even those who are elected. George Bush, in another sketch, is fishing from the presidential yacht with Willie Horton -- got him out of prison for the afternoon, figured he owed Willie a lot -- when news breaks of an invasion of Chicago: wave after wave of squat, flat- nosed horsemen in leather skirts, waving their fists and rolling their little red eyes. Bush calls for bipartisanship and issues a statement that barbarianism is a long-term problem, no quick solutions, the answer is education. The President will, it is promised, decide soon whether to name a barbarian czar to coordinate the federal effort. So as to appear calm and in control, Bush flies to Kennebunkport for a week of tennis.

Marvelous stuff, by a guy who proves you don't have to be Ross Perot to be funny. Keillor for Secretary of Spin!