God of Beer:  Novel examines a culture of alcoholism

God of Beer, by Garret Keizer, to be published in March 2002 by HarperCollins Children’s Books in New York, 256 pages, softcover, $15.95

reviewed by Jennifer Hersey

In Garret Keizer’s new book, God of Beer, an Ira County schoolteacher asks his class a tough question.  Mr. Whalen says to the class, “Mahatma Gandhi once said that if God ever came to India, he’d have to come in the form of bread because that is the only way that the starving masses of peasants would be able to understand him.”

He asks the class what form God would have to take to make the students of Willoughby Union High wake up and listen. Young Kyle Nelson answers, “Beer,” because “it’s what people seem the most into.  It’s what they talk about all the time.”

And thus begins Mr. Keizer’s powerful and poignant novel delving into a culture of alcoholism.  He  presents a clear and gentle message about alcohol without sounding preachy or patronizing, making this a must-read for teens and adults everywhere.

A group of teens, including Kyle, Diana LaValley, and the oddly named Quaker Oats (referred to as “Quaker Nuts” by Kyle’s mom), decide their class project on social protest should be about alcohol.  Along the way they begin to think about the theme in terms of alcohol versus the law versus the common values of a community and come up with a plan.

Quaker Oats is the ringleader of the project.  In the following passage Kyle makes an attempt at explaining Quaker Oats.  “I remember wondering one time when I was a bit buzzed if he was actually some kind of alien, probably from a planet more advanced than ours, who’d toddled away from the mother ship after it landed in Ira County one night and been found by these two long-haired vegetarians, also a ways from home and not too sure what to do with their beamy little visitor, so they had fed him a carrot, and he was theirs for life.”

The protest idea advances as the group begins to think of drinking as a culture or religion, and then as a hypocrisy with adults, drinks in hands, telling kids not to drink.  They begin to examine a law that does not make sense — a legal drinking age that does not coincide with the legal age for everything else.

“It’s like when you’re a real adult you can finally do what’s really important, what requires the most maturity and responsibility, which is drink a can of Budweiser,” Quaker Oats says as his group explains the project to their wary teacher.

So in the spirit of civil disobedience the group plans a party in which some people will be drinking alcohol and some won’t, both oblivious to the other’s drink content.  The hope is that the pressure to drink will be somewhat alleviated and that the party will draw attention to the hypocrisy of alcohol laws. Their “demands” are:  to “lower the drinking age,” to “raise the drinker’s awareness,” and to “destroy the non-drinker’s stigma.”

In Quaker Oats’ explanation he defends nonviolent action.  “In a violent-type struggle all you see is how mad and how determined people are to fight against this thing they don’t like.  But with civil disobedience it’s sometimes possible to give people a picture of what you’d prefer in place of what you’re fighting against.  It’s like if you protest against a war peacefully, you can actually show people how peace is better than war.”

One phase of the protest is to collect bottles and cans on the side of the road to show the connection “between drinking excessively and waste.”

At one point Kyle talks about the business of redemption centers in Vermont.  “One guy I know says that when he first moved up here, his mom thought one of them was some Bible-banger church.  They lived here a year before she realized that redemption in Vermont refers to bottles and cans, not people.”

Another friend, David, in the protest spirit, walks into a convenience store and begins carrying out bottles of beer to smash into the pavement.  After David’s sentencing and other events Kyle makes an observation, “The way I saw it was like this:  Blood all over the highway was just one of those unfortunate teenage tragedies that the world was prepared to tolerate now and again, but private property trashed all over the pavement, even if it was an honest protest against the blood, well, we just couldn’t put up with that.”

Along the protest path, the group begins to think about how beer makes people feel, and how sometimes alcohol makes things seem easier, more beautiful, better.  And then, how it really can make things worse.

After everything that happens throughout the novel, Kyle decided that he will stay in Salmon Falls, for a while at least, despite the advice of both family and friends.  He concludes, “Maybe I’ve grown up enough to admit that I love Ira County and the people in Ira County and the woods and streams thereabouts and that I couldn’t just walk away from them, at least not for a while. And maybe, who knows, that’s my special talent, like basketball was for Diana or hunting is for David or just about anything that takes a brain is for Quake:  that when I love something, I love it very much.” 

Mr. Keizer, a former teacher at Lake Region Union High School, paints wonderfully vivid characters.  They are complete with insecurities and major character faults as well as intelligence and compassionate generosity.  The relationships Kyle forms along the way are rich and meaningful.  The message might be gentle, but it cannot be ignored.  And neither can the dedication in the front of the book: For those I taught, the living and the dead. 

This review was written based on an uncorrected advance proof of Mr. Keizer’s book.