posted
I am a huge Tom Robbins fan. Right now I'm re-reading Skinny Legs and All. Anyone who has not read this book, or any Tom Robbins, should drop whatever they are doing and run, nay, sprint to the nearest bookstore and violently demand it from the cashier.
As I am such a fan, I am going to share some entertaining quotes that I come across as I read. If you are a fan of Tom Robbins, please feel free to quote any of your favorite passages. If this is your first time hearing of Mr. Robbins, enjoy, and let this be your inspiration to delve deeper.
"'Well,' said Can o' Beans, a bit hesitantly, 'imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings.'
'Huh?'
'Quite so. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from the shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.'"
-Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All Copyright 1990 by Tibetan Peach Pie, Inc. Bantam Books
Edit to add: If there are any legal reprecussions that I am unaware of, please let me know and I will either edit or delete.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History wil have to wear size 48 shorts forever.
posted
I like Tom Robbins, he knows how to turn a phrase, but I find that his books tend to get a little long winded. He comes up with some wacky idea, and writes a whole book that is a rant justifying that idea. It's often a clever rant, and has some good lines, but I find it a bit abrasive.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I’ve only read "Still life with Woodpecker". It was years ago and I don't remember any quotes. It took two tries to read it. First time I put it down a year later or so I read the entire thing and loved it. Been meaning to get another one, but just haven't brought myself to do it.
Which one would you recommend?
Posts: 555 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Jitterbug Perfume is my favorite, but I've read Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas and Another Roadside Attraction.
Robbins' books don't stay with me. I enjoy them as I read them. I feel similarly about John Irving books, although, I think that Cider House Rules and a Prayer for Owen Meany are fine stories. For the most part, reading a Robbins book is like watching a good episode of Farscape.
posted
I agree with Irami, both in terms of Jitterbug Perfume and in terms of his general evaluation of the books.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Okay, so this is not somebody I need to read? He sounds funny but a little glib. Would you say he's something like Kurt Vonnegut? (i.e. funny and entertaining but not really engaging the whole heart/mind/spirit?)
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Tom Robbins definitely engages my entire heart/mind/spirit. I admit that he can, at times, get a little carried away with creatively arranging his sentences, and I suppose this could come across as long winded.
Often times I find myself laughing aloud at something in his novels. He is very funny and always entertaining, but I would wouldn't say that his books lack anything in the depth department. His books often deal with religion, love, individuality, society and gov't in a very open and admittedly liberal way. It's not rare to find myself inspired after a long session of Robbins reading.
I would strongly urge you to at least pick up a copy of one of his books and take a look, to see if it catches your fancy.
Still Life with Woodpecker was the first one I read too, so it will always be one of my favorites, but not the mostest favorite. I think that would either be Jitterbug Perfume or Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. That one was great, and I think I learned a lot from it too.
And finally:
"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature."
posted
I like Robbins well enough, but I don't think you can put him in the same league with John Irving. _A Prayer for Owen Meany_ and _The World According to Garp_ are beautifully told, fantastically plotted and moving stories. Robbins is fun to read, but he can't compete with Irving's best books. Admittedly, some of Irving's books aren't so hot, but I thought those two were amazing.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Would you say he's something like Kurt Vonnegut? (i.e. funny and entertaining but not really engaging the whole heart/mind/spirit?)
Wow, I couldn't disagree more with the description
Posts: 122 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
In 1982, in my senior year English class, my teacher got annoyed at the way I kept finishing the classroom reading assignments too quickly so he handed me a book off his shelf. It was Robbins' "Another Roadside Attraction." Today he'd probably have been fired for it, but it was the start of a lifelong love of Robbins' thoughts, imagery, and sheer delight with the English language.
I like some more than others. "Roadside" still holds a place of affection, and "Still Life with Woodpecker" is probably the most linear of his works and better suited for the Robbins initiate. "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" is wild and wistful at the same time, and you gotta love the characters. "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas" is my least favorite; the second person narrative gets on my nerves and it seems to be less... meaningful, for want of a better term, than the others. I like "Villa Incognito" and "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates" but they tend to get confused together in my mind. "Skinny Legs and All" is probably more topical now than when he wrote it.
I don't recommend reading them one after another. After awhile you start to look for his tropes: a neurotic, funny girl, a wise person with weird habits, a supernatural element, a man who dances through the laws of the world, etc. But I do recommend reading them.
"Who knows how to make love stay?
"Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.
"Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.
"Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning."
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I wasn't wild about Cowgirls. But Woodpecker? It's like Princess Bride on steroids.
"Wait for baby!"
First time I saw it, I picked it up solely because of the blurb on the back, which said the entire story took place inside a package of Camel cigarettes. That's not entirely accurate, but it got my attention, and I was way glad for it.
And figuring out how to make love stay is probably the most important things I can imagine. Read this.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've got to admit that I can't stand Tom Robbins, mainly because he reminds me too much of this guy I know who was an untalented artist and political activist in the '60s, became a deadbeat professor who cheated on his wife in the '70s, met another woman, his "muse," (then working as a fortune teller, now working as a human resources office) in a coffeeshop in the early '80s and has been living with her since, was arrested twice in the '90s on drug infractions, and now writes long, rambling, didactic screeds about the importance of the search for meaning, the legalization of drugs (and, not coincidentally, the importance of Mayan calendars), and the emptiness of the conservative viewpoint in a local college magazine, where he now works as a janitor.
What's deeply, deeply disturbing is that I know FOUR guys like this, all of whom match this exact same description, and all of whom are evoked by even a few paragraphs of anything by Tom Robbins.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I thank my lucky stars that I haven't met your four 'friends' Tom, so that I might continue to wallow in the vast vat of fireworks-on-fourth-of-July prose that is a Tom Robbins book.
"the conclusion that a wise homer - forgive the expression, sir - wouldst draw from Pan's admission that he lives only so long as men believe in him, is that men control the destiny of their gods. Thou mightst even say that men create their gods, as much as gods create men, for as I, untutored or read that I be, understand it, it is a mutual thing. Gods and men create one another, destroy one another, though by different means."
posted
"Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually, however, religions became aquariums. Then, hatcheries. From farm fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim...
...If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the "comfort" of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment."
quote:What's deeply, deeply disturbing is that I know FOUR guys like this, all of whom match this exact same description, and all of whom are evoked by even a few paragraphs of anything by Tom Robbins.
You live in Wisconsin. I'm suprised you know so few...
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Maybe I'll check him out.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
