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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Tom Robbins....with two moth bobbins

07:55 / 14.12.05

Been a-searching hard and long for a barbe-ginza of Mr. Robbins, if there is one, many apologies, but if there isn't..tis but a crime.
As a malleble disco-crumpet of a kid a couple of decades ago, the books he wrote created a freedom that, in hindsight, was in the larger scheme more right and funkier than nearly any other button that moulded me. Tis a personal thang, but, (forget the movie), his analogies; his poetic sense of unreason, yet nobility; and most of all his sense of largeness makes him iconic in my tome.

favourite quote at the moment:
"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."

discuss?? (rather not hear about 'Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates', disappointed personally, and have yet to read 'Wild ducks' and "Villa"...love a personal review)

08:07 / 14.12.05

more quotes for the drunken grin that it gives me at the moment, soul huggles this give me:-

"The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating"

"I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred."

"When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death"

"When two people meet and fall in love, there's a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it's usually too late, we've used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It's hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay."

"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."

will stop now...grin is getting a bit sinister

14:42 / 14.12.05

Currently reading "Another Roadside Attraction" for the first time, about 80 pages in. Enjoying it a lot. Only Robbins I've read are "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," years ago, and "Fierce Invalids" (sorry), which I read when it was published. I do enjoy the man's writing, but I'll say you have to be in the mood for it. What I do like is his strong female characters, and how he retains the free-spirited feel of the '60s. I recall reading that around the time Roadside was published, the rumor was Robbins was really Thomas Pynchon, writing under a psuedonym. And how the guy writes -- talk about labored! He writes one sentence at a time -- sometimes spending a whole day on getting that single sentence just right. And he claims most of the time he has no idea what the next sentence will be.

19:56 / 15.12.05

I love the way Tom Robbins holds every sentence and paragraph up to the reader like an offering. He enjoys himself immensely, it's obvious in everything he writes. He's not terribly subtle, but as a more obtuse reader I appreciate being bludgeoned over the head with wordplay. I also love the playful sensuality of his works. Sometimes it feels a bit like he's trying to drag us back to the time when sex was less likely to kill you, but it is refreshing to see sensuality with a smirk and a wink instead of the fretfulness it's treated with in most modern liturature.

Ususally, once I've decided that a person is worth keeping as a close friend I gift them with a copy Still Life with Woodpecker, which is one of my favorite books ever in the universe.

However, I haven't read anything of his since Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, due to a bit of burn-out. I've heard good things about His newest offering though.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

18:49 / 20.12.05

"The sunset was like a neon fox licking the powdered bones of angels"

shudder
-not jack

05:32 / 21.12.05

I've only read Fierce Invalids. Am I correct in judging from the comments upthread that this is one of his weaker books? I liked the style but the plot seemed forced and I had the sneaking suspicion that the prose was a re-hash of an already well established voice.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

22:38 / 21.12.05

in no particular order, his best works (inmho etc etc)

Skinny Legs and All
Jitterbug Perfume
Still Life with Woodpecker

still good
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

I thought Another Roadside Attraction a bit rough (it was his first)

and Half-Asleep in Frog Pyjamas didn't measure up to anything before it. alas.

14:51 / 30.09.08

everyone should do the bandaloop dance....robbins makes me smile,,,real forbidden fruit,,offered to the masses,,,truly nutritious writing ,,,one of americas brighter stars.... from me he gets a `Hankshaw thumbs up`

13:53 / 18.10.08

Ah, there's nothing wrong with Fierce Invalids. I love the character, even if it's nothing on Jitterbug Perfume, which is just brilliant, or Skinny Legs and All.

Villa is pretty good, actually. I enjoyed that a lot, though some parts felt like they weren't fully fleshed out - it was quite a short book.

Still Life with Woodpecker is great, and has a much more appealing central female than Roadside Attraction. RA is good, but the central female is a touch too cold for my liking - though that's obviously part of her character.

The only thing that stops me in my tracks occasionally is how Robbins skirts the line between women having free love with every man in a beautiful, 60s happy-go-lucky style, and a more sinister expectation that a woman is somehow not sexually 'right' if she prefers monogamy.
That said, I'm an inbetweener, a 1980 kid, so I'm unlikely to utterly 'get' the whole hippy/free love shtick.

17:53 / 13.11.08

i`ve read five or six of his novels; his women are magnificent.