You just can’t beat for sheer fun with language. The first book of his I ever attempted to read was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and after a few pages of going, “Huh?” and “Do what?”, I put it down and vowed never to try again.
A few years later, my brother told me that I must read Another Roadside Attraction. Maybe I just needed to be older, because suddenly I plugged in to the way Robbins writes and became an ardent fan. To the point that if I ever had written that Master’s thesis that I didn’t write, its subject was Tom Robbins’s work.
Maybe it’s better than I left him in the realm of pleasure and didn’t turn him into another halfhearted academic exercise. Although I wasn’t as deeply thrilled with his later works (Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, Villa Incognito), even those are crisper and more inventive than almost anything else I read.
The ones I enjoy most–in addition to Even Cowgirls… and Another Roadside Attraction–are Still Life with Woodpecker and Jitterbug Perfume (the latter’s descriptions of New Orleans remain among my favorites), with Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas and Skinny Legs and All in that middle land between the ones I love and the ones I sort of love.
Trivia: Tom Robbins played the toymaker in one of my favorite quirky movies Made in Heaven, and I just discovered he’s also in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, a film I haven’t seen.
Wild Ducks Flying Backward is not a novel, but a collection of shorter works and essays spanning Robbins’s career. Sometimes he’s playful, sometimes profound, but Robbins is always a master of words, whether with imaginative metaphors or frivolous puns. I just love him, and Marla, if you’re reading this LJ entry, thanks again for this book.
