I started working my way through some old Tom Robbins I have on my shelf, starting with Jitterbug Perfume and going from there through Another Roadside Attraction and Still Life with Woodpecker, and it’s too much. Not too much reading, mind you, but his style is just overwhelming, self indulgent, sometimes racist meandering. While I see how he became popular, writing to issues like runaway capitalism and explicitly about sex, it doesn’t have the same kind of effect today. I’m not surprised his writing has gone out of fashion. He often seems too wrapped up in attempts at cleverness than creating a comprehensible and meaningful story, and often he’s successful to the detriment of the larger narrative.
Thoughts?
by The_Dirk_Strider
4 Comments
oh man, tom robbins isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, for sure. his stuff can be way out there with all the wild metaphors and funky philosophies.
I remember getting my hands on my Mom’s copies of a couple of his books when my best friend and I were in junior high. Nobody was writing about sex that way. Nobody wrote about pubic hair back then. The only other thing out there was The Godfather and that was obsessed with giant penises rather than being just about the mob like I expected.
He wrote about sex like it was supposed to be fun. And he thumbed his nose at all kinds of other things that I was being raised to be solemn about, like the church.
But I’ve never gone back because I strongly suspect that it would no longer be as amusing, and I suspect that his manic pixie dream girl hippies haven’t aged that well. Your post doesn’t surprise me…
I haven’t gone back to his books in a while, but I read them (that were out at the time) in the early 90s and enjoyed them at the time. I wouldn’t be shocked if they don’t hold up, but they felt like a very interesting and original voice at the time.
I fear I would have the very same reaction on a re-read, thus haven’t attempted it yet, and I LOVED jitterbug perfume when I read it years ago.
Somewhat off topic but not really: I recently reread A prayer for Owen Meany and I did not love it at all in the way I did the first time I read it, and actually kind of disliked it quite a bit. I guess sometimes books really hit best in their specific time.