Tom Robbins appreciation thread

[TomFoolery]

Hey y'all,

On the heels of that Tom Robbins discussion in whatever thread that was the other day, I thought I'd post this for you.

I read this some time back. Its supposed to be a speach Robbins gave at a high school commencement in Washington State. Its not official or anything so it could all be b.s. Its still a really cool read regardless...

Its a long read...

Tom Robbins Commencement Speech Grays Harbor,WA.

I am often asked whether there is life after death. Certainly there is. There is also death afterlife, and life before death, and death before life. It goes on forever. There is just no stopping it. You will live forever, and die forever. In fact, you already have.

As for Heaven and Hell, they are right here on Earth, and it is up to each of you in which one you choose to reside. To put it simply Heaven is living in your hopes and Hell is living in your fears.

In the traditional image, where hell is down and heaven is up, one escapes from hell by digging a hole in the ceiling. Though in an age of downers and uppers down no longer makes sense, it is still possible to think of in and out. Think of hell as in and heaven as out. To get out of hell you expand your soul until it is pushing on all the walls from the inside all the way around. If you just maintain a steady pressure, your soul will gradually filter out into limitless heaven beyond.

One problem with the notion of Heaven and Hell, however, is that, although they are exact opposites, an astonishing number of people seem to be confused about which is which. For example, all over the United Sates on this very evening, commencement speakers are standing before audiences not greatly unlike yourselves, describing Hell as if they are talking about Heaven.

Their speakers are saying things such as, "Graduating seniors, you have reached the golden threshold of maturity; it is time now to go out into the world and take up the challenges of life, time to face your hallowed responsibility."

And if that isn't one Hell of a note, it's certainly one note of Hell.

When I hear the word "maturity" spoken with such solemn awe, I don't know whether to laugh or get sick. There circulates a common myth that once one becomes an adult, one suddenly and magically gets it altogether and, if I may use the vernacular, discovers, where it's at. Ha ha. The sad funny truth is, adults are nothing but tall children who have forgotten how to play.

When people tell you to "grow up," they mean approximately the same thing they mean when they tell you to "shut up". By "shut up" they mean "stop talking", by "grow up" they mean stop growing.

Because as long as you keep growing, you keep changing, and a person who is changing is unpredictable, impossible to pigeon-hole and difficult to control. The growing person is not an easy target for those guys in the slick suits who want you to turn over your soul to Christ, your heart to America, your butt to Seattle first National Bank and your armpits to new extra crispy Right Guard.

No, the growing person is not an ideal consumer, which means, in more realistic terms, he or she is not an easy slave. Worse yet, if he or she continues to grow, grows far enough and long enough, he or she may get too close to the universal mysteries, the nature of which the Navy and the Dutch Reform Church do not encourage us to ponder. The growing person is an uncomfortable reminder of the greater human potential that each of us might realize if we had the guts.

So society wants you to grow up. To reach a safe, predictable plateau and root there. To muzzle your throb, to lower the volume on the singing in your blood. Capers all cut, sky finally larked, surprises known, SETTLE DOWN -- settle, like the sand in the bottom of an hour glass, like a coffin six months in the ground. ACT YOUR AGE -- which means, act their age, and that has, from the moment they stopped growing, always been old.

Growing up is a trap.

As for responsibility, I am forced to ask, "Responsibility to what?" To our fellow humans? Two weeks ago, the newspapers reported that a federal court had ruled that when a person's brain stops functioning, that person is legally dead, even though his or her heart may continue to beat. That means that 80% of the population of Earth is legally dead. Must we he responsible to corpses?

No, you have no responsibility except to be yourself to the fullest limit of yourself, and to find out who you are. Or, perhaps I should say, to-remember who you are. Because deep down in the secret velvet of your heart, far beyond your name and your address, each of you knows who you really are. And that being, who is the true you, cannot help but behave graciously to all other beings -- because it is all other beings.

Yet, we are constantly reminded of our..." responsibility." Responsibility means obey orders without question, don't rock the boat, and for God's sake, get a job. (Get a job. sha na na na) That's the scary one. Get a job. It is said as if it were a holy and ancient and inviolable law of nature. But the fact is although cultural humanity has been on Earth for some 2 million years, the very concept of jobs is only about 500 years old. A drop in the bucket, to coin a phrase. And with advent of an electronic cybernetic automated technology, jobs are on the way out again. Jobs were just a flash in the pan, a passing fancy. There is no realistic relationship between jobs and work – work being defined as one of the more serious aspects of play – any more than there is a realistic relationship between jobs and eating. It is curious how many people believe if it weren't for jobs they couldn't eat. As if it weren't for Boeing their jaws wouldn't chew, if it weren't for the Navy their bowels wouldn't move and if it weren't for Weyerhauser that great destroyer of plants - plants wouldn't grow. Technocratic assumptions about the identity of humanity, society and nature have warped our experience at its source and obscured the basic natural sense of things. Rabbits don't have jobs. When was the last time you heard of a rabbit starving to death?

Ah, but we must be responsible, and if we are, then we are rewarded with the white man's legal equivalent of looting: a steady job, secure income, easy credit, free access to all the local emporiums and a home of your own to pile the merchandise in! And so what if there is no magic in your life, no wonder, no amazement, no playfulness, no peace of mind, no sense of unity with the universe, no giggling joy, no burning passion, no deep understanding, no overwhelming love? At least your ego has the satisfaction of knowing you are a responsible citizen.

Responsibility is a trap.

As a matter of fact, the entire System into which you were born and which now, upon the completion of high (high?) school you must perhaps face more directly, is a System designed to trap you - and manipulate you as a co-operating slave, a System designed to steep you in Hell.

Hell is living in your fears, and it is through fear, both subtle and overt, that the System traps you. fear of failure, fear of social rejection, fear of poverty, fear of punishment, fear of death.

For example, we are taught to fear something called Communism, and millions of Americans go to sleep each night wondering if Mao Tse Tung is under their bed. Conversely, on the other side of the world millions of Russians and Chinese go to sleep wondering if Henry Kissinger is under their bed. Our Totalitarian government uses the hoax of the threat of Communism to control and enslave us, just as the totalitarian Communist governments use the hoax of the threat of Capitalism to control and enslave the people. It's an extremely old and obviously effective trick.

You see, the powers behind Communism and the powers behind Capitalism are virtually the same people. We might also include the powers behind the Vatican and the powers behind Islam. Their main function is to mystify the popular mind by creating illusions of omnipotence and omniscience with which to command docility from their subjects. While at the same time creating illusions of health, happiness and fulfillment for their subjects, although it does not require much thorough investigation to discover that few of the people of the world are healthy, happy or fulfilled.

But never mind, there are ways out of the trap, ways, as I have earlier suggested, out of Hell.

The only advice I have for you tonight is not to actively resist or fight the System, because active protest and resistance merely entangle you in the System.

Instead, ignore it, walk away from it, turn your backs on it, laugh at it. Don't be outraged, be outrageous! Never be stupid enough to respect authority unless that authority first proves itself respectable. And unfortunately, there is no officially sanctioned authority today, from the President of the United States down to the cop on the beat, that has earned the right to your respect.

So, be your own authority, lead yourselves. Remember the ways and means of the Ancient yogi masters, Pied Pipers, cloud walkers, witches and medicine men. Stay in harmony with nature. Listen to the loony rhythms of your blood. Look for beauty and poetry in everything in life. Let there be no moon that does not know you, no spring that does not lick you with its tongues. Refuse to play it safe, for it is from the wavering edge of risk that the sweetest honey of freedom drips. Live dangerously, live lovingly, believe in magic. Nourish your imagination. Use your head, even if it means going out of your mind. Learn, like the lemon and the tomato learned, the laws of the sun. Become aware, like the jungle became aware, of your own perfume. Remember that life is much too serious to take seriously - so never forget how to play.

In times of doubt and chaos, it has been the duty of superior persons -- artists, poets, scientists, clowns and philosophers (certainly not statesmen or military heroes) -- to create order in the psychic vibrations of their fellow being. But in times such as ours, times that are too carefully ordered, too strictly organized, too expertly managed, thoroughly programmed and craftily planned, times in which too few control too many, it is the duty of all feeling, thinking humanitarian people to toss their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. On second thought, you do have some responsibility to your fellow beings. To relieve the repression of the human spirit, it is your sacred duty to screw things up royally.

Looking at you tonight, I know you're going to do just fine. Let me wrap this up with a few short questions I am often asked.

(1) Will we be eaten by bugs and Worms? A difficult question. We ought to be. We have eaten, and we ought to be eaten. This is justice, and there is no stopping it. If you have your body burned, starving the earth to glorify a memory, you are asking for trouble (I have no idea what.)

(2) Does your soul fly out of your body at the moment you die. No, this is a foolish superstition. Your soul is constantly flying out of your body in just the same way that energy is constantly flying out of the sun. At the moment your body dies, the soul stops flying out.

(3) Is Jesus coming back? Yes, all the time. And so are you. All souls echo forever throughout the universe.

I hope you have a wonderful trip.

[Velvet]

wow

[Kaidy Mae]

Right on! Thanks Jay. I think these are my favourite parts...

Rabbits don't have jobs. When was the last time you heard of a rabbit starving to death?

Use your head, even if it means going out of your mind.

I love that man. I am overwhelmingly tempted right now to tell the Catholic school board to go fuck themselves and go back to making daisy chains and playing hide and seek. Alas, I can only afford to avoid "growing up" and "responsibility" on the weekends. If I could sit on a sun-drenched patio, sipping cold Manhattans with whoever I wanted, I would have to choose my 2 dead grandfathers and Tom Robbins. Those good 'ol boys sure would have a lot to say.

New book in August!

[fluffhead77]

the greatest writer of the last 20 years...from the northwest u.s.a.

[timouse]

wow

what he said.

Tom is an amazing writer, this piece sure seeems like his style. can you imagine the reaction of straight parents hearing this at a commencement?

They don't mention if he was taken away by security afterwards, do they? Utah Phillips talked about doing a commencement speech that ended badly...he started off by telling them that "...you will hear over and over again today that you are this nation's most valuable natural resource. have you seen what this nation does to its' valuable natural resources? they'll strip mine your soul, clearcut your best ideas for the sake of a greasy buck..."

apparently this cayused some commotion, and he was basically escorted out. i would have loved to be a spectator at either of these events

[Kaidy Mae]

That's awesome! I can't imagine that Robbins is getting many invites back after that doozie either. ...regardless of it being perfect and exactly what such "valuable resources" need to hear.

Anyone on here read Conan O'Brien's from Harvard a few years back? It wasn't nearly as provocative, but basically said not to look up to him for anything. Nothing too inspiring. No real direction. No clear answers. Hilarious.

[Velvet]

I'm so glad to hear that there's a new one out in August. I'd been putting off Villa Incognito for a long time 'cuz I don't want to be out of new Robbins, but I broke down and started it a few days ago.

Of course, I'm lovin' it. The guy keeps getting better and better.

[bradm]

I've never read anything by him, so can somebody recommend a title or two for a beginner?

Aloha,

Brad

[Kaidy Mae]

Brad, start with Another Roadside Attraction or Jitterbug Perfume. You'll be hooked!

Velvet, how'd you like the beginning of Villa? Pretty wacky eh? LOL

[bradm]

Thanks, KM, I just requested ARA from the library.

Aloha,

Brad

[Velvet]

Well Brad, in the next several posts all the books Tom has written will be suggested to you, as they're all superb and everyone has their favourites, but knowing you I would recommend Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas or Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates or whatever that one is called.

[Velvet]

Though I think Another Roadside Attraction is my favourite.

(Good suggestions KM, and I'm loving Villa. The guy is just so good.)

[FairySari]

I was sort of disappointed by the end of Villa Incognito - it seemed like he just gave up and stopped writing. I guess that makes me extra happy that he's got a new book coming out. yay!

[Kaidy Mae]

Yeah, that wasn't my favourite ending...1/2 Asleep didn't exactly float my boat at times either. I'll never look at asparagus the same way again. But I still love them both. Villa really left me jonesing for a new read though.

Good call on Fierce Invalids. I loved that one too. The last time I went to Mouse's house, I brought Alex (who had never been there). In the kitchen was Pedro (Mouse's parrot). As soon as he saw him Alex screams, "People of zee world, relax!" We had just been into the unmentionables and I nearly laughed my ass clean off. LOL Good times. Ya gotta love a chum who can quote Robbins like that.

[fluffhead77]

Still life with woodpecker is a great one to cut your teeth one Bradm...but I think Skinny legs and all is his swan song...buuuut then again Jitterbug perfume is a great story too...

todd...too funny! It is always funny when one person asks a group of Robbins fans for a recommendation ~ you're def. gunna get all of em !

[PalacePrincess]

i have kind of a wow/yawn feeling about tom robbins. i think he is a brilliant writer, incredibly imaginative and a very, very smart man. i hate the way he writes sometimes though, especially when you are getting into the story. i find it takes me a really, really, really long time to get through one of his books because i often get so bored and frustrated with the way he's writing (especially in the first person) for most of the first 2/3 of the book, i have to put the book away after just a few minutes. it's the explaining each and every sentence in 3+ different ways in a row that annoys and bores me the most. the cat was black. like the colour of night the cat was black. the cat was the colour of coal, black. black, how do you like that black, black, rhymes with rat, but not tar which indeed is also black. i've been forcing myself through even cowgirls get the blues for months now.

HOWEVER, having said that, one thing i do love about the bastard is by the time you are done one of his books you are mouth agape, WOW, completely floored at his writing. he is great for character development, original plot, and the guy is just so dang smart AND an absolute artist with words, that he just paints the most beautiful & sneaky little ideas into your head.

i love the end product, i just get bored when the story lulls... which i find it does. one thing i will say though, is that even if it does take months to get through a book, it is the type of thing that you can pick up after not reading it for 2 weeks and be right back into the story.

brad, go for another roadside attraction as your first. even if you get bored, just keep trucking right through it until it's done, it'll be worth it.

heh. boy todd, when you're right, you're right.

oh and p.s., as much as tom robbins writing does annoy me sometimes, the parts i like about it are enough to make me want to read all of his books.

[scottieking]

Without hyperbole, Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs, and Still Life with Woodpecker changed the way I look at the world. That and this from Esquire Magazine

You gotta have soul

By Tom Robbins

Mental Bungee-jumping may not be your sport of choice, but there's a cerebral ledge that sooner or later each of us has to leap off. One day, ready or not, we glance in a mirror, cuddle an infant, attend a funeral, walk in the woods, partake of a substance Nancy Reagan warned us to eschew, chance a liaison, wake in the night with a napalm lobster in our chest, read a message from the pope or the Dalai Lama, get lost in Verdi or lost in the stars - and wind up thinking about our soul.

Yes, the soul. You know what I mean.

Popular culture to the contrary, the soul is not an overweight nightclub singer having an unhappy love affair in Detroit. Nor, on the other hand, is it some pale vapor wafting off a bucket of metaphysical dry ice. Suffering, low-down and funky, seasons the soul, it's true, but bliss is the yeast that makes it rise. And yet, because the soul is linked to the earth (as opposed to spirit, which is linked to the sky), it steadfastly contradicts those who imagine it a billow of sacred flatulence or a shimmer of personal swamp gas.

Soul is not even that Cracker Jack prize that God and Satan scuffle over after the worms have all licked our bones. That's why, when we ponder - as, sooner or later, each of us must - what exactly we ought to be doing about our souls, religion is the wrong, if conventional place to turn.

Religion is little more than a transaction in which troubled people trade their souls for temporary and wholly illusionary psychological comfort (the old "give it up in order to save it" routine). Religions lead us to believe the soul is the ultimate family jewel, and, in return for our mindless obedience, they can secure it for us in their vaults, or at least insure it against fire and theft. They are mistaken.

If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved.

To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese.

Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic, alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if not for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane more than a little embarrassing.

But say you've inflated your soul to the size of a beach ball and it's soaking into the Mystery like wine into a mattress. What have you accomplished? Well, long term, you may have prepared yourself for a successful metamorphosis, an almost inconceivable transformation to be precipitated by your death or by some great worldwide eschatological whoopjamboreehoo. You may have. No one can say for sure.

More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn't get any better than that.

By Tom Robbins Esquire, October, 1993 (page 164)

[Velvet]

I think Robbins makes the best analogies in the business. When he writes the words "...is like a..." buckle yourself in and hold on tight, 'cuz he's gonna say something you've never heard before that will describe the thing as best as it can be described.

"like the colour of night the cat was black"

Aw c'mon pp, a guy who writes a sentance like "his voice sounded like a steel dog barking bricks" would never write a sentance like that! I do see what you mean though. I can see where some people would get bogged down by his descriptiveness. You can tell he has fun with it, so there's lots there.

"Let Amanda be your acorn" is a sentance that influenced my life noticably.

sigh

[Kaidy Mae]

Velvet, there are so many gems in his books that I have long since forgotten. It was actually while reading Robbins that I took up the pretentious habit of underlining passages. :blush: Before too long though, I had marked up most of the book.

And it's not only the philosophical, the spiritual, the cynical that I adore about his writing (although those are the most often quoted). His humour is so pure and obvious at times...so childlike. Like when he writes about hating snakes because they are "all belt and no pants" (which I heard an Aussie writer later plagiarized). That is just plain adorable!

PP-Cowgirls was good, but not one of my favourites. You have to be patient with Robbins. He doesn't write like a blockbuster movie. I love that his books can drag out a little. I even start to kind of ration myself near the end so that it lasts longer. The peaks and valleys are important in writing and I think Robbins is at the top of his game. "...the sweet is never as sweet without the sour."

Scottieking...you just hit the nail on the head! Those are my absolute top three favourites. I think Skinny Legs is the pinnacle of his career.

The only reason why I rarely recommend reading Skinny Legs first is because it's far more enjoyable if you already have a working knowledge of Robbins's work. You have to build up a certain level of willing suspension of disbelief before you'll play along to inanimate objects talking, traveling and unveiling religious mysteries. Also, you gotta save something for dessert.

I'm glad there are so many of you Robbins fans out there. Thanks for the articles and keep posting if you lovely folks find more.

[PalacePrincess]

okay, one thing i want to add about robbins. a lot of the time in day-to-day life i get to spend reading, is in small chunks here and there. late night in bed just before i fall asleep, or while i'm eating dinner, or in the precious few minutes i have to relax before i have to jump up & go somewhere. tom robbins is not a precious few minutes sort of author. tom robbins is a laying on the beach all afternoon / swinging in a hammock for hours by yourself kind of author. to fully appreciate his writing, you have to be in a tom robbins zone without much distraction, so you can savour every morsel of what he is writing. because there are many, many morsels to be savoured. even if i am frustrated with the pace of the story (i.e. the explaining the same image 4 times in a row, and doing this 15 other times down the page), there will still be at least 2 or 3 things that catch my attention enough to say "wow" and and want to memorize or write them down to "NEW QUOTE!" them. velvet, you are right, he is a master of the metaphor/analogy, cat black as night doesn't quite cut it.

and hahaha, i love his sense of humour too, kaidy mae. especially when it sneaks up all coy & tongue in cheek, and not blatantly in-your-face-slapstick.

i dunno, i can appreciate tom robbins, but generally i prefer a more to-the-point style of writing (especially when this can be mastered in conjunction with an artistic selection of words). and i suppose my occasional frustration with robbins' style is actually somewhat of a compliment to him -- the story (when you finally get to it ) is so darn freakin' good and interesting, you just want to get to it!

i'm glad this thread was started, i want to check out some of these other titles. it's beach season.

[bradm]

Has Robbins done any short fiction, or does he just write novels?

Aloha,

Brad

[Kaidy Mae]

As far as I know Brad, his yet-to-be-released book (Wild Ducks Flying Backward) is his first collection of short fiction.

[TomFoolery]

:-)

I like that other article from Esquire. I hadn't read that before. Robbins rocks.

However, I have to say that I was not a huge fan of Fierce Invalids.

This may sound really strange but I think Robbins has taken the Tom Clancy pill. Clancy used to write espionage novels that were full of cool stuff (for the espionage freak) until he got REALLY popular. If anyone read the Clancy books where the plane flew into the White House or the following one - did you notice that there was an incredible amount of neo-conservative propaganda being spewed that wasn't really part of the story. He just started using his books as a vehicle for his personal philosophy.

Well, I don't agree with Clancy's personal philosophy so I really hated reading his books. I no longer do.

Robbins, while I agree with most of his personal philosophy, has started doing the same.

A lot of Fierce Invalids seemed to be devoted to promoting Robbins' philosophy without really adding to the story.

I still love reading the guy and will continue to check out his new novels. But, I really got disappointed with his use of his novels to proselytise.

$0.02

Skinny Legs and All is definitely the best of the lot.

Still Life was my first - it'll always hold a special place...

[Kaidy Mae]

Still Life is pretty magical. Just when you stop believing in love, that book always work its way into your life.

I hear you about the preaching to the choir that's going on. I'm aware of it, but it's also one of the reasons why I love his books. I really want to know what's going on inside that man's head. While it may not contribute to the story, I feel like I get to know my favourite writer a little more.

[TomFoolery]

Fair enough. It is nice to get to know him a bit better for sure. I just find that in his previous material he SO artistically weaved his philosophy into the story that it was disappointing to see him abandon the artistry for plain brow-beating.

I don't mind him preaching so much as how he does it...