Other Perspectives On Tom Robbins

 Even though my favorite Tom Robbins novel is not Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (it's Still Life with Woodpecker), and a fondness from my younger days may color my thinking. I did read as many of Robbins' books while I was in prison (Still Life was unavailable but Cowgirls was), but they do seem more and more caught in the times they were written. Then they were rather radical; around my people, he was thought to be the second coming of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I saw the link to The Feel-Good Feminism of ‘Even Cowgirls Get the Blues’, and had to stop everything to read it. I have to wonder if the essay is not a bit of applying current thinking to work of a different era without enough consideration of how we got where we are. That we do keep learning. There will come - I hope - a time when people will look back at how we think today and go they missed the boat on that point, or on this point, how could we have thought them so enlightened. The alternative fits better my old nihilist ways that I am trying to get behind.

All that said, the essay is worth the time spent. Yes, it points out what are now seen as blind spots. The lesbian dying, I see a little differently - as a heroic act against an indifferent world (and that would have been the case when the novel was written) - but see that as much a trope as does its writer, Dayna Troisi.

One of Sissy’s love interests is queer woman Bonanza Jellybean. More radical than Sissy, she is so untamable that Robbins must kill her off. She openly scoffs at gender and assumes masculine roles, while wearing a mini skirt. She doesn’t fit neatly into understandings of gender. She might not be as conventionally good-looking as Sissy. And she probably wouldn’t “end up” with a man.  When I read, I felt like Sissy and Bonanza’s sexual chemistry was palpable. I thought they could even fall in love. But Robbins made the tired, cliché move of killing off the lesbian. Was he threatened by what he created? So threatened he had to physically insert himself in the novel? At the end of the novel, Bonanza Jellybean is dead and Sissy is with “Doctor Robbins.”

However, the paragraph that clinched the importance of this essay for me was this paragraph, with its statement of growth:

For all its problems, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is still one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Books can’t be perfect. But if they’re good, they are transformative for the reader: they help you shape your identity whether your pushing against them or pulling them closer. I would be doing myself a disservice if I wrote off ECGTB for being problematic because then I’d miss all its beauty, hilarity, and wisdom. When I read it again and it didn’t live up to the regard I once held it in, I was heartbroken, but I also knew I was growing. Now I’ve been finding my real life Sissy Hankshaws through personal essays written by actual queer disabled women.

 That we should all have such moments!

After reading that essay and while starting this post, I went looking for a link to Still Life with Woodpecker, and found Rereading Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins from 2010 on Pickle Me This. 

Rereading this book at 31, I see how far I’ve come, and how my literary judgement has sharpened, because the book is terrible. My political judgement has sharpened also– the Woodpecker is an anti-feminist, libertarian, but I would have noticed neither of these details then. Robbins’ prose is an orgy of play, but his language means nothing beyond its frippery, and it’s not even that funny– the only time I laughed out loud was when somebody sat on a chihuahua. I was bored reading most of it, and so bored out of my head by the end that I was only skimming. The sex was awful and gross, and not remotely sexy. The vagina euphemisms were totally disgusting, and I’m not sure why that didn’t put me off first time through.

I’m glad I reread it though– there were sparks of how brilliant I used to think it was. I don’t know if I’d ever read anything that interesting before, and it might have liberated me as a reader in the same way it did in a more general sense. And I wasn’t wholly cynical about its message. Even now, the idea of having CHOICE guide one’s life is very important to me: “To refuse to passively accept what we’ve been handed by nature or society, but to choose for ourselves. CHOICE. That’s the difference between emptiness and substance, between a life actually lived and a wimpy shadow cast on an office wall.” Rock on Tom!

Now, I need to re-read Still Life. The writer made me think about whether my own opinion is from too much nostalgia. Although, she nailed it about CHOICE. I wonder if I had kept reading Robbins, I might have prevented my depression.

My own notes on Robbins are buried, and I am not getting closer to digging them out! I recall thinking he had not aged well in some respects. However, I did like his reminding me of what was hoped for back then, and had me question whether we have not lost too much - including humor. What I have managed to write about Tom Robbins is here.

(By the way, Pickle Me This remains in operation and is up-to-date with views and reviews of books. I think I like the look of the site as much as I like the writer's style.)

sch 5/24/24