Tom Robbins

I had heard the name Tom Robbins before, but was never familiar with his work until Gurjit gave me a battered copy of his book, "Skinny Legs and All". The book is missing it's cover. The pages are dog-eared and yellow. You can tell this is novel has been well loved, many times over.


The plot is about as unconventional as they come. It combines historic fact, religion and politics, partially through the eyes of Can o' Beans, Dirty Sock, Spoon, Painted Stick and Conch Shell, as the animated-inanimate objects slowly try to find their way to across America and to Jerusalem. 


Sounds weird, doesn't it? There's a lot more to it than that, but I'm not here to write a book report. Instead I just wanted to express my newfound love of Tom Robbins. I think that he could probably write a book about how to reprogram your hard drive and make it sound fascinating. The clever descriptions are so rich in metaphor and analogies that they tickle the pit of my belly.


I suppose I've always been a sucker for a good metaphor in both writing and art. In high school English class, I remember falling in love with the line "nibbling on the edge of stale ideas" in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby. Meanwhile, in art history, all the symbolism in Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding Portrait long inspired me to pursue a career in iconology.... but on second thought, that career path didn't seem very practical.


Anyhow, because I find his work just so darn creative, I thought I would share some of the great metaphors, analogies and awesome quotes from Skinny Legs and All that I've come across so far. (I'm about halfway through...)


* Like a neon fox tongue lapping up the powdered bones of space chickens, the rising sun licked away at the light snow that had falled during the night. (I think this one is my favourite. :)


* Word spread like skin disease at a nudist colony.


* Mocking birds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a song of their own... mockingbirds aren't content to merely play the hand that is dealt them. Like all artists, they are out to rearrange reality.


* When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.


* Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished.


* Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually however, religion became aquariums. Then, hatcheries. From farm fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim.


* They sat her down, poured her a glass of Kuwaiti wine and insisted she explain why her aura looked like the ring around a coal miner's collar.


* It was after six now, and the zillions of tiny particles that comprised Manhattan's atmosphere had slipped out of their loud sport clothes and donned tuxedos.... Ellen Cherry walked inside a bag of night nearly as black as the one in which Spoon trembled. Only the discreet neon of the sushi bars or the flashing headlights of taxi cabs clipped random bow ties of brightness and colour to the formal collars of evening's molecules. 


* Dip a slice of bread in batter. That's September: yellow, gold, soft and sticky. Fry the bread. Now you have October: chewier, drier, streaked with browns. The day in question lie somewhere in the middle of the french toast process. 


And finally, I just wanted to share a short passage about Thanksgiving. I was so engaged by his interesting description, that I had to read it aloud to Jim (who thought it was pretty neat too). 


"The roast turkey carries with it, in its chubby hold, a sizable portion of our primitive and pagan luggage.


Primitive and pagan? Us? We of the laser, we of the microchip, we of the Union Theological Seminary and Time magazine? Of course. At least twice a year, do not millions upon millions of us cybernetic Christians and fax machine Jews participate in a ritual, a highly stylized ceremony that takes place around a large dead bird? 


And is not this animal sacrificed, as in days of yore, to catch the attention of a divine spirit, to show gratitude for blessings bestowed, and to petition for blessings coveted? 


The turkey, slain, slowly cooked over our gas or electric fires, is the central figure at our holy feast. It is the totem animal that brings our tribe together. 


And because it is an awkward, intractable creature, the serving of it establishes and reinforces the tribal hierarchy. There are but two legs, two wings, a certain amount of white meat, a given quantity of dark. Who gets which piece; who, in fact, slices the bird and distributes its limbs and organs, underscores quite emphatically the rank of each member in the gathering. 


Consider that the legs of this bird are called 'drumsticks,' after the ritual objects employed to extract the music from the most aboriginal and sacred of instruments. Our ancestors, kept their drums in public, but the sticks, being more actively magical, usually were stored in places known only to the shaman, the medicine man, the high priest, of the Wise Old Woman. The wing of the fowl gives symbolic flight to the soul, but with the drumstick is evoked the best of the pulse of the heart of the universe. 


Few of us nowadays participate in the actual hunting and killing of the turkey, but almost all of us watch, frequently with deep emotion, the reenactment of those events. We watch it on TV sets immediately before the communal meal. For what are footballs if not metaphorical turkeys, flying up and down a meadow? And what is a touchdown if not a kill, achieved by one or the other of two opposing tribes? To our applause, great young hungers from Alabama or Notre Dame slay the bird. Then, the Wise Old Woman, in the guise of Grandma, calls us to the table, where we, pretending to be no longer primitive, systematically rip the bird asunder. "


Swoon. How I love the way he writes! 


Anyway, I just wanted to share.