Tom Robbins R.I.P. at age 92. Irreverent, stoned satirical over-the-top prose reminiscent of a drunken Fitzgerald, blew our minds and made Robbins a counterculture literary icon.
Robbins’ foxy hippie looks and imaginative, adorably sexy female protagonists helped make him a hit with women readers. With his 1976’s NYT’s best-seller Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Rolling Stone crowned him “the new king of the extended metaphor, dependent clause, outrageous pun, and meteorological personification.” Take that, Hunter S. Thompson.
Another Roadside Attraction in 1971, 1976’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Still Life with Woodpecker were must-reads in that generation circles if you were cool—and even if you were not, as it reached No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list.
Robbins told BookPage magazine in 2000, “The family in which I was reared was a kind of a Southern Baptist version of The Simpsons and I played the part of both Bart and Lisa. Which is to say, I was, on the one hand, a rambunctious little troublemaker, and on the other, a highly sensitive, creative, artistic type.”
He wrote that listening to the Doors, stoned at 2 A.M. he had an epiphany, “found his voice, and soon starting his debut novel, Another Roadside Attraction. https://doorsmania.narod.ru/History/Whatthay.html
As reported in the Seattle Times, “He once described his books as ‘cakes with files baked in them. … I try to create something that’s beautiful to look at and delicious to the taste, and yet in the middle there’s this hard, sharp instrument that you can use to saw through the bars and liberate yourself, should you so desire.’
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules.” Tom Robbins.