Tom Robbins

When I picked up Tom Robbins' Skinny Legs and All in 1991, I was immediately hooked and soon went on to rabidly pursue the other four books he had out at the time. Considering the pathetic stocks of the bookstores in the area, this was no small feat. On my twentieth birthday, I was so insane with desire for new Robbins stuff that I demeaned myself by going into a local bookstore which I had earlier sworn I would never set foot in again. To my surprise, they had a copy of Jitterbug Perfume, so of course I had to further demean myself by promptly buying it.

These two books, along with Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Another Roadside Attraction, and Still Life With Woodpecker, were new experiences for me. With my previous obsessions, I thought I understood every nuance of those books. (Of course, I was probably wrong, but anyway.) Conversely, with Robbins' books, I couldn't fool myself; there was just too much in them for me to grasp.

Fortunately, however, I didn't let that bother me. Though I couldn't "get" everything Robbins was writing about, I took in what I could and came back hungry for more. I liked the unconventional characters, the wordplay, the playful tweaking of modern morality, and everything else he packed into those novels.

To this day, I'm the only Tom Robbins fan I know. There's a Robbins mailing list on the Net somewhere, but its contributors are sort of flaky and tend to talk about anything and everything they can think of that has absolutely nothing at all to do with Tom Robbins or his books.

But, in a way, I can understand that, because it's hard to talk about Tom Robbins' books in a coherent fashion. They offer a transcendent experience -- like a mushroom trip -- that is hard to recapture.

Speaking of mushrooms, I was eating a lot of mushrooms around the time that I was a hardcore Robbins reader. The good vibrations I was feeling from these combined funky influences had me contemplating becoming -- perish the thought -- a grungy hippie. Only one person could save me from becoming a New Age bohemian ...