Ya ama Allah kahretsin ya! O kadar güzel bitip neden bir Kudra - Alobar karşılaşması yok bu kitapta! Neden son bölümde sayfalarca Priscilla gereksizini okurken benim ikilim yok, AMA BÜTÜN KİTABI BU İKİLİ GÖTÜRMÜŞKEN NEDEN ONLARA AİT Bİ SON YOK!!!
HATTA BÜTÜN KİTABI ALOBAR YÜRÜTMÜŞKEN ASLINDA NEDEN SON SÖZÜ ALOBAR SÖYLEMEDİ AQ!!!
Ayrıca Dannyboy'ın kızını da yarım bıraktı bence.
Allah kahretsin epilog istiyorum!
ÇILDIRACAĞIM!
Şey... Muhtemelen hayatımın en anlamsız yorumu oldu ama buraya çok güzel alıntılarla dolu yorum bırakmayı düşünüyorum.
Şimdilik benim isteğim türde (Kudra & Alobar'ın) sonu, ileri giderek epilog eksikliği içinde, Alobar'ın son sözü yokluğunda kıvranacağım izninizle.

Ayrıca bu kitabı öneren İlkim'e sonsuz teşekkürler. Bir ablam vermişti kitabı ancak kalın ve kurgu olduğu için cesaret edememiştim. Şahane bi kitaptı!

Γιατί τα 4 αστέρια είναι πολλά:
Για τις πρώτες 150-200 σελίδες αναρωτιόμουν ποιο είναι το πρόβλημα του συγγραφέα, γιατί οι χαρακτήρες του να είναι πιο επίπεδοι κι από κοιλάδα της Ανδαλουσίας, γιατί διαβάζω ένα βιβλίο που ξεκινάει με μια σύγκριση μεταξύ ραπανιών και παντζαριών και κυρίως - πώς την έχω πατήσει έτσι με τον Τομ Ρόμπινς για δεύτερη φορά μετά τον Τρυποκάρυδο. Εξού και μου πήρε περίπου μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα για να τις διαβάσω.

Γιατί τα 3 αστέρια είναι λίγα:
Αυτό που κάνει τελικά ο Τομ Ρόμπινς, είναι μαγικό. Είναι πιο μαγικό από το μαγικό ρεαλισμό του και τους μεσαιωνικούς τ��υ βασ��λιάδες που κόβουν βόλτες στο χωροχρόνο. Εκεί που νομίζεις ότι διαβάζεις έναν χιουμοριστικό παραλογισμό γεμάτο με άρωμα, σεξ και μυθολογικές αναφορές, καταλήγεις να έχεις διαβάσει πολύ ουσιώδεις σκέψεις για πολύ βαθιά ανθρώπινα θέματα.

To προτείνω πάντως στα αγγλικά, για όσους έχουν άνεση με τη γλώσσα, κυρίως γιατί πιστεύω ότι η κωμωδία δεν μεταφράζεται ποτέ πλήρως.

I keep feeling like this book is like something else that I've read, but I couldn't tell you what that something else is.

I guess it's kinda like Kurt Vonnegut meets Robert Anton Wilson meets . . . maybe Chuck Palahniuk, emphasis on maybe, but very much Vonnegut meets Wilson.

And kinda Philip K. Dick, a little, just less of the science fiction and more of the mind-blowing philosophical standpoint.

That being said, I liked it. It's incredibly dense, in the sense that there is so much in it. The language is something unto itself, and when I happened across it in the Borders in Providence Place Mall, it was the language and the first little introductory page that convinced me I had to go back and buy it. It's at once prose, poetical, intellectual, light, jovial, didactic, aloof. Really something else.

I couldn't help but wonder, as I went through it, how the hell he wrote it. What kind of research he had to have done, if he did any. I mean, the story itself is basically a very simple story, but it's all the layers that are interwoven on top of it are really something else. It boggles the mind. I mean, there are things that just kind of stand out as periphery (Bingo Pajama, unfortunately, being one of them) to the overall story, but the amount of philosophical inference and banter, the journey throughout time, perfumery culture, like, where do you find this stuff? Impressive. Utterly impressive.

The library gave me a musty, beat up hardcover edition with a missing dust cover. I’m so visually oriented that in order to better enjoy the book I printed out pictures of both the hardcover and a paperback cover too.

I really struggled while reading this book and it took me forever to read it.

I enjoyed the main love story and liked the parts that take place in ancient Bohemia much better than most of the modern era portions.

While I was reading I felt as though I was reading a series of different stories. I felt that the plot disintegrated toward the end as the author seemed to go from writing a speculative fiction novel to a combination of philosophy, science, political, and health/longevity treatise, but not in a particularly interesting or compelling manner, or with enough accuracy either. The very end did bring all the parts together, and I suspected that it would. I think that the author tried to do too much with this novel; it was as though he was working out for himself some of the mysteries of life, but not in a way that entertained or enlightened me. Parts were brilliant but for me the whole was not.

I did find interesting the main theme of avoiding death, of the search for immortality. Immortality, perfume/smell/odor, and beets, yes beets, are the main subject matter of this novel. The god Pan makes an interesting appearance.

However, I found it long and rambling and at times irritating and annoying. It was a strange book. It’s hard for me to evaluate it given what was going on in my life while I was reading it. At another time I might have appreciated it more or been even more peeved by what I consider its flaws.

I do think it can make a good book club selection though, and I did read it for my real world book club; there’s some interesting material for discussion, especially regarding the ramifications of immortality.

Edited a day later: I just downgraded this book a star. Despite moments of brilliance and many interesting parts, at best it was just an ok book for me. I struggled through it and wouldn't have finished it had it not been for my book club. While I liked the author's ambition, I didn't really like the book enough to give it 3 stars. I couldn't even be bothered to write a long, thoughtful review because I didn't want to extend the experience.

Knyga keistenybė, kaip "Hitchhiker's guide to galaxy" - love or hate. Net jei nusibosta, vis tiek love or hate - dviejų kelių nėra, nėra.

Aš visą laiką svyravau tarp love or hate. Labai juokinga ironija - BET čia pat bjaurūs seksistiniai a la girto dėdės bajeriai. Smagi istorija - BET čia pat tiek ištęsta, vis besišakojanti tai ratais kvadratais, tai neaišku kur. Kandus stilius - BET čia pat bilekiek gramatikos ir turbūt vertimo klaidų. Kaip mylėti tą knygą?? BET ir kaip nemėgti??

Siužetas plėtojasi keliom linijom:
- Karalius Alobaras iš Viduramžių bando pabėgt nuo mirties, galiausiai per visokias dvasines praktikas su žmona atranda nemirtingumo formules. Nori sukurti fancy kvepalus.
- Kvepalų imperiją valdanti šiuolaikinė šeima patiria vadybinimo sunkumų.
- Kvepalų gamintoja bando pagamint ką nors pelningo, jos padėjėja šnipinėja ir pardavinėja info kvepalų imperijai.
- Kvepalų gamintojos anūkė tūsina su vyrais, moterim, nori sukurt pelningus kvepalus ir turėt daug pinigų.

SPOILER: visos linijos susijungia (ir Alobaro iš Viduramžių, taigi jis atradęs nemirtingumą). Kvepalų nesukuria, bet taip lengva, kad visi gali bandyt: burokų žiedadulkės, jazminai, citrina. Visi miega su visais. Pasakotojas labai ironizuoja. Atrodo, lyg skaitytum Undinę, tik kad su visiškai daugiaspalve, plačiai aprėpiančia istorija.

Bučinys dar nebuvo išrastas, todėl Alobaras savo nosimi patrynė Almai nosį. (p. 24)

O kas gi čia? Jo šešėlis susirado kompanioną - kitą šešėlį, šiek tiek mažesnį, bet žmogaus. Jei mano šešėlis ne vienas, ar tai nereiškia, kad ir aš turiu draugiją? O jei tas šešėlis nutaikęs į mano šešėlį ietį, ar jo draugužis nebus ieties nukreipęs į mane, samprotavo buvęs karalius Alobaras. (p. 34)

Madam bijojo skųstis policijai, tačiau spaudai ji vis dėlto pasiskundė. O spauda su pasimėgavimu daugybę kartų perpasakojo jos skundą visai Luizianai. (p. 287)

Tirpstančio sniego melsvumo akimis į pasaulį jis žvelgė kaip smalsus meškiukas į savo tėvo meškino suktybes. (p. 140)

Jei laukiniai žvėrys mokėtų kalbėti, įdomu, ar jie kalbėtų taip, kaip kalba žvėreliai animaciniuose filmukuose? [...]
O gal žvėrys kalbėtų Hemingvėjaus kalba: trumpais, konkrečiais ir aiškiais sakiniais, kurių kiekvienas žodis tarsi glotnus, krauju permekrtas akmenėlis? [...]
Bet paklauskime jų ir pamatysime.
- Ar šiuo keliu į šiaurę nepraėjo vyras su moterimi?
Elnias papurto ragais:
- Neee.
- Moteriškė tamsi ir gundanti, vyras žilstelėjęs. Tikrai nematei jų?
- Tikrai.
O gal tu matei, - klausiame lapino, - bizantiškais drabužiais apsitaisiusią porelę, keliaujančią į Bohemiją?
- Šiandien vakarienei sukirtau narą, - neskubėdamas atsako lapinas. - Gardumėlis. Mano vertybių skalėje maistas ypač svarbus. Miške šiąnakt buvo tylu, o tyla lapinui yra gera byla. (p. 151)

Nu kaip nemylėt? BET vis tiek skaityt atsibodo :D

BET taip gražu - kad kvapo pojūtis išnyksta paskutinis, kad "praradęs regėjimo, klausos, netgi lytėjimo pojūčius, mirštantysis dar gali užuosti" (p. 222). Nežinau kiek laiko praleidau galvodama apie tai, kaip žmonės miršta, kokiose aplinkose, ką gali užuosti, kaip jiems tai virsta dangumi ar pragaru. Už tą atvertą kosmosą - +1 žvaigždutė.

İlk 100 sayfa ve son 50 sayfa dışında pek beğenmedim.
Kitapta bir karekter binyıllarca yaşıyor ve inanın bunu hissettiriyor zira kitap ilerlemiyor, sündükçe sünüyor. Bir hafta ara verdim 300. sayfadayken, öyle bitirebildim.
Klasik bir Türk filmi gbi de mutlu sonla bitiyor. Herkes muradına eriyor anacım, ben anlamadım.

I avoided Tom Robbins novels for years particularly because my old boyfriend was such a fanatic about him and even when I was deep into him, we disagreed on most literature. The way he and his pretentious 20-something arty bros talked about Robbins put me off in a big way. Lately, I've been getting multiple nudges from friends who know I've been researching olfaction so I gave in and read JP for research.

My original instinct was correct: this is a novel for the all-male tribe I call "toilet philosophers" because most of the philosophy they read was while they were on the pot. Aside from its misogyny, the lamest thing about this novel is the spiritual message clumsily tacked onto the plot and heavily underscored in the last 40 pages.

I must admit that there are some admirable aspects about JP. It is well researched and I like the playful attitude towards myth, history, perfume and food. I found the narrative arc (minus the pseudo-spirituality) well crafted and interesting.

What I cannot stand is the novel's sloppy, infantile lewdness and its utterly misogynistic treatment of women. Each and every female character is about as deep as raindrop. In many ways, this novel is like a macho version of a Jackie Collins' novel where the plot gets in the way of all the more important sex scenes and blowjobs.

Don't get me wrong, I like sex scenes and Jackie Collins. The sex scenes in JP, however, are like watching a really drunk fatso try to get his groove on as if he were James Bond. The detail with which BJs are described makes these scenes like literary money shots, but in this porn, the women are gagging to be groped by slobs, crusty old lechers, handicapped, satyrs, and so on. It's truly painful. This book had so much semen on the pages, I felt I needed to wash my hands after each time I picked it up.

And in case you think that sexual subservience can be some sort of "modern, women-choose-to-please-on-their-knees feminism," it gets better. When the would-be heroine finally gets laid, her attempts to be sexy are mocked by the narrator's painstaking description of how shamefuly ugly and ill-fitting her clothes and underwear are. Lucky for her, the handsome one-eyed Irishman is a horndog and she's the only woman in the room. Except for the fat spinster, the female characters are all led by their vaginas despite their professional ambition. And that's what turns out to be the main joke of the novel: that women have professional ambition at all.

The "lesbian" character never gets the girl she's lusted after but settles instead for becoming her best pal. Sounds modern and empowering, right? Another female character is gruesomely stung by a bee on her perineum and luckily a creepy Frenchman is present to soothe her sting. barf.

Other problems are Robbins' really bad, self-indulgent puns, mixed metaphors and wrongheaded literary elbow nudges that seem designed to show the readers how well read he is since they add nothing to the plot. They are real groaners like "a populace that was puting Descartes before des horse."

Reading this novel made me so glad I left that Robbins'-lovin dude and his horny toilet philosophizing crew behind. Tom Robbins reminds me of other writers who combine vulgarity and humor (Vonnegut, Rabelais, Chaucer, Boris Vian, Alfred Jarry) but without their soul, intelligence, political engagement and verbal finesse. Read their work instead for hotter sex scenes, finer wit and more sophisticated style.

If that cliche (is it a cliche? It's said a thousand times) were true about pictures being worth a thousand words...



This is a beet book. Robbins didn't BEAT us over the head with the beets. I was all over the beets like beets in borscht. (Hey, so were other goodreaders. Nice!)

What are words worth? William Wordsworth probably knows. I'm with Slugsworth. We try to steal Willy Wonka's chocolate recipes and the words from others. I'm gonna eavesdrop.


However, the horny goats were less experimental than a charm Aberforth Dumbledore would've performed one of his goats (too bad there probably aren't Harry Potter nerds reading this who fixated on that hardly mentioned weirdo side character as I did...).

The single most evocative visual and audio aid I could think of for this review.

However some stuff worked (the beets)... I didn't give a damn, in the end. I don't remember reaching the end. I didn't have the heart (beets are good for the heart!).

Robbins didn't make me believe that they should last forever. I didn't feel world weary from living so long because I didn't feel alive. For all the (hold on, don't speak French) joie de vivre, it was exhausting tries too hard playful. Just cut through all the crap, Mr. Robbins.

The past (particularly Keda's not wanting to burn on her husband's funeral pyre) retained a staleness that worked for me. I shouldn't say staleness... I want to say it felt like opening an old photo album that's dusty and smells dead. At least she felt like something that once was, even as she continued on.

Pan and the chick (I don't remember her name! Because she was dull)... You know what? I said all this in my American Gods review already. If their spirit wasn't enough on its own, their vampiric need for devotion from the masses wasn't gonna do it. For the sake of it? No way.

Pretty words aren't enough on their own. Beets are awesome though. I love it about history that food recipes makes me think about people long gone more than anything else. I'll think of how people thought to do that delicious thing in the first place (probably because they had to!). They should be like food. Deliciousness lasts. It came out of a real need, boredom, just because, culture, all good stuff (except for English food. What is wrong with English people? How can they put that in their mouth? You know, like what Bender says in The Breakfast Club when Molly Ringwald eats sushi?). A stream of pointless sex scenes about Pan and sirens and whatever aren't gonna say any of that like food can. And the food should be new! I don't want stale sandwiches.

The most glarin’ failure o’ the intelligentsia in modern times has been its inability to take comedy seriously.

The above Wiggs Dannyboy quote sums up the experience of my first Tom Robbins novel. It was a wild, irreverent, intellectually challenging and most of all a ‘fun’ ride, a ‘look up Chomolungma’s skirts’, a perennial search for ‘the perfect taco’, a quest for immortality and the meaning of life that tries to expose the connections between perfume, tantric sex, transcendental meditation, pagan rites and ballroom dancing ... oh! and beets.

Of our nine planets, Saturn is the one that looks like fun. Of our trees, the palm is the obvious stand-up comedian. Among fowl, the jester’s cap is worn by the duck. Of our fruits and vegetables, the tomato could play Falstaff, the banana a more slapstick role. As Hamlet – or Macbeth – the beet is cast.

The beet, or mangel-wurzel, gets the royal treatment in the novel, put on an equal footing with ancient deities and with esoteric fragrances, granted deep philosophical significance and mysterious metahysical powers. Robbins lets his exuberance fly from the very first page in singing a paean to the under-appreciated vegetable. The introduction also serves as a weeding out device for starched-collar or thin-skinned readers who might be easily offended by the satirical attacks on widely accepted atitudes and religions. Speaking for myself, the intro had the opposite effect of drawing me instantly into the story.

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finished with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The story / plot itself turned out to be almost irrelevant compared to the flow of ideas and the gleeful deconstruction of ‘serious’ literature. Priscilla the genius waitress is working in a Mexican food restaurant in Seattle and in her spare time she experiments with the ultimate perfume. Her mentor, Madame Devalier, is also working on a new perfume in New Orleans, with the help of an alluring assistant named V’lu and of a supplier named Bingo Pajama. Across the ocean, in the perfume capital of the world, Marcel ‘Bunny’ LeFever is experimenting himself with the olfactive revolution. Later in the book, the different strands meet again in Seattle at an institute researching longevity under a modern Flower Power guru named Wiggs Dannyboy and a German Nobel laureate named Wolfgang Morgenstern. If you think this was easy to follow, add an Argentinian accordionist, a secret Tibetan sect named the Bandaloop, a Saxon King named Alobar and an Indian low-caste woman named Kudra, mix in Albert Einstein and a scene borrowed from Dante’s Inferno, extend the plot to cover several centuries, include an impromptu history of perfume from the ancient to the modern times and put the cherry on the cake with the foul-smelling god of anarchy, drunkenness and promiscuity – PAN. Then you might have an idea of the epic scope of Tom Robbins’ novel.

According to Priscilla, the genius waitress, an ‘alobar’ is a unit of measurement that describes the rate at which ‘Old Spice’ after-shave lotion is absorbed by the lace on crotchless underpants, although at other times she has defined it as the time it takes ‘Chanel No. 5’ to evaporate from the wing tips of a wild duck flying backward.

Of this long list of characters, all of whom are relevant in the economy of the novel, the catalyst or core element is probably Alobar, whose timeline come first and who defines in the most simple words the eternal human dillema : sooner or later we all have to deal with the awareness of death. Alobar refuses to accept Death’s supremacy and inevitablity, setting out to find the secret of immortality:

I may be mad, but I prefer the shit of this world to whatever ambrosias the next might offer.
and,
Alobar, once king, once serf, now individual – have you heard of individuals? – free and hungry, at your service. My mission? Well, frankly, I am running away from death.

Heading East from his native Bohemia, Alobar learns that freedom of choice equates also with danger and hunger, and meets in Greece with one of the old wise ones - The Great God Pan – who adds another piece or two to the puzzle of existentialism and free will:

Come with me, Alobar, for while we must go forever in despair, let us also go forever in the enjoyment of the world.
and,
The gods have a great sense of humor, don’t they? If you lack the iron and the fizz to take control of your own life, if you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don’t be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.

Refreshed by the god’s drink and by the lusty dryads hanging around Pan, Alobar continues to head East, reaching the roof of the world where at first he seeks refuge in a Buddhist monastery, only to discover that he very much prefers the material to the spiritual life. A young Indian woman helps him to make the decision, and from this point forward they will be a couple.

Here they teach that much of existence amounts only to misery; that misery is caused by desire; therefore, if desire is eliminated, then misery will be eliminated. Now, that is true enough, as far as it goes. There is plenty of misery in the world, all right, but there is ample pleasure, as well. If a person forswears pleasure in order to avoid misery, what has he gained? A life with neither misery nor pleasure is an empty, neutral existence, and, indeed, it is the nothingness of the void that is the lamas’ final objective. To actively seek nothingness is worse than defeat; why, Kudra, it is surrender; craven, chickenhearted, dishonorable surrender.

By this point of the journey I have also became aware of a tendency towards preaching on the part of the author, but I enjoy so much his barbed style that he gets a free pass for more of the same:

If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that’s what I think. I don’t want salvation. I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.

Yay!!! for Alobar and Kudra ! Reader, be prepared for some steamy scenes of enjoying life under the majestic Chomolungma. Robbins continues to fire up his aphorism gun:

To eliminate the agitation and disappointment of desire we need but awaken to the fact that we have everything we want and need right now.

... making time for a sideswipe at those serious, gloomy, cynical high-brow authors, comparing them with Timolus, who judging the music contest between Pan and Apollo, had unhesitatingly awarded the prize to the Apollonian lyre, thereby establishing the tradition that critics must laud polish and restraint, attack what is quirky and disobedient, a tradition that endures to this day.

I would propose Robbins is deadly serious in his comedy, coming down hard on the side of Pan and decrying the ways first Christianity, and later Pure Reason (Descartes and his disciples, according to Alobar) have taught us that life is pain and suffering. In this plea, Robbins sounds to me like a later day hippie, a more articulate but equally passionate supporter of a life among flowers and unrestriced love.

The old god had endured severe setbacks in the past: the disdain of Apollo and his snooty followers, the rise of cities, the hostility of the philosophers – from Aristotle to Descartes – with their smug contentions that man was reasonable and nature defective, and, most damaging of all, the concentrated efforts of the Christian church to discredit his authority by identifying his as Satan. The arrogant attacks, the dirty tricks, the indifference had rendered him weak and invisible, and might have destroyed him altogether had not an unreasonable affection for him persisted in isolated places: hidden valleys and distant mountain huts; and in the hearts of heretics, lusty women, madmen, and poets.

The same theme of the fight between Pan and Apollo is picked up later by Priscilla and Wiggs Dannyboy in Seattle, as they discuss Flower Power and French existentialism:

-t Seems to me that the so-called happy people are the ones who are trivial. Avoiding reality and never thinking about anything important.
-tReality is subjective, and there’s an unenlightened tendency in this culture to regard something as ‘important’ only if ‘tis sober and severe. Sure and still you’re right about your Cheerful Dumb, only they’re not so much happy as lobotomized. But your Gloomy Smart are just as ridiculous. When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don’t think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin’ on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

Practising what they preach, Priscilla and Wiggs follow in the footsteps of Alobar and Kudra, learning to find happiness in self-expression and getting in touch with their animal side.  “They can have their loaf o’ warm bread, their new-mown hay. Nothin’ beats the smell of a lassie freshly laid.” exclaims Dannyboy in post-coital bliss.

Where does perfume come in, you might ask? Well, it’s complicated! and while it might have something to do with disguising the bad smell of Pan, the disappearance of dinosaurs or reaching directly into our subconscious part of our brains, I believe it is better to let the Parisian specialist, Bunny LeFever, explain.

Perfume, fundamentally, is the sexual attractant of flowers, or, in the case of civet and musk, of animals. Squeezed from the reproductive glands of plants and creatures, perfume is the smell of creation, a sign dramatically delivered to our senses of the Earth’s regenerative powers – a message of hope and a message of pleasure.
and,
I have spoken to you this afternoon of poetry and of sexual magic. Not too many years ago, the names of our perfumes bore testimony to such things. There was a popular scent called Tabu, there was Sorcery, My Sin, Vampire, Voodoo, Evening in Paris, Jungle Gardenia, Bandit, Shocking, Intimate, Love Potion, and l’Heure Bleue - The Blue Hour. Nowadays what do we find? Vanderbilt, Miss Dior, Lauren, and Armani, perfumes named after glorified tailors, names that evoke not the poetic, the erotic, the magic, but economic status, social snobbery, and the egomania of designers. Perfumes that confuse the essence of creation with the essence of money. How much sustenance can the soul receive from a scent entitled Bill Blass?

Tim Robbins is preaching to the choir in my case, and he is guilty from time to time of becoming too enamored of his debating skills, ignoring the need for pacing, character development and an actual plot, but I am real glad I discovered him through the pages of this novel, reminiscent to me of the more ‘serious’ offers of another favorite author: Christopher Moore in “Lamb” or “Sacre Bleu”. I plan to read more of Robbins’ books, and I hope they will be filled with the same extravaganza of satire and philosophy.

Here are the rest of the aphorisms that I salvaged from my mangel-wurzel journey:

If a person has an “active” life, if a person has goals, ideals, a cause to fight for, then that person is distracted, temporarily, from paying a whole lot of attention to the heavy scimitar that hangs by a mouse hair just above his or her head. We, each of us, have a ticket to ride, and if the trip be interesting (if it’s dull, we have only ourselves to blame), then we relish the landscape (how quickly it whizzes by!), interact with our fellow travelers, pay frequent visits to the washrooms and concession stands, and hardly ever hold up the ticket to the light where we can read its plainly stated destination: The Abyss.

>><<>><<

It’s been a huge adventure, an exploration of possibility, the invention of a game and the play of the game – and not merely survival.

>><<>><<

So make your perfume, my friends. Make it well. Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.

>><<>><<

Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have known all along that it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek.

>><<>><<

Theese dance she make zee blood happy, zee bones happy. I don’t know how to explain eet, but theese dance she celebrate that we are not, you know, died already. (Effecto Partido, the Argentine accordion virtuoso)



>><<>><<

Live by the heart if you would live forever!

Çok garip bir kitap okudum.Hem de her şeyiyle; anlatımıyla,konusuyla,aktarmaya çalıştığı düşünceyle,karakterlerle...
Ama benim için daha da garibi kitabı okurken hem zevk almam hem de okuması işkenceye dönüşen bir kitap olmasıydı.
Kitapla ilgili sanırım uzun bir süre hiç konuşmak istemiyorum.
-Bir insan 6 günde 432 sayfalık bir kitapla nasıl cebelleşebilir?-
-Ölüm,doğum?-
Tüm yorumumu okumak için; https://ruyakitaplik.blogspot.com/201...

This was my first Tom Robbins novel, and is still my favorite. I am reading it again because after a TR drought, I tried to read Another Roadside Attraction (my 6th TR I think) and have really not been able to catch on... So I feel like I've forgotten what it was that I like about TR and I'm getting to know him all over again.

For being my first Tom Robbins, I can see now why I started to like him: the epic style, millenia-crossing arcs, the witty metaphors, the dabbling in religious theory... I felt it all to be very refreshing, especially after spending most of my 20s reading chick novels about despair over crappy boyfriends and girl power bringing the man-of-her-dreams right to her door.

Read this book if you:
wonder how anyone can base a novel on beets and perfume,
wonder what happened to Pan,
have an imagination,
and want to laugh.

Çok zeki, çok eğlenceli ve çok absürt. Geleneksel hikaye anlatımına baş kaldıran bir üslup. Mitoloji, dinler, gelenekler ve ölüm takıntımızı eleştirmiş Tom Robbins. Çok, çok sevdim.