4,5*γι αυτο το όνειρο , απ' το οποίο δεν δες να ξυπνήσεις .

Hm. What to say about this guy . . . this is totally a guy you either love or hate, and yet I find myself strangely ambivalent. There are some things i really appreciated about the book and his style, and there are some things I really didn't care for. Whatever one says about this writer, the first is that he is a complete iconoclast of Rabelasian proportion. He ignores pretty much every rule that fiction writers generally, in good taste, abide by. And to an extent that's quite refreshing. He's incomparably clever at turning a phrase. His imagination is boundless. Through the first 50 or so pages I was very skeptical, but then he got me, and the reading went much quicker. I also have a lot of appreciation for his message, and that message is consistent with the manner in which he writes. I can therefore conclude that Tom Robins is simply writing who he is, and that's pretty much all one can ask of any author . . .

That being said, here come the complaints. I guess my biggest complaint was the fact that the novel's pull depended so much upon the author's cleverness. The characters all have roughly the same sense of humor (which I suspect is very much like Mr. Robins' own) and I felt they could have been interchanged with one another into different roles and it wouldn't have made a difference. And I guess that's it - I was so aware of the writer and his tongue in cheek (or tongue in ass?) wit that the characters remained at a distance from me, as if they were on a stage, and when the novel stalled (which was not often) I was painfully aware of this distance. At those points they seemed like characters from a Beckett or Pirandello play wandering about in search of direction. Robins is perhaps too overtly the master puppeteer with his many strings dangling from quick moving fingers . . .

The big question for me when I finished the novel was 'Why did I not connect on an emotional level with the characters?' The novel is wonderfully humorous, the author's aim is admirable, and he treats his characters with a decided tenderness; yet despite this I was left feeling a little aloof. And I think it was because of one thing: his characters don't change. They don't struggle. They struggle, but they don't seem to struggle as much with the reasons why they do things. They struggle with two things: bills and cosmic issues. In that order. I might have loved this novel ten or fifteen years ago.

Which leads me to my third and final criticism. This novel reminded me at times of Ayn Rand. Whom I despise. It also reminded me of BF Skinner, who wrote perhaps the worst novel (Walden II) in the history of novel writing. How can I compare someone like Tom Robins to Ayn Rand? How can I compare the leaping imagination of Tom Robins with the clinical sensibility of Skinner? Why they seem like total opposites! Ah but they are, in a way, the same. You see to Ayn Rand things like characters are always subservient to her greater (and stupid) purpose of telling all people to act like butt-holes, and then they will be better off. And though Tom Robins has quite the opposite message, his characters are still subservient to his ideas, and I tend to think that characters need a little more elbow room than that. Characters are people too, after all.

I was going to give this book 3 stars, based on my enjoyment level, but then I realized you know what? I've never read a book like this before and it definitely got me to thinking. Thinking of the serious, head-scratching variety. I can't say I'm going to rush out and buy his oeuvres, but I will pick one up the next time I'm feeling guilty about loafing about or surfing too much. And for that? 4 stars for you Tom Robins!

Fucking terrible.

An immortality fable thoroughly leavened with pseudo-spiritual bullshit, goofball names (Bingo Pajama! Huxley Anne and Wiggs Dannyboy! V'lu Jackson! The Bandaloops!), nonsensical descriptions ('Above Seattle, the many-buttocked sky continued to grind', 'The shaman grinned like a weasel running errands for the moon'), a black character dat sho 'nuff be talkin' like dis, and a yucky, hairy, hornball lesbian - Careful, Priscilla - she's going to corner you and eat your pussy!

At one point, this actually happens.

Worth reading - now I know not to read anything else:

1. Written by Tom Robbins

2. Recommended to me by the person who told me I should read Tom Robbins.