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RIP, Tom Robbins, 2/9/25. In 1976, everyone I knew was reading this book, passing it along, sharing jokes from it in our bars, our first but not last Robbins book. A countercultural spokesperson for a generation of boomer hippies. Funny, whimsical, stoner work I now associate with Richard Brautigan. A book from one time in my life, my early twenties.
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976; filmed 1994) is the story of a female hitchhiker name Sissy Hanshaw with enormous thumbs who visits a woman's spa in South Dakota. She's very popular at the spa because of the thumbs. But the image of a hitchhiking women with large thumbs also references R. Crumb's "Keep on Truckin'" image, too. There are (of course?) sexist elements of the book, as I recall. There's a cameo of Jack Kerouac, the hitching icon himself.
Oh, there's so much crazy, nonsensical stuff, including something about Clockworks, geological versus other kinds of time. Sissy’s gay make boss builds a fortune with Sissy as model for a time selling feminine hygiene products, though this leads to a women's revolution of sorts on his beauty ranch in the Dakotas, the Rubber Rose. And so on, as Kurt Vonnegut would write. I wouldn't guess the book was ever exactly a feminist icon, though I probably wasn't bothered by any of its problematics in my early twenties, mea culpa.
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976; filmed 1994) is the story of a female hitchhiker name Sissy Hanshaw with enormous thumbs who visits a woman's spa in South Dakota. She's very popular at the spa because of the thumbs. But the image of a hitchhiking women with large thumbs also references R. Crumb's "Keep on Truckin'" image, too. There are (of course?) sexist elements of the book, as I recall. There's a cameo of Jack Kerouac, the hitching icon himself.
Oh, there's so much crazy, nonsensical stuff, including something about Clockworks, geological versus other kinds of time. Sissy’s gay make boss builds a fortune with Sissy as model for a time selling feminine hygiene products, though this leads to a women's revolution of sorts on his beauty ranch in the Dakotas, the Rubber Rose. And so on, as Kurt Vonnegut would write. I wouldn't guess the book was ever exactly a feminist icon, though I probably wasn't bothered by any of its problematics in my early twenties, mea culpa.
