Μια ιστορία για μια κοπέλα η οποία έχει μια δυσμορφία-δύο μεγάλους αντίχειρες-που,όμως, μαθαίνει να τη "χρησιμοποιεί" για να κάνει ωτοστόπ!
Ένα (ακόμα) σουρεάλ, μαγικό, αλλά και "λογικό μέσα στην τρέλα του" βιβλίο από τον Robbins. Ένα βιβλίο που μιλά για αυτούς τους "διαφορετικούς" ανθρώπους, για όλους όσους προσπαθούν να μάθουν ποιοι πραγματικά είναι (ή να ξεχάσουν ποιοι είναι), για την ελευθερία, για τον έρωτα (σε διάφορες μορφές).
Ο Robbins μας θυμίζει ότι μπορούμε να γελάσουμε με ο,τιδήποτε και πως η σοφία κρύβεται ακόμα και σε "ανάλαφρα", μικρά πράγματα.
Απολαυστικότατο.

I have SUCH conflicting feelings about this book.

I guess I'll start here. Tom Robbins is an amazing writer. This is the main reason I am so frustrated and want to like this book more than I do. It's funny, it's witty, it's captivating, and I couldn't put it down.
The reason I can't like this book as much as I want to is simply the subject matter combined with Robbins' approach to writing about these topics. An all-girl ranch housing many lesbian relationships, all to be thrown out and taken that they weren't enough and that the girls needed "the opposite to complete them" really threw me off. There is a heavy hand of a man writing a book about women that he does not understand. I wish that I could credit all of it to that the book was written 4o some years ago, but there is still more to it than that.

In the end, I'm glad I read this book. What I previously described was select sections of the book but I felt that it was a prominent enough theme for me not to be able to overlook it. I have never read anything like this book, and if you read it (please do so I am not alone), share my struggle. I do think that in the end, it's worth the experience of reading it.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm supposed to love this book/author. But mostly, this book read like a frat guy's fantasy about women.
Have fun reading it for yourself, though. I'm not nearly as clever as Tim Robbins.

ha ha ho ho and hee hee

Tim Robbins is an ASS. He is a creative literary genius and he throws it in your face all throughout this book. You will walk away from this novel not only because it is gross, (or because you have pieces of Tim Robbin's genius on your face), but also because you wont be able to figure out why someone so apparently gifted would write about this trivial crap. It will stump you for days, and on the fifth day you will realize that TR is just what he appears to be...a gifted and obscenely talented ASS. The juxtaposition of graphic gross-yam pudding-while-balling with-old-chinese-men-sex and the brilliant and enlightened way in which TR philosophizes is maddening. Its worth reading- its entertaining at least. The basic plot is bullshit...buuuuut read between the lines. Snort between the lines if you need to. Its the only way to "get it." Of course, if you really love goats and metaphors about dirty greek deities and non-stop phallic references and explicit but pseudo-lesbianism, you will not need to preform the aformentioned snorting. Actually, all you need to do is read some Thoreau and then visit your local "adult" bookstore. You will get the same effect. If however, the book begins to bug you and you cant figure out why and yet you cannot put it down......snort.

What is the love cry of an angel food cake? That's not the only thing at which I rolled my eyes, but if anyone can explain that, I will bake an angel food cake and ship it to you any where in the U.S. In the winter given this summer.

Who has two thumbs and is a feminist? THIS GUY!!!

"The author isn't altogether certain that there is any such thing as exaggeration. Our brains permit us to utilize such a wee fraction of their resources that, in essence, everything we experience is a reduction."
Robbins is a truly singular writer. A whacked out, enlightened, gleefully grotesque, and tender-hearted writer. This book was a joy to read, even when it wandered away from itself, indulging in philosophy or vulgarity or both at the same time, it was always good to hold, and it's pages turned slowly but joyfully. The story itself, in the end, takes a back seat to the telling of it, but what a telling! A song, both ancient and modern and thoroughly American, sung 'round a campfire, with the sounds of gunfire, tractor trailers, and bird songs perfuming the air.

I did not like this book. Forget liking the characters, I didn’t even believe the characters. It’s silly without being funny. It’s sexual without being sexy. It meandered in a way that made me feel the minutes of my life ebbing away. As a bonus, it’s layer upon layer of problematic.

I’m confused about the positive reviews because it feels like I read a completely different book than the one they are referencing.

Beautiful, meandering prose.

Oh god, how I wish this aged well. Upon this second read, I realized just how much of an influence Tom Robbins has had on my writing. The winks, the tangents, the pure silliness of trying to make any bold statement on this floating rock of a planet where we’re reading these books. I expected to come back to Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, five years, three continents, and one heck of a self-discovery later, and enjoy the wild ride of poetic prose and cosmic absurdism that Robbins injects into all of his books. But geez, it’s hard to get past the misogyny and, let’s just say, outdated terms of the first few chapters. If some names could be changed and stale remarks on every-kind-of-marginalized groups could be scrubbed away, we’d be left with a fun story and some delightful passages about time and magic and poetry. Unfortunately, in order to sample these nuggets of gold we have to mine through the cringe and, let’s just say, not-so-PC bits. Sigh. This will not stop me from going through all his works, once again, in order! So long as the international situation is desperate, as usual, I will have a soft, aching spot for Robbins and Kerouac and all the nauseatingly privileged men who wrote the books that underscored my backpacking adventures. Sigh.

You know that road trip you've always wanted to take? (Maybe you've taken it already and if so, I am jealous of you.) You know that road trip you're always planning, the one where you drive a beat-up, gorgeous, car full of books and old clothes, and mix tapes and takeout containers and random souveneirs of americana, through america, maybe by yourself or maybe with one or a few of the people you love most in the world? And you take polaroids of yourself and your wear ripped up jeans and drive barefoot and wear big hunter s. style shades and hang one foot out the window sometimes and sometimes when traffic is bad you park the car by the side of the road and turn the music up real loud and dance until the traffic dies down and find beautiful, hidden places that you can't get to by plane or bus or chartered tour, those places in america (you know they're there) accessible only by Really Awesome Roadtrip? And you stay up driving all night and pointing out stars through the windshield and sometimes you have long conversations where you get honest and earthy and grounded and dangerous in a way you can't get except in a car, on a road trip, somewhere halfway into America, and sometimes you have sex in the car, late at night in parking lots or in the afternoon with summer making the leather seats sticky and making car-smell and body-smell the same thing and afterwards you go the a dairy queen by the side of the road and buy milkshakes and drink them giggling like kids getting away with something? And you drive over mountains that you think you maybe won't ever find your way out of and through states like Wyoming where there's nothing but the road and the sky and you feel so gloriously small that you completely forget what you look like? And you meet gorgeous, prophetic, fictive strangers and have incredibly intense experiences with them and feel like you're in a movie and novel and a rock song and love them perfectly because you know you won't ever see them again? And get, finally, to the other side of the country, tired and sore and stained and achy and grouchy and just totally, totally transcendent, and feel that you understand yourself in a way you always wanted to understand yourself, but never knew how to get to before?


This book is like that road trip.

[Significantly cheaper, too.]