First and foremost annoying

Having finished this funny little book I am trying to decide if it is ok to recycle a whole book. I can't think of anyone I can give it to in good faith, and I can't ever imagine reading it again. It has nice passages, and with out the Chink (literally, that's what he's called) I might have been able to deal with it a little bit better, but on the whole it's kind of a waste of paper to me.

Um, okay. I know people dig on Tom Robbins. And I know that his work was formative for a lot of folks (shit, Dune, which I recently finished reading for the tenth time was formative for me, I've got no pride here). But ever since I decided to read Skinny Legs and All immediately after reading Still Life with Woodpecker, I realised that—to me, at least—one of his books was as good as another.

Constant themes: The Mysteries of Womanhood, finding your place with the earth, ever the traveller, damn the man, moon blood, cunts and sexin', Everything is Connected and ain't we quirky.

I didn't even skim The Mysterious Island, which I hated with a passion. Yet, I totally started skimming this one about halfway through, because I'd read it before, just with a different coat of paint.

Her gün ve her gün durmadan ve sömürürcesine Tom Robbins okuyabilirim. İnanılmaz özgün, tuhaf bir hikaye anlatıcısı o ve beni büyülüyor. Bazen anlattığı hikayeden kopup bambaşka bir konuya geçiyor ve okuyucunun sıkılabileceğini umursamadan, sanki o an canı ne isterse onu yazıyor:) Bu kendinden emin ve cesur tavrı seviyorum.


Bu kitap, kovboy kızlar, feminizm, aydınlanmalar, kirli yaşlı adamlar, zaman, vücut kokusu, seks, psikanaliz ve özgürleşme hakkında bir hikaye. Ama çoğunlukla başparmaklarla ilgili:) Aynı zamanda, kendine değer verme, kendini sevme, doğayı koruma, hoşgörü ve alçak gönüllülüğe uzanan çeşitli konulara ışık tutuyor. Ve ‘yolda da olsan anda kal, bırak hayat bildiği gibi gelsin diyor:)

Kitabı rastgele bir sayfadan açabilir ve ilgi çekici bir şey, bir ders bulabilirsiniz:) ve sıradanlıktan uzak ayrıca açık fikirliyseniz çok sevebilirsiniz

Tom Robbins is a pure stylist. In Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, it’s almost guaranteed that every few pages there’ll be a description that’s incredibly unique and accurate. Robbins paints a slew of eccentric characters—the main girl, Sissy Hankshaw, who hitchhikes around with giant thumbs; the Countess, a gay tycoon who has his own line of feminine hygiene products; the happily misnomered Chink, who would rather throw rocks at people than give them the enlightenment they think he has to offer; a band of cowgirls; and even the author himself, appearing as a doctor who might just be crazier than the people he’s supposed to diagnose—interacting in oft-amusing situations.

Oh, right, I gave the book one star…

The problem is that these aspects just aren’t enough. There are maybe three minor plot points that occur within the first hundred pages. You can pull that off for part of a novel, maybe for an entire short story, but not for a whole novel. I need some story with the style. A hundred pages later and the trend hadn’t changed. If anything, it had worsened, with large sections of philosophy (on religion, politics, drug use, free love promiscuity, etc.), but still little plot. Throw in a large chunk of sexuality that seemed more like the author’s personal desires for lesbianism and the veneer of style kept peeling away to reveal little else.

I’m not the fastest reader in the world, but I’m certainly not the slowest, and after a month with Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, I was only two-thirds of the way through. Regardless of what other criticism I can give, I never felt the urge to return for more than a half-dozen pages at a time. Apparently books are meant to be read, but I just wasn’t returning to Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, so I just left it be. One star.

This book made me forget how to read and I hate it. Loved still life with woodpecker though!

Robbins' paean of cheeky irreverance was published in 1976. There are not so veiled references to Nixon, Gerald Ford, hippy communes, LSD, and the Hare Krishnas. That said, the issues are still familiar: gender inequality, political hypocrisy, repression of non-conformity, to name just a few.

Robbins skewers feminity; extols Feminism. His protagonist, Sissy, has one extraordinary aberration. Her thumbs are huge. Mama frets. How will Sissy find a husband with such an abnormality? Sissy adapts. She cultivates a unique gift — for hitchhiking (of course!). In New York she works as a model for (literally) a douche magnate; in South Dakota she meets the cowgirls of the Rubber Rose Ranch. The ranch begins as a beauty spa. It's manager Miss Adrian confides: “'What really sets us apart, however, from the Maine Chance and all other spas is our program of intimate conditioning....When a woman comes to a beauty spa, she does so to make herself sexually attractive to men....[O]ur client is a mateless bird in need of preening.'” (p.119) A cowgirl revolt will put an end to all of that.

In one of his most successful riffs, Robbins casts the Pentagon, Petroleum and the President as an unholy alliance secretly anticipating the demise of the whooping crane while pretending to champion its protection. It's a P.R. ploy designed to blame the cowgirls, destroy their resistance, and insulate the President from blame.

Robbins rants against equating the conventional and the normal. Sissy's husband Julian insists Sissy view her thumbs as a deformity. She must strive toward normality rather than adapt. A character named Dr. Robbin (a.k.a. The Author) contends: “'Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization. It's rare to discover someone who hasn't been infected, to greater or lesser degree, by that neurosis....I believe Sissy should be protected from normality. Freed from the center and left to return to the edge. Out there, she's valuable. In here, she's just another disturbing noise in the zoo.'” (p.242)

Another convention Robbins questions is the lockstep tyranny of time: schedules, day planners, clocks and calendars arbitrarily dictate an unexamined notion of “progress.” His argument is literary as well as literal. He effects unheralded time shifts in his narrative and inserts non sequitur whimsies (e.g. an argument between the thumb and the brain).

Robbins aims his barbs at a culture of mediocrity as well. He dismisses Sissy's extravagant thumbing technique at one point: “It was flashy but there was no real joy in it, no substance or spontaneity. It was what is known as a virtuoso performance. It lacked soul.” (p.88) Later, he compares a featureless landscape to a “style identical to that of rural weekly newspapers throughout the middle of the nation: blandness in such high concentration as to become finally poisonous.” (p.216)

Robbins is a brilliant writer, but he pours his efforts into a chaparral of clever one-liners, mischievous puns, and syntactic acrobatics. (Who can resist a line like: “the gunfight at the I'm OK/You're OK Corral” to describe the confrontation between Dr. Robbins and the censorious Dr. Goldman?) As a novel, this book never coheres. I never cared about any of the characters. The one question of substance that he poses — the contradiction between freedom and happiness — is never explored.

Over 40 years have gone by since Robbins wrote this book. His incendiary libertarianism feels self-indulgent. The raunchy sex scenes are distractions. His manichaean mythology of the Paternalistic vs. the Feminine? Please. The System with a capital “S”? These are anachronisms that stuck out like, well, sore thumbs. Dr. Robbins exhorts his patients: “'Don't be outraged, be outrageous!'” (p.173) We have become too connected to each other to rally behind this battle cry for individuality. Retreat to a commune or a cave is not feasible.

I read this book because it was the selection of a local book club. I slogged through it, pausing frequently to lament the number of pages remaining to be read. At the end of it all, I felt like many precious hours had been stolen from my life. Not something I'd recommend to anyone.

I think this book can be best summarized by quickly scanning the list of reviews; people love it or they loathe it.

Me? I loved it.

I'll admit that I might be biased in favor of this book simply because I have a fairly unusual set of opposable digits myself. You see, first and foremost, this is a story about thumbs. Well, its is a story about thumbs, cowgirls, body odor, literary theory, feminism, epiphanies, dirty old men, the end of time, sex, psychoanalysis and liberation. But it's mostly about thumbs.

Tom Robbins is a damn good writer, and he knows it. At times, he seems to forget that he's telling a story at all, and instead delves into some other topic that has momentarily caught his interest. In a way, it's almost infuriating the way he can write about whatever he pleases without the slightest worry that you'll put the book down. Then again, you *won't* put the book down. If you have an open mind and are patient with his beautiful but sometimes nonsensical ramblings, there's a good chance you'll love this book as much as I do.

2,5/5

Okumamın en uzun sürdüğü Tom Robbins kitabıydı. Öz itibarıyla aynı muzırlık ve bilgelik karışımına sahip olduğu için, tanıdık Robbinsle sohbet etmek her zaman çok zevkli. Ve aslında, hayatı anladığımız ve yorumladığımız yerden kendimi en yakın hissettiğim insanlardan birisi kendisi. Yine de edebi kurgu olarak en zayıf bulduğum romanı oldu ve okurken bunun Robbins'in ilk romanlarından biri olabileceğini düşünüp durdum; ki ikinci yayımladığı kitabıymış. Sevgiler genç Robbins, içinde kaynayan pancar suyunun rengini kaybetmeden yaş aldığını görmek keyifliydi.

Genç Robbins'le tanışıp, aynı muzırlığı daha da yetenekli bir halde tertip edeceğini bilerek ayrılıyor ve popo sallıyorum kendisine.

Two stars for the story but the words are worth 97 stars.

“Water- the ace of elements. Water dives from the clouds without parachute, wings or safety net. Water runs over the steepest precipice and blinks not a lash. Water is buried and rises again; water walks on fire and fire gets the blisters.”

There is one poignant scene in Tom Robbin's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, where a sage tells the main protagonist that mankind will never be free unless it understands that there as to be a stop to consumption and greed. If not the paradoxical forces of nature will intervene.

Judging by global warming and the pandemic I guess we haven't learnt much. May I remind you that this book was published in 1976.

The plot is about Sissy, a girl born with over-sized thumbs, which she uses for hitchhiking. On her travels she meets a tycoon called the countess, who deals with douche fresheners, who uses her as a model. One day he decides to film a commercial on his all female cowboy health spa and needs Sissy to take part. Eventually this leads to rebellion and whooping crane rustling.

Yes the plot is bizarre but Even Cowgirls get the Blues is a highly philosophical work. Trust me, there are many complex issues at at,

The central theme is freedom. A lot of the characters want it. For Sissy hitchhiking gives her the movement she craves. The girls on the ranch want autonomy from males. Sissy, although married , starts up relationships with the head cowgirl Jellybean, their sexuality is being unleashed as well. Throughout the book we readers get glimpses of characers wanting and savouring freedom.

The apex is when sissy spends time with the sage aka The Chink (yes it sounds racist but once your read the book you'll understand the meaning behind the term) who launches into a philosophical discussion about time, religion, the paradox's of life and the notion of stability. As I stated before, we have to be free in order to discover ourselves but that means we have to be the agent of change.

One cannot bypass the fact this is an eco-fable. The whooping crane subplot helps bring out the fact that we are destroying the planet for our selfish gains and the repercussions will be big.

For a book that was published 44 years ago it is way ahead of it's time and these philosophies still make sense today. The more controversial scenes involving explicit lesbian sex and gang-bangs are more a product of their time but probably back then this could be seen as transgressive.

Stylistically Robbins is brilliant. Puns galore, witty double entendres and many meta moments litter the book. In a way think of a more accessible and streamlined Pynchon.

I'm surprised that people do not really mention Tom Robbins. All I can say is that I was impressed and this is definitely not the last book I'll read by him.