One of the reasons I adore Tom Robbins' books is that I can never tell where he is going with something, but I'm sure it will intertwine in a way that makes me feel like I should have known all along. He is pulling the wool over my eyes, and I'm blissfully blind and savoring every paragraph until the conclusion.

This book doesn't take that journey as it's a collection of his short writings. The travel writing is short and doesn't invoke the images of the places like it does with images of the characters he develops. The country songs are cute and the profiles are witty. It lacks the charm that his novels evoke, but just like his fiction, you have to pay attention to each sentence and often reread them for fear that you've missed a metaphor or quotable line. My personal favorite was "In Defiance of Gravity." I'd be curious what would strike you.

I'm reminded with every Tom Robbins I read as to why I write, and travel, and write, having picked up this particular gem from Crow Bookshop in Burlington, Vermont. Robbins sums it up best:
"What Tom Wolfe and the other champions of naturalistic writing would have us accept as realistic content is actually the behavior patterns of a swarm of fruit flies on one bursting peach in an orchard with a thousand varieties of strange fruit stretching beyond every visible horizon. Granted, those fruit flies are pretty damn interesting, but from a standpoint of 'reality' they are hardly the only game in town."
...notwithstanding, I hasten to add, my utter admiration of realistic champions Tom Wolfe and Don Delillo, say. The best perch from which to spy all that is, is perhaps not a perch at all. Or should I say peach? Rather it could consist of a perennial zooming in and out, pulmonary, halfway between arterial and etherial. Our being here is a miracle, no less. To attempt to describe it is to touch a divinity's morning breath. Hello you!

I enjoyed hearing his poetry but some short writings were kinda boring

Tom Robbins is my oddball muse. I LOVED Jitterbug Perfume, and I'm looking for some reading to shake up my traditional ruts and so I came back to Robbins.

I really enjoyed this book. I love Robbins' prose, his sharp wit and cutting-edge literary devices. This is the kind of book I want to take to a college class and pick apart line by line. Instead, I settled for reading various passages aloud to my family who rolled their eyes at me when I yelled, "Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?!"

This is non traditional in the sense that it's not a series of short STORIES. It's more a collection of a assorted short writings: some stories, some poems, some songs, a couple magazine articles, an op-ed piece or six. It was very different. I had a hard time understanding some sections simply because I am young and didn't understand the allusions of the 70s/80s/90s phenomenon. I think this would be five stars were I a few generations older. As it stands, it doesn't age well. Well, some of it doesn't age well.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't recommend this to many. It's very odd, which I greatly appreciated, but I doubt many others would. Good for the literary type, who are more interested in language than in story.

Warnings:
Drugs: Implied, not explicit.
Sex: The first story is titled, "Canyon of the Vaginas." So. Yeah.
Violence: None.
Language: Occasional.

Like many writers Tom Robbins got his start writing for newspapers and magazines. Wild Ducks Flying Backward: The Short Writings of Tom Robbins highlights “occasional forays across the inky divide into journalism.” There are travel articles from Florida, Indonesia, Tanzania, Botswana, and the “Canyon of the Vaginas” in Nevada,

There are tributes to The Doors, Joseph Campbell and William Moyers, Ray Kroc, Leonard Cohen, Diane Keaton, Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh, Terrance McKenna, Thomas Pynchon, and Debra Winger.

There are some random musings, a few art and music critiques, some stories, poems, and song lyrics.

As to be expected Robbins was bombastic, hyperbolic, outrageous, outlandish, and fun.

Μία σειρά σύντομων κειμένων, ταξιδιωτικών άρθρων, σχολίων και ποιημάτων. Το μόνο που μου άρεσε είναι το χιούμορ του Ρόμπινς, που είναι παρόν σε κάθε βιβλίο του. Προτιμώ όμως τα μυθιστορήματά του.

I read this for a book discussion group, and the only copy available from the library was on audio. I listen to audio all the time in the car, so that was not a problem; however, Tom Robbins read it himself, and his voice is somewhat soporific. I never wanted to fall asleep, but my mind sometimes wandered. He couldn't keep my attention. Best part of the book is that he does have a fantastic ability to turn a phrase. I would have liked the hard copy to mark them, because by the time I got to the book group, I naturally couldn't remember the choicest bits. Recommend reading hard copy.

A must-read for Tom Robbins' fans.

I recall being astounded by the creativity of Robbins' "Even cowgirls get the blues" and "Another Roadside Attraction," which I read in my American Lit course at Carleton U. Fiction could be this? How did he so skillfully suspend disbelief?
What I failed to appreciate, and has been brought home so fully in this collection of his writings, is his mastery as a stylist. The metaphor sings, offers a symphony of meaning. He also brings a new cadence to philosophical musings: from Aristotle to Robbins.
Some of these articles were published in popular media; others seemingly just for his amusement. They vary: travel articles (Canyon of the Vaginas), Tributes (The genius Waitress); Stories, poems and lyrics; musings and critiques (The Desire of his object) and Responses. There is some marvelous writing here! Dip in and enjoy the water!

Some particular bon mots:
"The Doors. The musical equivalent of a ritual sacrifice, and amplified sex throb, a wounded yet somehow elegant yowl for the lost soul of America, histrionic tricksters making hard cider from the apples of Eden while petting the head of the snake" p 56

Homage to Joseph Campbell: "If 'the proper study of man is man,' then mythology is the lens through which man is properly examined. Yet most of us, including the ostensibly well-educated wouldn't know a myth from a Pentagon press release. We've been taught to equate 'myth' with 'lie.'
"In actuality, myths are neither fiction not history. Nor are most myths—and this will surprise people—an amalgamation of fiction and history. Rather , a myth is something that never happened but it always happening. Myths are the plots of the psyche. They are ongoing, symbolic dramatizations of the inner life of the species, external metaphors for internal events.
"As Campbell used to say, myths come from the same place dreams come from. But because they're more coherent than dreams, more linear and refine, they are even more instructive. A myth is the song of the universe, a song that, if accurately perceived, explains the universe and our often confusing place in it." p 63

"the Genius Waitress": "She reads men like a menu and always knows when she's being offered leftovers or an artificially inflated souffle." p 69

On Ray Kroc "the franchise Frankenstein" McDonalds: with McDonald's, they're secure. That's the fly in the Egg McMuffin. Rather, the fly is that there never is a fly in an Egg McMuffin. The human spirit requires surprise, variety, and risk in order to enlarge itself. Imagination feeds on novelty. As imagination emaciates, options diminish; the fewer our options, the more bleak our prospects and the greater our susceptibility to controls. The wedding of high technology and food service has produced a robot cuisine, a totalitarian burger, the standardized sustenance of a Brave New World.
..."so wha if democracy tends to sanctify mediocity and McDonald's represents mediocrity at its most sublime.... Here they are at the heart of the matter, reductive kitchens for a classless culture that hasn't time to dally on its way to the next rainbow's end." p 72-3

On Leonard Cohen: "there is evidence that [Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case, you're wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person's biochemical sky more pyrotechnically than any deep abiding attachment, so an unlikely, unexpected burst of linguistic imagination will usually reveal greater truths than the most exacting scholarship. In fact, the poetic image may be the only device remotely capable of dissecting romantic desire, let alone disclosing the hidden mystical essence of the material world."
"It is a voice raked by the claws of Cupid, a voice rubbed raw by the philosopher's stone. A voice marinated in kirschwasser, sulfur, deer musk, and snow; bandaged with sackcloth form a ruined monastery; warmed by the embers left down near the river after the gypsies have gone."
... "Nobody can say the word 'naked' as nakedly as Cohen. He makes us see the markings where the pantyhose have been." p 79

The problem with a collection of short pieces is that each was intended to be read on its own, to be cogitated by itself, not as one in a series consumed during a literary binge... which is how most people are conditioned to go about reading a book. At least a novel. And the people reading this book are novel-readers, fanboys and fangirls hungrily lapping up every last scrap of Robbins's writing that they can find... having exhausted the novels and the memoir, this is the last scrap they shall find.

I admit, this book has mostly been a binge for me, and the good stuff I appreciate less as a result. Some of the celebrity stuff and the art criticism were not to my taste (the very idea of serious art criticism is abhorrent to me--it's all pompous bullshit. weaving a tapestry out of farts is the phrase that comes to me. I probably inadvertently stole it from Tom Robbins) and I've never been more than half on board with Robbins's philosophical views so some of the essay material was tedious. But in a collection of such disparate works, one can't expect to love every single item. All in all, the good-to-not-good ratio was... not bad.

I've known about Robbins since the 80s, but never could bring myself to try one of his books – he was marketed in the 80s as a sort of hip new Vonnegut, or Hunter Thompson without the drugs, which I didn't quite trust (being a big fan of both Vonnegut and Thompson). I found this at a charity sale and thought that it might be a good way to try him out.

My instincts were right. Reading Robbins' prose feels like sitting in a bar listening to a slightly drunk guy monologuing for no reason other than that he loves to hear himself talk. Which is great for him, but it's not necessarily a good time for me. I won't rate it since I didn't get past the first couple of pieces, but my curiosity has been satisfied, and we shall not speak of this again.

Tom Robbins' books are so unfailingly fun, so spectacularly gymnastic in their use of language, that I've often found myself wondering how much of him can be found in his work. Is Robbins the man, in other words, as playful as his writing? Wild Ducks Flying Backward is an answer in the affirmative. There's not much of substance here – it's a slim collection of previously published essays and musings (on art, food, and celebrity, mainly) – but the linguistic somersaults and rhetorical backflips are on full display, and for the first time I could see how Robbins' personality becomes refracted through his words. It's not the ideal introduction to his work (start with any of his novels instead), but for people who already know (and love) his stuff, it provides a fun glimpse of a different side of the man.