Started out brilliantly - loved the travel section and the "tributes" section was good for the bits that I knew what/who he was talking about. After that I didn't enjoy it.

This was a book I tripped over, put it back on the shelf, saw the name, and claimed it.

Haven't read any of his other writings, but I'm going to give it a go. I was entertained, amused, and because of the smorgasbook format had no problems moving quickly through the material. Being a PNWer myself, reading about the things that celebrate home is always a joy. His piece on rain won me over completely, one of the best I've ever read.

Plus, who can pass up a book that starts with a chapter called the Canyon of Vaginas??

A book that can make you laugh out loud, or break your heart in just a few words is the work of someone who deserves followers. I believe, so say I.

Some truly beautiful stories mixed in.

Firts of all I want to make clear that I love Tom Robbins. I like very much some chapters of this book, the only reason that I put 3 stars is because I don't like that much this type of books (compilation of writings).

I don't suggest this to someone that has never read Tom Robbins, just because he will make wrong impression. Some "random" articles are not enough to demostrate Robbins' genius!

On the other hand, If you are a Robbins' lover, this book will make you feel that you go for a walk with him! Give it a try!

I think I'll give this book to people who ask me for an introduction to my favorite author. Easily digestible short pieces that still sparkle with Robbins' unparalleled linguistic talents.

Tom Robbins may be my favorite author. His perspective and style are singularly gorgeous in my estimation. This collection of "other writings" was my first taste of the Robbins Quality I do love in his novels applied to real life things and it was spectacular. Of note:
Tribute To Redheads
Moonlight Whoopee Cushion Sonata
In Defiance of Gravity
What Is Art and If We Know What Art Is, What Is Politics?
Write About One of Your Favorite Things
What Is The Meaning of Life?

What a day to finish my book challenge- and what book to do it with! The reason I LOVE and HATE Tom Robbin’s is my need to look up so many meanings of words, which happened to help me considerably today, since I always want a word for the new year.

But to the book- I don’t usually like short stories and some are hard to get through, but ultimately, true to Tom Robbins. I was going to put a list of must reads but I am going to get to celebrating an incoming new year!

This is my first book of Tom Robbins and am already a fan. His love for the English language is patent in every sentence and the metaphors as surprising as drops of water in the desert. The range of topics is eclectic and they come alive effortlessly in the capable hands (or shall I say pen?) of the erudite author. Razor sharp humor to boot with, this book is a pleasure to experience.

3.5

It pains me more than you can imagine to write these next few words.

Listening to Tom Robbins’ latest offering, Wild Ducks Flying Backwards, as an audiobook, is an excruciating experience. No, not because it is read by the author, who, by his own admission, has a voice that sounds like it was wrung out of a mop. Robbins is actually not at all a bad reader for this collection of mostly non-fiction pieces, many of them travel essays, tributes, and even the odd review or two. Non-fiction sketches don’t really require much of a reader; no sustained mellifluosity, no delving into characters or acting is required.

It isn’t terrible because any of the writing is bad either. With the exception of a very young Robbins’ review of a Doors’ concert (an ode so nakedly fan-ish that when he read it, the article was prefaced and followed up with small almost embarrassed remarks most likely not included in the print version), most of the pieces stand alone as either typical Robbins or just a little below that. The short stories here are too short to really be of much note, and anyway, they aren’t particularly good or representative samples of his fiction.

And what a long pleasure a Tom Robbins novel is, like a good slow bout of lovemaking with every position, every conjunction, tried on for size, always tender, sometimes energetic. What a thrill is a short bit of Tom Robbins article, turning up in some unexpected place, like a sweet piercingly cold flute of champagne in the middle of a workday.

But what a wearying, exhausting, tiresome endurance test this collection is to read (or to listen to) straight through in long stretches. It’s rather like a long, long, loooooonnnnng dinner with a clever, sometimes witty, host who never expounds at length for any time on one subject. He may make you laugh or even think, but only in two minute bouts. If you really must own this work, do yourself a favor: Buy it in print, put it on the back of your toilet, read one item a day (or once every time you have a seat), and stretch the thing out over a month or so.

What’s nice about these writings, even better than the paper collection, is that Robbins (as in the Doors’ piece) presents this as though it were just a recorded reading out in public and not merely a literal verbalization of the text. Nearly every article has a little intro wherein he gives us just a touch of background. That’s kind of endearing throughout.

Yet this collection has no real sense of necessity or cohesion. There are Esquire portraits, reviews of concerts, the liner notes to a Leonard Cohen tribute album, a defense of the sixties, and the most surprising and shocking thing of all, commercial whoring. It seems strange that such an idiosyncratic American original like Robbins’ would stoop to advertisements, which is what his short article on drinking out of a shoe ends up being (Bergdorf Goodman being the patron in question).

The best stuff in the book appears at the very beginning and it’s Robbins’ travel writing. A curious observer of this anthropological curiosity homo homo sapiens, the author takes us out west to the Canyon of the Vaginas as well as to Tanzania and a Botswanan swamp. These are typical Robbins, wacky, wonky, funky, and deeper than he is given credit for by any number of high falutin’ critics. His recognition of the western canyon as one of that last few holy places left in America is an observation the Frommer’s crowd just won’t get.

There are times when he lapses into a kind of naive sentimentality about the African savanna as though it were Eden, the kind of rosy tinted recollection that would irk me no matter who did it and always begs the question, so why did you come back? But for the most part, Robbins lives one of my particular dreams, which is to go all over the world, print up my thoughts about the experience, then convince someone to pay me for it (and as a bonus pick up my expenses to boot).

When he turns to tributes Robbins pens a scorcher to Jennifer Jason Leigh, one of my favorite actresses, though the article is short, probably not more than three hundred words tops. It’s almost hard to believe Robbins managed to get paid for this one, which demonstrates the power of a celebrity status. That bit of reverence fits neatly with a little smooch of worship for Robbins’ obvious crush, Diane Keaton.

The other highlights include his Joseph Campbell appreciation, a scholar whose width of vision and breadth of knowledge serve as strong undergirdings for his ease of accessibility. Robbins often treads some of the same motifs and themes in his novels, and the two writers are well paired. He likewise gives Ray Kroc his due for his skill and ingenuity (if not completely for his culinary accomplishments), then comments at the end, paraphrased, well that was written twenty years ago before the dark revelations of SuperSize Me, another one of Robbins’ asides unlikely to have made it into print. His Leonard Cohen tribute album liner notes are much longer, but lack any actual quotes to back up his statements about how great Cohen’s writing is, a weakness his other critical judgments share.

Much of the rest of the book is almost instantly forgettable. A turn of phrase stands out, a jolting metaphor, a sly bit of erudition slipped in. Robbins’ poetry is rather awful, the kind of doggerel verse well meaning dilettantes throw out on occasions that seem momentous (or to draw our poor beclouded eyes to a hitherto unsung bit of minutiae). If I had to pick a sample of writing to save from this whole mish-mash it would be Robbins’ lovely little theme on kissing which is nearly as delicious as being about to kiss. It’s no surprise that one ended up in Playboy.

Ultimately, Robbins is one of those curious writers whose novels are not too divorced from his personality and that shows in these various writings. Stephen King may not spend his afternoons killing small children (I will pretend to believe that), but Robbins spends his days thinking in just the same fashion that his novels unfold, quirkily, offbeat, amusingly. There are strong pieces herein and others which will do their author no credit and would have just as well remained hidden in the back pages of the magazines where they first appeared.

I’ll just quietly await his next novel.

I hadn't read Tom Robbins in decades but remembered I extremely liked him in the 90s, so I went for the remainder of his works I hadn't digested before. Some of these short essays, poems, scripts and stories seem to (and do) come from a different era, but the author's love for words and puns still are what I Iike about him. The mention of Terence McKenna and Marshall McLuhan reminded me of my younger self. Really worth a reread today.

RIP Tom Robbins and others

https://popculturelunchbox.substack.c...

As noted in the introduction to 2005’s Wild Ducks Flying Backward, Tom Robbins “began writing his first novel in 1968 and he’s made it clear that if he’s remembered, he wants it to be for his fiction.” But that collection also made clear that Robbins was likewise a powerhouse of social commentary and comedic gonzo counter-culture journalism.

Robbins, whose most-famous novels include Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Jitterbug Perfume, has passed away at age 92.

Many people over the years have claimed that the author’s wackiness can make it tough to read an entire novel. That’s why the afore-mentioned Wild Ducks Flying Backward might be a better place to start. The large collection of stories, tributes, critiques, and “responses” to questions such as “how do you feel about America?” and “why do you live where you live?” displays his power of observation.

For example, in “Canyon of the Vaginas,” Robbins offered the kind of travel writing that I find the most helpful. Reporting from west-central Nevada, he didn’t bother with the dry facts of a Fodor’s or Frommer’s, but rather the color of place and pop-culture stories that make (or could make) any and all places relatable to the human experience. Robbins told the tale of taking the Loneliest Road in America to find some canyons, and that asking for directions from the likes of the folks he’s encountering is not an option.

“One simply does not approach a miner, a wrangler, a prospector, a gambler, a Stealth pilot, a construction sweat hog, or sandblasted freebooter and interrupt his thoughts about big, fast bucks and those forces—environmental legislation, social change, loaded dice, et cetera—that could stand between him and big, fast bucks; one simply does not march up to such a man, a man who lifts his crusty lid to no one, and ask: ‘Sir, might you possibly direct me to the Canyon of the Vaginas?’”

Unlike standard travel books, the pleasure of this piece by Robbins is in the anticipation along the journey’s path. Yes, he does eventually get to the Canyon of the Vaginas, only to tell us that the common and perhaps more well-known name of the place is North Canyon. But why would I have wanted to read about that had I known that was the final destination in his trek from Seattle to nowheresville Nevada?

Speaking of Seattle, Robbins’ take on that fine city:

“Downtown Seattle has long been my ‘stomping grounds,’ as they say, although in the past couple of years it’s lost its homey air. A side effect of Reaganomics was skyscraper fever. Developers, taking advantage of lucrative tax breaks, voodoo-pinned our city centers with largely unneeded office towers. In downtown Seattle, for some reason, most of the excess buildings are beige. Seattleites complain of beige à vu: the sensation that they’ve seen that color before.”

A few other interesting things about Robbins:

He was born in one of my favorite places: Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

His nickname as a kid was Tommy Rotten.

He attended Washington and Lee University in Virginia and worked at the college newspaper with its sports editor Tom Wolfe.

He took LSD one day in 1963 and it inspired him to quit his job at the Seattle Times.

He began to find his goofy and descriptive voice as a writer around 1967 when he wrote a concert review of The Doors.

His kids book B Is for Beer was adapted by Robbins and indie-pop master Ben Lee into a stage musical.

Others I wish to rest in peace:

Bob Uecker, age 90 from lung cancer. He was a far-from-spectacular baseball player, including a stint with the St. Louis Cardinals, who would go on to much greater fame as a funnyman on TV shows, Miller Lite commercials, and in the baseball broadcast booth.

William E. Leuchtenburg, age 102, who my favorite documentary filmmaker Ken Burns called “one of the great historians, if not the dean of American historians in the United States, for his work on the presidency.” He appeared in Burns’ series on Civil War and baseball and said in 2017 about President Donald Trump, “We really have no precedent for a chief executive with this sort of temperament—so careless about his statements, so quick to take offense.”

Marianne Faithfull, age 78. I only know her from being Mick Jagger’s girlfriend and muse in the 1960s, but she also had a career in music and film. She was the inspiration behind the Rolling Stones’ lyrics “wild horses couldn’t drag me away” in the song “Wild Horses.”

Fay Vincent, age 86 from bladder cancer. He was commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1989 to 1992—a short while but one with impact. He had just started when an earthquake hit San Francisco as the Giants and Oakland A’s were about to begin Game 3 of the World Series. The next season was delayed by a contract dispute. The first sneaking suspicions of the approaching steroid era began as he was removed in favor of Bud Selig.

Tony Roberts, age 85 of lung cancer. Roberts was Woody Allen’s sidekid city buddy in films such as Annie Hall and Play It Again, Sam, in which he was always too busy taking calls on his phone to notice anything around him, including that Allen and his wife, played by Diane Keaton, were falling for each other. He was also in Allen’s films Stardust Memories, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Radio Days.

Virginia Halas McCaskey, age 102. She was owner of the Chicago Bears, the daughter of George Halas Sr., and I always thought she was quite adorable seated high atop her stadium perch. Having a little elderly woman running one of the country’s storied hard-nosed football teams was one of the most likable things remaining in a league that gets a little harder and harder to watch each season, with yesterday’s Exhibit A being a snoozefest Super Bowl 59 victory by the unlikeably bullying Philadelphia Eagles 40-22 over the Kansas City Chiefs.