Skinny Legs and All

Brilliant. Like all of Tom Robbins’ books, so hard to succinctly describe (and understand the blurb offhand) but once you’ve read it, you realise that it actually encapsulates everything so well. Very much enjoyed this!

Even though I grew a bit tired of this towards the last 100 pages, the fact that half of the main characters were objects like a spoon, a sock, a can of beans, a vibrator, and a stick, and it didn’t annoy the shit out of me = 3.5 rounded up.

I’m very ambivalent about this book. Skinny Legs and All is a dense, intricate spiral of a story with funny characters but serious messages. However, Tom Robbins’ style grates on me a little bit. There’s nothing egregious about it, but maybe I’m just getting less patient with purpler prose as I approach the ripe old age of 26. In any event, I appreciate and respect this book, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to.

Skinny Legs and All follows Ellen Cherry Charles, a small-town Virginian woman, as she grows older and wiser in New York City. Owing to her crazy fundamentalist uncle and estranged art-nouveau husband, not to mention her employment at a restaurant owned by an Arab and a Jew, Ellen finds herself adjacent to all sorts of events related to the tension in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine.

It’s also about a Dirty Sock, Can of Beans, and Dessert Spoon who join up with an ancient Painted Stick and Conch Shell to make their way to Jerusalem and await the coming of the Third Temple.

There’s a great deal of allusion here, Biblical and otherwise, and it’s easy to get lost down the rabbithole. The plot doesn’t move forwards so much as spiral around and around the drain. The main focus seems to be on Ellen’s struggle to redefine herself after separating from Boomer. She was supposed to be the artist, the hip and trendy participant in New York’s cultural scenes. Then Boomer, the welder who couldn’t see the point in art, suddenly finds himself caught in the maelstrom, while Ellen watches from the sidelines and finds her own inspiration and direction drying up.

Meanwhile, the anthropomorphized household articles are on a quest of their own, in a sideplot that is so bizarre I can’t do it justice. Ultimately I’m not sure it ever really comes to fruition—it’s fun, I guess, but it never held my attention for too long. I feel like Robbins is just having fun riffing off these characters he created, while also playing around in the sandbox of Middle Eastern history and mythology. And if that’s what he wanted to do, fair enough.

As far as the commentary on the Middle East goes: this novel predates September 11, 2001. I couldn’t help but fixate on this fact and wonder how it would be different if Robbins had written it ten years later. There is an atmosphere of optimism even amidst all the strange and sometimes upsetting things that happen, as if Robbins believes that humanity might possibly just manage to muddle through this all. The Middle East is an appropriate focal point for exploring our species’ foibles because of how it is the birthplace both of Abrahamic religions and so much strife in the contemporary world—how can a place named for peace be the centre of so much conflict? This contradiction proves to drive the most interesting moments of the book.

Yet for all its intensive soul-searching and intriguing commentary on religion, Skinny Legs and All strikes me as ultimately a disappointing and empty book. It’s nearly five-hundred pages of rumination on why humans band together with common beliefs and then proceed to be massive dicks to the rest of humanity. And none of what Robbins says about religion is really all that original or thoughtful—he says it very well, of course, but if you’ve read any critiques of or apologies for organized religion, you’re already going to be familiar with these themes.

What redeems the book, if anything, is Ellen. I enjoyed reading about her, sympathizing with her, and even being annoyed with her sometimes. Robbins gives Ellen sexual agency in a way that many male authors fail to do with their women characters—Ellen has a healthy internal and external sex life. The sexuality of women and the way our society and religions police it is one of the pillars of Robbins’ critique of organized religion, of course—hence the allusions to Jezebel and Salome and the veil dance that comprises the entire structure of the narrative. Whereas I wasn’t that impressed by the overall commentary on religions, I did appreciate this facet.

This is the third in a trio of books lent to me by a friend (n  Gould’s Book of Fishn and n  Sweet and Viciousn being the other two). I think I enjoyed the ride that was Sweet and Vicious most, but Skinny Legs and All is probably the best book of the three. Although it took too long to read for what little reward I got from it, I can still appreciate. For me this book is an example of how literature is like art—sometimes you know something is important, even though it doesn’t really speak to you on an emotional level. It’s intellectually satisfying, even though viscerally you’re left wanting something else, something different. This won’t be everyone’s reaction, of course, and I’m sure there are plenty of Robbins fans out there who love this book to pieces. I’m just not one of them.

n  n

Full of thought provoking existential metaphors- makes you think about humanity and God through an abstract lens. I knocked off a point for the male gaze-ness of it all.

Aby si člověk patřičně vychutnal knihy Toma Robbinse, musí mít dostatek čas a (přiznejme si), i nějaký ten kulturní přehled.
Hubené nohy a všechno ostatní naráží na problémy a neustále boje mezi křesťany, židy a muslimy. Každou "historickou" postavu nebo událost Robbins glosuje, což nejvíce oceníte právě pokud víte, jak je věc podávána "tradičně". Navíc mu to dává příležitost ukázat své jazykové mistrovství.
Celý příběh je neotřelý, neskutečně zábavný a zároveň má neskutečný přesah (ano, já vím, že přesně to je důvod, proč ho čteme, ale je třeba to zopakovat). V příběhu malířky-servírky se odráží celý svět, jeho historie i budoucnost, pokud tedy k nějaké dojde. každá banalita dává smysl, každý předčasný úsudek je stejně nemístný jako podvazek na noze jeptišky.

I will say this book had a slow middle and was difficult to get through. I almost didn't keep going and I'm glad I did. The end had me so satisfied that I can give it 4 stars, but oh boy, that middle is tough.

It's pacing. Robbins is a purple author who luxuriates in purple prose. He will spend an entire paragraph on one concept and explore every association he can make with that idea and then move on to the next. He does this all the way through the book and so the pace is glacial and yet, it's also revelatory. This is not a plot driven story and it isn't as much a character driven story either, but character is the driving force here. Yet, the real force is philosophy and exploring ideas of life, the universe, and the mysteries of the world.

One thing he decides to focus on is animating some objects, 3 ordinary objects and 2 ancient objects of worship some 3,000 years old. A can-o-beans, a spoon, and a used sock are ordinary and then there is the painted stick and conch shell from ancient Phoenician, religious items in the worship of Jezebel. Each of these things has a personality and a dynamic. They are able to motor about and they are bound for Jerusalem for the building of the 3rd temple to come.

No one out there puts the wild ideas together like Tom Robbins. We start out with newlyweds driving from Seattle across the country to NYC in a silver motorhome that's been crafted to look like a giant turkey driving down the road. Ellen is an artist wanting to make a name for herself and her husband is boomer. Tom then throws in the history of Jezebel from the bible and how it really relates to ancient goddesses before the Hebrews back then. He also takes the idea of Salome and the Dance of the 7 veils and uses that as structure for his story. He explores the history of the Arab, Jewish, Christian disputed land of the holy city of Jerusalem by going back before they all started and digging up what they all have in common. He mixes all these objects with these ideas and shakes vigorously. It's such a story.

Ellen has a hard time in the art world and she becomes a waitress at a restaurant owned by a Jew and an Arab who are trying to create common ground. They hire a belly dancer named Salome. There is Norman, the street performer who takes all day to turn around so that you can't even see him moving and then there is Ellen's uncle who is a street preacher trying to bring about Armageddon making trouble for all.

The book is set up in 7 sections. Each section is a veil and one veil drops and another layer of reality is then understood. The apex of the piece is the bellydancer doing the dance of the 7 veils on Superbowl Sunday. Each veil she drops, her audience understands another layer of life and the ancient secrets of the world. Man, the ending was fantastic. It made the whole book come together and it was worth the slog.

I do love Tom Robbins writing. I love his metaphors and smilies he piles on top of each other. He uses them with abandon. This is my 4th book by Robbins. One of my all time favorite books is Jitterbug Perfume. It's the best thing. This is a great book, but again, that middle was gooey and difficult to keep going. I had to really push to get through it.

Tom is an ideas man. He wants to ponder the universe and reveal in the dance of people, the absurdities of life. It wouldn't be a Robbins novel without sex and it has its place in this story.

The weird thing is that Tom seems to be the band leader for matrimony and he longs to topple the patriarchy with each story I have read. He is no fan of the male world of repression. He does lift up woman in his own weird way. I wish he had one more novel he put out to see how he handles the Trump era or error.

This is far from a perfect book. It is slowly paced, but I still really enjoyed this experience. I want to read a new Tom book each year until I get him all read.

Let me quote a random section, I'm just opening the book, to highlight how he will dissect a point.

"Despite its complexity, its nocturnal richness, there was something slaphappy if not slapdash about it, something careless and childlike. Itch as it might with stellar information, buckle though it might under a weight of ashes, adobe, and bone, it also was as topsy-turvy as a nursery rhyme; it was kachina pinball, an episode from chipmunk television." That is a paragraph simply describing the mural of Ellen Cherry Charles.

This is a history lesson and a philosophy lesson wrapped up in a story. If that sounds interesting, you might enjoy this story. If you need plot and action, you might just hate this book.

I’m glad I read this after my prefrontal cortex was fully developed. This is the first book by Robbin’s that I’ve read. It was very Vonnegut coded which I enjoyed. I always enjoy when an author writes more like a poet/song-writer, it tickles my brain in certain ways.

One of the points Robbin made was that it takes a bit to think for yourself. I think people will ride certain beliefs/values because it gives them a sense of acceptance with their peers.

You can tie it to politics, sports, your favorite type of condiment - spicy garlic aioli is my favorite. It’s an easy/lazy way to socialize sometimes.

But I get it to an extent

Humans are social creatures, I once rejected pop music bc my college friends would turn their nose at it. No one is too good for pop music!!

I know this is a very disorganized review but it’s all I have!!!!

wowie wow wow i hardly even have any words. this book blew me away, made me laugh, made me look at life in completely new ways, and THINK. it was a wild ride that can’t be pinned down to any one takeaway. also incredibly timely and yet timeless. thank you dand for the rec and the book! excited to read more tom robbins, wish i could get a peek inside this guys mind