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

Tom Robbins. Tommy rob. Tim ribbons. Thomas Robbinas. Boy howdy, does this man love to say words.
This was a re-read, and it took me a MINUTE. there are parts of this novel that are simply DENSE with … well, everything: turns of speech, metaphors, self-indulgent (but relentlessly fun) lists and musings.
But it’s worth all of that, even in the slow bits, and i’d even say one could and should luxuriate in the flowery and ridiculous, yet quite sharp and unbelievably wise, meanderings of Skinny Legs and All.
What a treat.

This book was fascinating from many perspectives. To write a real book report, I would need to dig into history to fact check a lot of the claims Robbins makes here, although, I expect much of what he said here is true. What I did do is transcribe my favorite passages throughout, which I've included below.

What the book does best is make you think about world religion, and how females have been portrayed throughout history, and what exactly we are doing here with this God stuff.

The first half of this book is pretty slow, but picks up once they arrive to New York, and catches fire the last 75 pages. Tom Robbins 4 life.

Page unknown.
It was during the Babylonian exile that the patriarchs finally got their monotheistic ducks in a row. In the tens of centuries that had rolled by since the tribe of Abraham made the political decision to promote its local tribal deity, Yahweh, as the one and only god in the cosmos, worship of the Great mother had continued in Judea and Israel. Ancient jews loved the Goddess, loved her wisely and well, and even when they came to accept Yahweh, they kept a shrine for her-in their temples and in their hearts. Asarte, or Ashtoreth, as they called her, reigned in the First Temple of Jerusalem alongside Yahweh and, periodically, in place of him, a state of affairs that rankled the right-wing misogynists of the yahwehistic extreme.

In exile, however, the Jews were unified as they never could have been at home. Oppression and homesickness strengthened their common bond. The more Babylonians mocked the macho Yahweh, the tighter the Hebrews clung to him as a unique, indigenous cultural icon. Spurred by the prophet Ezekiel, the patriarchal priests hastened to take advantage of the situation.

It was in Babylon that the heretofore multitudinous, unmanageable laws and rituals of Judaism were edited and codified. New traditions, such as the synagogue, were established. And a stern, broad, inspiration dogma was hammered out of the ancient desert ores that they had hoarded and slowly refined in the fire of their longing. From that time on, a shield of dogmatic brass would reflect every tendered kiss of the Mother. So great was the patriarchs' hatred and fear of her that she was left unnamed in their transcriptions. When referred to at all, it was as some vague, unspeakable, whorish pagan evil.

By 538 B.C., when the jubilant exiles were permitted to return to a desolated Judea (it had been leveled in the Babylonian invasion, remember), nearly a half-century of reprogramming would have purged them of their matriarchal affection. It was for the glory of Yahweh and Yahweh alone that they rebuilt their nation, their capital, and their Temple. The Second Temple, although as large as the First, was simply and plan; an odd, impoverished, jerry-built, unembellished religious blockhouse erected upon a pile of rubble. Neither the Goddess nor Conch Shell and Painted Stick would ever see the inside of that particular version - but their days and nights on the Temple Mount were not yet done.

Seriously
"Folks take art too seriously. Did I say that already? But, you know, they take their relationships too seriously, too. I sure used to. Then, you did. This morning, I reckon we both are."
"People tend to take everything too seriously. Especially themselves."
"Yep. And that's probably what makes 'em scared and hurt so much of the time. Life is too serious to take that seriously."

Money - 5th veil, p231
Both money and art, powdered as they are with the romance and poetry of the age, are magic. Rather, money is magic, art is magik. Long before the veil of commerce dropped down over the eyes of art, it had impaired the sight of religion. Ancient temples, pagan or otherwise, almost always doubled as treasuries and mints.

It will fall at the moment of our death. As we lie there, helpless, beyond distraction, electricity sealing out of our brains like a con man stealing out of a sucker's neighborhood, it will occur to many of us that everything we ever did, we did for money. And at that instant, right before the starts blink off, we will, according to what else we may have learned in life, burn with an unendurable regret-or have us a good silent laugh at our own expense.

Absolute standard, p299
"Anyone who maintains absolute standards of good and evil is dangerous. As dangerous as a maniac with a loaded revolver. In fact, the person who maintains absolute standards of good and evil usually is the maniac with the revolver."

Crime, p299
"If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it."

Omnipotent God, p302
It was impossible for her to picture God just stomping on the brakes one day and sending the world flying through the windshield. What was the point? Was life merely a failed experiment destined to be terminated? Since his prophets had forecast a fiery end thousands of years earlier, it would seem that God had known all along that the experiment was going to flop. Why would an omnipotent, omniscient deity go to to the trouble to create an infinitely complex universe if he realized from the beginning that it was only going to malfunction and go down in flames?

Religion, p305
As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they're convinced that they'll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes. Moreover, the faithful are usually willing to risk their skins in whatever military adventure their government may currently be promoting. When the sixth veil drops, there will be a definite shortage of cannon fodder.

Those in high places are not immune. While the afterlife concept renders the masses manageable, it renders their masters distortive. A world leader who's convinced that life is merely a trial for the more valuable and authentic afterlife is less hesitant to risk starting a nuclear holocaust. A politician or corporate executive who's expecting the Rapture to arrive on the next flight from Jerusalem is not going to worry about much about polluting oceans or destroying forests. Why should he?

Thus, to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.

In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may every have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line. Theirs is a death wish on a very grand scale, an eschatological extension of Kissinger's perverse logic-"in order to live forever, we must die as quickly as possible"-and if time doesn't run out soon, they're going to form a posse and run it out. Fortunately for them, they see signs everywhere that the end is near. Unfortunately, they're virtually the same signs that their ancestors saw millennia before them.

Meanwhile, the thermodynamic and cosmological forces that form the basis for "time" spiral merrily along without going anywhere very much. Just around. And around again. Order expanding into disorder contracting into order at a rate so incredibly slow that it bores and bewilders us to the extent that we have to invent psychological endings for it. What the sixth veil conceals is not a blank clock but a relieved expression, the expression on our own faces as we meet ourselves coming from the opposite direction, free to enjoy the present at last because we are longer fettered by the future that is history.

Structure Chaos, p355
"The level of structure that people seek always is in direct ratio to the amount of chaos they have inside."

Art-life gloom, p359
The would-be novelist who developed an allergy to solitude.

Pales, p364-365
The country of Palestine, which had been called Canaan, was named for Pales.

Pales was a deity. The ass-god. Or the ass-goddess. Usually he was male, but sometimes she was female, and sometimes its gender was a tad ambivalent.

The name Pales was Arabic, having come out of Libya, but the Hebrews loved the long-eared bisexual no less than the Arabs. Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote that the Semites fell into venerating the ass because had it not been for wild asses, they never would have survived in the desert. It was probably more complicated than that. The ass was a savior who provided milk, meat, shoe leather, and transportation (what the Bible calls the "golden calf" was actually the golden ass, since there were never many cows in the Levant).
The ass was also obstinate, silly, and sexually crude.
Embodying all of those characteristics, Pales was tricksters, fertility, spirit, and sacred clown, presiding over humankind's unruly passions, giving mortals what they needed, but no before having some fun with them.

Arabs and Jews of their common roots, that once upon a time they worshipped the same deity and that a lot of stuff they still have in their religions can be traced back to their common cult. He says it should remind them that this land they've fought over so bitterly was named after a braying ninny. And that that ought to tell them something. Among other things, it should tell them not to take themselves so seriously…

…And that at the same time that they're laughing at themselves and how they allowed a simple case of sibling rivalry to escalate into such a long-lasting, world -threatening mess, they can also reaffirm their original sexuality, which, means reaffirming their ties to nature. One of the main problems in Palestine or Israel is that everybody, Arab and Jew, lives in the abstract, lives in political and religious ideology rather than living in physical bodies connected to the earth.

p372
…Tacitus wrote that the Semites fell into venerating the ass because had it not been for wild asses they never would have survived in the desert. It was probably more complicated than that. How complicated? Well, it isn't enough that the children of Lilith, Adam's 'bad' wife, were born with donkey haunches or that Samson slew the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass or that Jesus chose to enter Jerusalem on the back of one of those scrawny steeds, but very early images of the Hebrew Messiah depicted him as an ass-headed man crucified on a tree…

…Even earlier in Egypt, there was an ass-headed deity my ancestors called Set, who was crucified annually and wounded in his side. On more than one Sunday morning in spring he rose from the dead…

As a goddess, Pales was the protectors of herd animals, thus insuring the survival of the tribe. As a bisexual, Pales was served by both priests and priestesses, usually dressed in big wooden donkey masks. The temples were Pales was worshipped gave us the word 'palace.'

During the Festival of Palilia, which was appropriated into the Christian calendar as the Feast of Saint George, some rowdy games were played in those temples.

Since Pales had been an important religious figure, one whose pale specter still haunted the western and Middle Eastern worlds, and since he-or-she-was almost entirely forgotten, to a large extent deliberately obliterated by revisionist theologians…

3.5 - the spoon made it! little too religious for me at times

I read the first 100 pages and set it aside. Robbins is obviously a skilled writer, and I was interested in the story but not enough to continue. I didn’t care about the characters and the text was too dense to hold my attention. I will try again when my attention span is longer or my desire to read this kind of novel returns!