Ortadoğu, din, sanat, tarih, feminizm, futbol, aşk, seks dolu bir roman. Tom Robbins'in kitaplarında yarattığı incelikli ama umursamaz karakterler (canlı, cansız) ve ambians. İsterseniz düz bir macera olarak, isterseniz referanslarına dalarak derinlikli bir kitap olarak okuyabileceğiniz çok hoş bir kitap.

“Skinny Legs And All” by Tom Robbins is without a doubt one of the best books I’ve read. This is the story of five inanimate objects: Conch Shell, Can O’ Beans, Painted Stick, Dirty Sock and Spoon; which embark in an unlikely adventure that consists of heading from America to Jerusalem. Along, during and through their trip, they encounter some humans: Ellen Cherry; an artist and waitress, Boomer Petway; Ellen’s husband, Patsy and Verlin; Ellen’s parents, Reverend Buddy Walker; Ellen’s uncle, Abu and Spike; Ellen’s employers, Roul Ritz, Ellen’s want to be Latin lover, and Turn Around Norman, the most mysterious character of them all.

This novel has two stories: the inanimate objects and Ellen Cherry’s. These inanimate objects are interesting –I’m ashamed to admit –a lot more than some people I know. The beauty of this well achieved treatment by the author is that at a certain point one stops seeing these inanimate objects as such, and starts visualizing them as characters, real and round characters... and therefore, the feeling of absurdity rises, however, in a contradictory fashion: making sense.
Tom Robbins has crafted a delightful roller coaster of great height and deep thoughts. The paramount debates regarding religion, politics, art, philosophy, marriage, sex, history, myth and legend are dealt, criticized, judged, analyzed and scrutinized with an over the notch brilliant sense of humour by our dear fellows, the inanimate objects. Robbins’s outrageous and out of this world sense of humour –I know I’ve mentioned sense of humour before, but it has to be said again --plus his addictive metaphors create the most sensuous and cathartic dance, lifting seven veils of incredible awareness pertaining the everlasting mysterious human condition.

Leave it to me to read a book that packs religion, politics, history, art, money, love, lust, the complex history of the Middle East, etc. etc. all in one novel on my family vacation.
Really enjoyed his style of writing after I got into it, which took about 100 pages. But I found myself laughing and learning - and being reminded of obscure religious references I learned in CCD 15+ years ago - as well as pulling some unique and meaningful messages out of this book. 4.5.

What a slog - I love my boy Tom but this one is much too political for my taste. The last 20 pages are ethos of the novel and I got a lot out of it - but could have skipped the rest of the 400pgs

I love you Tom - don’t take it personal

Το μανιφέστο του Τομ Ρόμπινς. Ένας καλλιγραφικός 7λογος που στέλνει κάθε κατεργάρη... στην Ιερουσαλήμ του.

I finished this last night and my head is still spinning with the concept of inanimate objects having lives, the depths of the discussion on religion, art and the apocalypse. This book is a lot to take in and despite the heavy subject matter, it's still funny and surprisingly light in feel.

I'll admit to a bit of skimming over the lengthly discussions of events surrounding temples and battles from thousands of years ago but don't let that discourage you. I'm just not much of a history buff.
The story opens with a couple, Boomer and Ellen Cherry, travelling across the country in their trailer which Boomer has welded into a turkey. It's just gets more bizarre from there. You follow Boomer and Ellen Cherry, Ellen's parents, their fanatical "uncle" who's a preacher and their employers through what feels like the end days of time.

Every once in a while, things are so descriptive, I would start to lose track of what the original subject was and I can't explain this anymore than to give you a direct quote from the novel:
"Spilling from tenements and condominiums, from boutiques and bodegas, the anxious multitudes have found a new tempo, a pace in between the wind-up toy frenzy of winter and the deep-sea diver drag of the summer to come. Crushing Styrofoam burger cartons, condom packs, hypodermic syringes, and graffiti-spewing spray cans underfoot, they almost dance as they walk, and unconscious rite of spring in their steps, a forgotten memory or sod and seed and lamb and ring-around-the-rosy. The unfinished and unfinishable symphony to which they move is composed of salsa, rap, and funk from boom boxes, strains of Vivaldi sifting out in a silvery drizzle from fine restaurants and limousines, the sophisticated rhythms produced by Cole Porter's phantom cigarette holder tapping upon the vertebrae of tourists and businessmen in hotel lobbies throughout midtown, fey techno-rock in SoHo bars and art lofts, drum solos banged out on plastic pails and refrigerator trays by brilliant buskers, androgynous anchorpersons announcing the "news", a loud screeching of truck and bus wheels, and interminable red bawling of sirens, the tooting of taxis, an occasional gunshot or scream, girlish laughter, boyish boasts, barking dogs, the whine of aggressive beggars, the yowls of the unsheltered insane, and, on many a street corner, the greased-lung exhortations of evangelists, ordained or self-proclaimed, warning all who pass that this could be the last April that God will ever grant, as if April were a kitten and God and angry farmer with a sack."
Where were we? Oh right... I was saying how you can suddenly get caught up in descriptives and then have to go back and check what the original subject matter was to begin with. Right.

I also have to mention the can of beans, the sock and the spoon... the inanimate objects who talk and have personalities. They can even move. They meet up with an ancient stick and conch shell on their way to Jerusalem. Seriously.

Some of the 'revelations' from the book that summarize the religious component struck a chord with me.

"While the afterlife concept renders the masses manageable, it renders their masters destructive. A world leader who's convinced that life is merely a trial for 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 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."

As the veils come down throughout the book, new revelations come to Ellen Cherry, and it is about these revelations that I have primarily been thinking. This is one of them:

"And there would be willing followers until humanity reached that philosophical plateau where it is recognized that its great mission in life had nothing to do with any struggle between classes, races, nations, or ideaologies, but was, rather a personal quest to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirt, and light up the brain."

I want to re-read the last section of this book over and over and memorize it. His writing is unlike anything I've encountered- and the story so strange- it's hard to summarize other than to say you should read it yourself.

Great book, great writer, great translator for Turkish language version.

3.5 *

Σας έχω πει πόσο αγαπάω τον Ρόμπινς; Να σας το πω ξανά;Τον αγαπώ.Γιατι μπορεί να συνδιάσει χιούμορ και πίκρα,ρεαλισμό και όνειρο, αγάπη και κυνισμό, μπορεί να φτύσει κατάμουτρα τον κόσμο σου όλο και μετά να σε πάρει αγκαλιά και να σε ταΐσει κρουασάν με Μερέντα.
Όταν έπεσαν όλα τα πέπλα η ανθρωπότητα μου φάνηκε πιο φτηνή από ποτέ.

Στον απόηχο όλων όσων συμβαίνουν με τον πόλεμο στην Ανατολή,τα τρομοκρατικά χτυπήματα και τα κύματα ρατσισμού, προτείνω να το διαβάσεις.ΛΑΘΟΣ.ΠΡΕΠΕΙ να το διαβάσεις.
Αγάπη, ειρήνη, αδελφοσύνη.

"Όταν συγκεντρώνεις όλη την προσοχή σου στον παράδεισο,δημιουργείς κόλαση."

4,5 αστεράκια, χάνει λίγο,γιατί συγκριτικά με τον τρυποκάρυδο, η ιστορία μου φάνηκε ένα τσακ λιγότερο ενδιαφέρουσα.

It's difficult to describe Skinny Legs and All. Part of that is down to the fact that I must've read this when I was about 12 or so - far too young - an age where I read any book that wasn't nailed down. That means my memories of it are jumbled in with the memories of every weird and wonderful book I read during that time. I sort of wish I could go back to that time, now. It was a time when I would just pick up any book and read it, without worrying if I thought I was going to enjoy it. I had so much time. Well, Skinny Legs and All is a good book to read if you have a lot of time on your hands. It's not a doorstopper or anything, but it's hefty, dense. The motif of the dance of the seven veils that runs through the book echoes the experience of reading it - there is swirling colour, obfuscation, mirth, lust, joy.

This is the room where Jezebel frescoed her eyelids with history’s tragic glitter, where Delilah practiced for her beautician’s license, the room in which Salome dropped the seventh veil while dancing the dance of ultimate cognition, skinny legs and all.

A bean can and a desert spoon have their own character arcs, but it's still about the Middle East and identity and love and humanity. I don't know. It's a weird one - but one I'd recommend that people give a try.

I believe this novel was so enjoyable because of its lighthearted mix of the absurd, the everyday, the magical, and the sexual. I consider those the four food groups of fun literature, and they each find a home in this ridiculous tale of self-awakening and revelations of truth. Robbins asserts that patriarchal society has blinded us to a heritage that recognizes and rejoices its feminine deities that embrace expressions of sexuality and the magic of nature. Blinded by “seven veils” of untruth in our modern culture (including the efficacy of politics, our reign over other creatures, and the worship of money), we are disillusioned to the point of not thinking for ourselves. These strong themes are revealed through such farcical characters as a troupe of inanimate, yet mobile objects, an artist with unruly hair and spirit, her redneck welder husband, and a gold-toothed, pustuled clergyman with a penchant for Armageddon.

For a book that doesn’t take itself too seriously, it certainly presents some weighty challenges to the status quo. While I don’t believe that this book will necessarily bring on a feminine revolution, it is a refreshing change of pace and a new point of view to explore. I don’t know from whence Tom Robbins got his Girl Power, but he certainly doesn’t hold back. You go, Girl!

A bit absurd how virtually nothing Tom Robbins is writing about has changed (except to get worse) since he published this 34 years ago (specifically referencing the conflict between Israel and Palestine and the general societal discourse/fear/relevance of the Middle East. Specifying because in terms of some other topics such as AIDS which he recurringly brings up we have made at the very least medical progress.) This book is so smart and so stupid and could only be written who has done a ridiculous amount of reading in their lifetime and also has such a deep command of the English language that they can break every rule. My friend Ezekiel told me to read this book and it makes a lot of sense that he did, this is exactly a zeke book (weird, religious, worldly and uber intelligent but in an objectively abnormal or even dumb way.) It was so fun to read. By the end I was reading hundreds of pages a night, only pausing because it was so late and i knew if I didn’t put it down I would be freaking sleepy at work. I did often feel stupid while reading this because while the book is stupid (inanimate objects talking and everyone horny and half the metaphors objectively ill-fitting) it is stupid in a way only a disgustingly smart person can be. Ellen Cherry Charles (written casually as Ellen Cherry) is an addictive name to read and just makes sense (in the way the name Lily Blossom Bloom could never make sense.) Idk. Dumb review on my part but just such a well executed book that feels thrown together but is obviously the product of a big voluptuous brain. Relevant and funny and smart and deep and the kind of book that addresses things we (I) think about all the time and gives them answers. Direct answers. Anytime I feel lost I think I could read the last section over and feel a little more like I have it. Idk bro. Good fucking book.