"Nella casa di spettri della vita, l'arte è l'unica scala che non cigola"

this is the only fiction book i've read three times. all of the characters are thinly-veiled representations of specific ideas--a redneck, a stick, a conch shell, etc.. i am not a huge reader, so this book is kind of long for me with a lot of characters to keep straight. it also helps if you have some background about historic monuments and turmoil in jerusalem. overall, though, it's a very satisfying read. if you're looking more for witty banter and action, i recommend another tom robbins book, though (woodpecker or fierce invalids).

I can’t believe I started reading this on October 6th.

Tom Robbins just can’t help himself.

“She parted her legs slightly so that the late afternoon sunlight might warm her between her legs, where she was leaking a rivulet of the manly fluid in which she sometimes suspected her own artistic life had drowned.”

“Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually, however, religions became aquariums. Then hatcheries. From farm fingerling to frozen fish stick in a short swim.”

“If one hears to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish fame, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords. … How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the “comfort” of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutrient.”

“‘There’s a right sorry admission of defeat, then signs are. If my life was that compromised, I sure wouldn’t advertise it. My sign would say, “If there was something else I’d rather be doing, I’d damn well be doing it.”’”

“During periods of so-called economic depression, for example, societies suffered for want of all manner of essential foods, yet investigation almost invariably disclosed that there were plenty of goods available.”

Τέχνη, θρησκεία, έμπνευση και σουρεαλισμός.
Επίκαιρο περισσότερο από ποτέ.
Πρώτη φορά που ο ελληνικός τίτλος ενός βιβλίου (στην προκειμένη περίπτωση "ο χορός των εφτά πέπλων") αντιπροσωπεύει πολύ πιο βαθιά το νόημα του βιβλίου το από αυτόν που έδωσε ο συγγραφέας.

Skinny Legs and All is only the second Tom Robbins novel I've read, and I think it's pretty safe to say that I probably don't need to read any more. All the charm and magic that was Still Life With Woodpecker is just obnoxious here. The weirdness of Robbins' writing style is still funny and entertaining, and I enjoyed if not loved the majority of the characters (major, minor and inanimate objects). Skinny Legs and All showcases a hefty amount of magical realism and absurdism, which is fine by me, but for some reason here it feels a little stale. I think that the greatest hurdle to get over is that Robbins has a lot of ideas concerning politics, religion, culture, art and sex, and it seems like he tried to compact them all into this 400+ page novel. Unfortunately, those ideas are way too many and too complex to really have any effect. It doesn't help that Skinny Legs and All features the usual intricate, multiple plot lines. It's hard to keep track of everything going on. In spite of all this, it was still an enjoyable read. I still look forward to spending time with Jitterbug Perfume, eventually.

I can't think of any other book I've read very recently that left my mind as thoroughly blown as Skinny Legs and All. I'd only read one other Tom Robbins book -- Still Life With Woodpecker -- so I was prepared for his playfulness, humor, intricate (but goofy) language, and overall trippy feel that all come with just about everything he rights.

But I was not prepared for Skinny Legs. This book is so dense with literary magnificence that you could chew it like you had a whole mouth full of sticky bubble gum. I dog-eared more pages and marked more passages in this book than any other I've ever read by a long shot.

Skinny Legs deals with so many topics, many of which are classical in nature: love, sex, family, art, compassion, work, religion. But it all revolves around a more specific point of the conflicts in the Middle East, primarily between Jews and Arabs. There's lots of history, spirituality, and ridiculousness all spun together -- about the Middle East especially but also about everything else surrounding it (both geographically and more abstractly). Were I a teacher of Middle East studies or any subject that dealt with the Judaism/Islam conflict specifically, this book would be required reading if for no other reason than to lighten the tension -- but hopefully also to open some minds and spark a more creative and intelligent dialogue built not on dogma but on critical thinking and compassion.

The book says great things about all the topics it touches on, but to the topic of the Middle East specifically it is blazingly relevant and even prophetic in its own right. Even now, with the book being 18 years old, it hasn't lost a lick of power or shown its age. Nothing in the writing itself ever gave me the impression that the book was written any earlier than yesterday.

Anyway, I'm mostly just spitting out tidbits -- let me try to formulate something more concrete. It was very, very good. Long and complex, but good. Robbins is a master of language and imagery. He gives the impression of writing with very reckless abandon. It's like he scribbled down every single thing that came to his mind while writing the story, omitting nothing and not even considering apologizing for such craziness. And yet, it works. The madness all comes together without ever seeming structured hardly at all. As if there's not a method to the madness, but that the method IS the madness.

In fact I wish my review of the book could be half as perfectly cohesive as the novel itself managed to be in the end. I could rant and ramble about this fantastic book for hours on end (and probably will to my poor unfortunate friends and acquaintances), but I'll just start wrapping up and say that this one is indeed highly recommended. It's not the quickest read in the world because you have to use your brain, sense of humor, and imagination rather extensively and mostly constantly -- but it's very, very worth it.

I'm not normally quite this scatterbrained in my reviewing of a book, but it really was that good!

I read this a long time ago but it still plays with my head now. After that I got caught up in Robbins' books. Then, well, other books came in and I lost my way. Must get back and read more. Maybe Can of Soup, Stick, Spoon, and Dirty Sock will welcome me back. How I miss them!

...not only is religion divisive and oppressive, it is also a denial of all that is divine in people; it is a suffocation of the soul.

This is, to my memory, at least the third time I have read this book. Over those times and now it still serves as an indictment of religion and specifically how the People of the Book have for millennia been unable to peaceably coexist. Robbins plays fast and loose with myths and the Old Testament in a bawdy surrealist/absurdist fable pointing out the ridiculous notions and prejudices at play here and their murderous expressions.

A fourth veil came undone, circled several times the gyrating torso of the dancer (it had somehow been wrapping both of her arms) like a gaseous cloud of star stuff orbiting a galaxy, before finally breaking the gravitational attraction and wafting toward a new home on the edge of the bandstand. Ellen Cherry understood then that religion was an improper response to the Divine.

Religion was an attempt to pin down the Divine. The Divine was eternally in flux, forever moving, shifting shape. That was its nature. It was absolute, true enough: absolutely mobile. Absolutely transcendent. Absolutely flexible. Absolutely impersonal. It had its god and goddess aspects, but it was ultimately no more male or female than it was star or screwdriver. It was the sum of all those things, but that sum could never be chalked on a slate. The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that. They wanted to hang a face on the Divine. They went so far as to attribute petty human emotions (anger, jealousy, etc.) to it, not stopping to realize that if God were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago.

The Divine was expansive, but religion was reductive. Religion attempted to reduce the Divine to a knowable quantity with which mortals might efficiently deal, to pigeonhole it once and for all so that we never had to reevaluate it. With hammers of cant and spikes of dogma, we crucified and crucified again, trying to nail to our stationary altars the migratory light of the world.

I want an eighth veil -- revealing the illusion that the dropping of veils of illusion leads to "enlightenment."

Tom Robbins is a genius. His use of the English language is so playful and dangerously intelligent that I can't belive he isn't a bigger literary celebrity.

Skinny Legs and All delves into all of life's big issues: religion, politics, love, war, money and so on, though it has a light touch; main characters include a Can 'o Beans and a Dirty Sock, for example. Seven fundamental truths are revealed as a modern day belly dancer named Salome dances The Dance of the Seven Veils - a veil drops, and a truth is revealed. Each segment of the book is a "veil," and Robbins tackles organized religion head on. One bit I love: "Early religions were like muddy pools with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually, however, religions became aquariums. Then, hatcheries. From farm fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim." The conflicts in the Middle East, with Jerusalem as the epicenter, is the primary focus of the story, and it's incredible that he wrote this well before 9/11.

One way or another, I'm a fan.

This is the best book I've ever read! Robbins keeps me on my toes with his vocabulary and uses unique characters to provide interesting perspectives on cultural clashes and life in general. I love this guy!

Skinny Legs and All is an iridescent firework of words…

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.

Skinny Legs and All is a variegated mural of religions…

Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually, however, religions became aquariums. Then, hatcheries. From farm fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim.

Skinny Legs and All is a pied throng of weird characters full of intrigues…
“A bladder, a blade of straw, and a shoe went to chop wood in the forest. They came to a river and did not know how to cross it. The shoe said to the bladder: ‘Bladder, let us swim across it on you.’ The bladder said: ‘No, shoe, let the straw blade instead stretch itself from shore to shore, and we will walk over it.’ The blade of straw stretched itself across the water; the shoe walked on it and the straw broke. The shoe fell into the water, and the bladder laughed and laughed until it burst.” The Bladder, the Straw, and the Shoe – a Russian fairy tale
Echoing this folksy masterpiece three animated objects – Spoon, Dirty Sock and Can o’ Beans – adventure dangerously all the way through the story while Painted Stick – an ancient symbol of Lingam – and Conch Shell – an antique emblem of Yoni – are their spiritual leaders.

The conch shell is the voice of Buddha, the birth-bed of Aphrodite, the horn that drives away all demons and draws lost mariners home from the sea. Colored by the moon, shaped by the primal geometry, it is the original dreamboat, the sacred submarine that carries fertility to its rendezvous with poetry.

Similar to gods fiction moves in a mysterious way.