One thing I can say for sure is Jitterbug Perfume is nothing like anything I have read so far. This is my first Robbins so I don't know what his other novels are like, but we're talking about an exceptionally charismatic writer here.

Robbins takes a bunch of ingredients totally unrelated to one another and makes a story that's as unique as it is brilliant. Beets, horny gods, perfumes, ancient and modern history, eternal life, philosophy and sex. Not the cheesy, romantic kind of sex, but the raw, primitive and full of body fluids one. These are the basic ingredients that he uses to make a story both unforgettable and dreamy.

History-wise, Robbins has certainly done his homework. It seems like he knows what he talks about when it comes to ancient and medieval times. The icing on the cake was the masterful use of humor to communicate his rather heretic ideas about pretty much everything. And of course his depiction of the afterlife is simply genius.

To make a long story short, this is great stuff which I'll definitely be checking out more of.

n  n    Η απορία δεν είναι, να ζει κανείς ή να μη ζει. Το ζητούμενο είναι, πώς να επιμηκύνει κανείς το ζειν.n  n

Ένα ωραίο, διαφορετικό βιβλίο που πραγματεύεται την ζωή (και την αποφυγή του θανάτου). O Tom Robbins μας κάνει να βλέπουμε τα πράγματα διαφορετικά και είναι από τους συγγραφείς που έχει αποκτήσει φανατικούς θαυμαστές λόγω και της φιλοσοφικής νότας που βρίσκει κανείς στα βιβλία του.

Πολλοί βέβαια είναι και εκείνοι που δεν τους αρέσει, καθώς τραβάει λίγο τα πράγματα, κάνει μπαμ από μακριά πως είναι άντρας από τον τρόπο που περιγράφει τις γυναίκες (not cool) και οι διάλογοι είναι σαν τις διαφωνίες που κάνουμε μέσα στο κεφάλι μας.

Είμαι εδώ να σας πω ότι η πρώτη κατηγορία θα αγαπήσει αυτό το βιβλίο, ενώ και η δεύτερη ακόμα θα βρει ορισμένα θετικά, πιστεύω πως όλοι θα το απολαύσουν. Κι ας μας την δίνει λίγο στα νεύρα. Ο συγγραφέας καταφέρνει να γράφει εξωφρενικά πράγματα, που όμως τα κάνει τόσο αληθοφανή που χάνεσαι με ευχαρίστηση στον κόσμο του. Συν πως γράφει υπέροχα.

n  n    Η πραγματικότητα είναι κάτι το υποκειμενικό και σ' αυτό τον πολιτισμό υπάρχει μια τάση, καθόλου φωτισμένη, να θεωρεί κάτι σαν "σημαντικό" μοναχά όταν είναι σοβαρό και άχαρο.n  n

Ο Αλομπάρ, ο πρωταγωνιστής μας δεν θέλει να πεθάνει. Οπότε αποφασίζει να παλέψει για την ζωή του, να γλυτώσει από εκείνους που τον θέλουν νεκρό. Αλλά το πάει κι ένα βήμα παραπέρα. Λέει να αποφύγει γενικά τον θάνατο, τα γηρατειά και όλο το πακέτο. Τα καταφέρνει; κι αν ναι, ποιος ο δρόμος για την μακροβιότητα; Τι ρόλο παίζει η όσφρηση και ποιόν τα... παντζάρια; Νομίζω για τις μεγάλες απαντήσεις, θα χρειαστεί να το διαβάσετε.

n  n    Όταν δεν είσαι ευτυχισμένος, φτάνεις να δίνεις μεγάλη σημασία στον εαυτό σου κι αρχίζεις να τον παίρνεις πολύ στα σοβαρά. Οι πραγματικά ευτυχισμένοι άνθρωποι, εννοώ δηλαδή, οι άνθρωποι που αληθινά γουστάρουν τους εαυτούς τους, δε σκέφτονται και τόσο πολύ τους εαυτούς τους.n  n

Çok zeki, çok eğlenceli ve çok absürt. Geleneksel hikaye anlatımına baş kaldıran bir üslup. Mitoloji, dinler, gelenekler ve ölüm takıntımızı eleştirmiş Tom Robbins. Çok, çok sevdim.

One of the best books I have read in my life. A genius writer...

The most glarin’ failure o’ the intelligentsia in modern times has been its inability to take comedy seriously.

The above Wiggs Dannyboy quote sums up the experience of my first Tom Robbins novel. It was a wild, irreverent, intellectually challenging and most of all a ‘fun’ ride, a ‘look up Chomolungma’s skirts’, a perennial search for ‘the perfect taco’, a quest for immortality and the meaning of life that tries to expose the connections between perfume, tantric sex, transcendental meditation, pagan rites and ballroom dancing ... oh! and beets.

Of our nine planets, Saturn is the one that looks like fun. Of our trees, the palm is the obvious stand-up comedian. Among fowl, the jester’s cap is worn by the duck. Of our fruits and vegetables, the tomato could play Falstaff, the banana a more slapstick role. As Hamlet – or Macbeth – the beet is cast.

The beet, or mangel-wurzel, gets the royal treatment in the novel, put on an equal footing with ancient deities and with esoteric fragrances, granted deep philosophical significance and mysterious metahysical powers. Robbins lets his exuberance fly from the very first page in singing a paean to the under-appreciated vegetable. The introduction also serves as a weeding out device for starched-collar or thin-skinned readers who might be easily offended by the satirical attacks on widely accepted atitudes and religions. Speaking for myself, the intro had the opposite effect of drawing me instantly into the story.

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finished with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The story / plot itself turned out to be almost irrelevant compared to the flow of ideas and the gleeful deconstruction of ‘serious’ literature. Priscilla the genius waitress is working in a Mexican food restaurant in Seattle and in her spare time she experiments with the ultimate perfume. Her mentor, Madame Devalier, is also working on a new perfume in New Orleans, with the help of an alluring assistant named V’lu and of a supplier named Bingo Pajama. Across the ocean, in the perfume capital of the world, Marcel ‘Bunny’ LeFever is experimenting himself with the olfactive revolution. Later in the book, the different strands meet again in Seattle at an institute researching longevity under a modern Flower Power guru named Wiggs Dannyboy and a German Nobel laureate named Wolfgang Morgenstern. If you think this was easy to follow, add an Argentinian accordionist, a secret Tibetan sect named the Bandaloop, a Saxon King named Alobar and an Indian low-caste woman named Kudra, mix in Albert Einstein and a scene borrowed from Dante’s Inferno, extend the plot to cover several centuries, include an impromptu history of perfume from the ancient to the modern times and put the cherry on the cake with the foul-smelling god of anarchy, drunkenness and promiscuity – PAN. Then you might have an idea of the epic scope of Tom Robbins’ novel.

According to Priscilla, the genius waitress, an ‘alobar’ is a unit of measurement that describes the rate at which ‘Old Spice’ after-shave lotion is absorbed by the lace on crotchless underpants, although at other times she has defined it as the time it takes ‘Chanel No. 5’ to evaporate from the wing tips of a wild duck flying backward.

Of this long list of characters, all of whom are relevant in the economy of the novel, the catalyst or core element is probably Alobar, whose timeline come first and who defines in the most simple words the eternal human dillema : sooner or later we all have to deal with the awareness of death. Alobar refuses to accept Death’s supremacy and inevitablity, setting out to find the secret of immortality:

I may be mad, but I prefer the shit of this world to whatever ambrosias the next might offer.
and,
Alobar, once king, once serf, now individual – have you heard of individuals? – free and hungry, at your service. My mission? Well, frankly, I am running away from death.

Heading East from his native Bohemia, Alobar learns that freedom of choice equates also with danger and hunger, and meets in Greece with one of the old wise ones - The Great God Pan – who adds another piece or two to the puzzle of existentialism and free will:

Come with me, Alobar, for while we must go forever in despair, let us also go forever in the enjoyment of the world.
and,
The gods have a great sense of humor, don’t they? If you lack the iron and the fizz to take control of your own life, if you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don’t be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.

Refreshed by the god’s drink and by the lusty dryads hanging around Pan, Alobar continues to head East, reaching the roof of the world where at first he seeks refuge in a Buddhist monastery, only to discover that he very much prefers the material to the spiritual life. A young Indian woman helps him to make the decision, and from this point forward they will be a couple.

Here they teach that much of existence amounts only to misery; that misery is caused by desire; therefore, if desire is eliminated, then misery will be eliminated. Now, that is true enough, as far as it goes. There is plenty of misery in the world, all right, but there is ample pleasure, as well. If a person forswears pleasure in order to avoid misery, what has he gained? A life with neither misery nor pleasure is an empty, neutral existence, and, indeed, it is the nothingness of the void that is the lamas’ final objective. To actively seek nothingness is worse than defeat; why, Kudra, it is surrender; craven, chickenhearted, dishonorable surrender.

By this point of the journey I have also became aware of a tendency towards preaching on the part of the author, but I enjoy so much his barbed style that he gets a free pass for more of the same:

If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that’s what I think. I don’t want salvation. I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.

Yay!!! for Alobar and Kudra ! Reader, be prepared for some steamy scenes of enjoying life under the majestic Chomolungma. Robbins continues to fire up his aphorism gun:

To eliminate the agitation and disappointment of desire we need but awaken to the fact that we have everything we want and need right now.

... making time for a sideswipe at those serious, gloomy, cynical high-brow authors, comparing them with Timolus, who judging the music contest between Pan and Apollo, had unhesitatingly awarded the prize to the Apollonian lyre, thereby establishing the tradition that critics must laud polish and restraint, attack what is quirky and disobedient, a tradition that endures to this day.

I would propose Robbins is deadly serious in his comedy, coming down hard on the side of Pan and decrying the ways first Christianity, and later Pure Reason (Descartes and his disciples, according to Alobar) have taught us that life is pain and suffering. In this plea, Robbins sounds to me like a later day hippie, a more articulate but equally passionate supporter of a life among flowers and unrestriced love.

The old god had endured severe setbacks in the past: the disdain of Apollo and his snooty followers, the rise of cities, the hostility of the philosophers – from Aristotle to Descartes – with their smug contentions that man was reasonable and nature defective, and, most damaging of all, the concentrated efforts of the Christian church to discredit his authority by identifying his as Satan. The arrogant attacks, the dirty tricks, the indifference had rendered him weak and invisible, and might have destroyed him altogether had not an unreasonable affection for him persisted in isolated places: hidden valleys and distant mountain huts; and in the hearts of heretics, lusty women, madmen, and poets.

The same theme of the fight between Pan and Apollo is picked up later by Priscilla and Wiggs Dannyboy in Seattle, as they discuss Flower Power and French existentialism:

-t Seems to me that the so-called happy people are the ones who are trivial. Avoiding reality and never thinking about anything important.
-tReality is subjective, and there’s an unenlightened tendency in this culture to regard something as ‘important’ only if ‘tis sober and severe. Sure and still you’re right about your Cheerful Dumb, only they’re not so much happy as lobotomized. But your Gloomy Smart are just as ridiculous. When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don’t think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin’ on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

Practising what they preach, Priscilla and Wiggs follow in the footsteps of Alobar and Kudra, learning to find happiness in self-expression and getting in touch with their animal side.  “They can have their loaf o’ warm bread, their new-mown hay. Nothin’ beats the smell of a lassie freshly laid.” exclaims Dannyboy in post-coital bliss.

Where does perfume come in, you might ask? Well, it’s complicated! and while it might have something to do with disguising the bad smell of Pan, the disappearance of dinosaurs or reaching directly into our subconscious part of our brains, I believe it is better to let the Parisian specialist, Bunny LeFever, explain.

Perfume, fundamentally, is the sexual attractant of flowers, or, in the case of civet and musk, of animals. Squeezed from the reproductive glands of plants and creatures, perfume is the smell of creation, a sign dramatically delivered to our senses of the Earth’s regenerative powers – a message of hope and a message of pleasure.
and,
I have spoken to you this afternoon of poetry and of sexual magic. Not too many years ago, the names of our perfumes bore testimony to such things. There was a popular scent called Tabu, there was Sorcery, My Sin, Vampire, Voodoo, Evening in Paris, Jungle Gardenia, Bandit, Shocking, Intimate, Love Potion, and l’Heure Bleue - The Blue Hour. Nowadays what do we find? Vanderbilt, Miss Dior, Lauren, and Armani, perfumes named after glorified tailors, names that evoke not the poetic, the erotic, the magic, but economic status, social snobbery, and the egomania of designers. Perfumes that confuse the essence of creation with the essence of money. How much sustenance can the soul receive from a scent entitled Bill Blass?

Tim Robbins is preaching to the choir in my case, and he is guilty from time to time of becoming too enamored of his debating skills, ignoring the need for pacing, character development and an actual plot, but I am real glad I discovered him through the pages of this novel, reminiscent to me of the more ‘serious’ offers of another favorite author: Christopher Moore in “Lamb” or “Sacre Bleu”. I plan to read more of Robbins’ books, and I hope they will be filled with the same extravaganza of satire and philosophy.

Here are the rest of the aphorisms that I salvaged from my mangel-wurzel journey:

If a person has an “active” life, if a person has goals, ideals, a cause to fight for, then that person is distracted, temporarily, from paying a whole lot of attention to the heavy scimitar that hangs by a mouse hair just above his or her head. We, each of us, have a ticket to ride, and if the trip be interesting (if it’s dull, we have only ourselves to blame), then we relish the landscape (how quickly it whizzes by!), interact with our fellow travelers, pay frequent visits to the washrooms and concession stands, and hardly ever hold up the ticket to the light where we can read its plainly stated destination: The Abyss.

>><<>><<

It’s been a huge adventure, an exploration of possibility, the invention of a game and the play of the game – and not merely survival.

>><<>><<

So make your perfume, my friends. Make it well. Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.

>><<>><<

Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have known all along that it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek.

>><<>><<

Theese dance she make zee blood happy, zee bones happy. I don’t know how to explain eet, but theese dance she celebrate that we are not, you know, died already. (Effecto Partido, the Argentine accordion virtuoso)



>><<>><<

Live by the heart if you would live forever!

İlk 100 sayfa ve son 50 sayfa dışında pek beğenmedim.
Kitapta bir karekter binyıllarca yaşıyor ve inanın bunu hissettiriyor zira kitap ilerlemiyor, sündükçe sünüyor. Bir hafta ara verdim 300. sayfadayken, öyle bitirebildim.
Klasik bir Türk filmi gbi de mutlu sonla bitiyor. Herkes muradına eriyor anacım, ben anlamadım.

Jesus Christ I'd really like to read a novel in which a male author can write about a female character without making several notes about the state of her breasts and vagina. I guess this is kinda funny and has moments of beauty within its (dense, dense) prose, but DAMN it there's another mention of breasts and look, a cartoonish orgy! WIth semen! And its all over the women, who have breasts! Maybe the book is about life or some shit, but who cares about that when you can obfuscate it with a projected sexual power trip.

I can't finish this book.

Talk about not understanding what all the fuss is about. If I'm not mistaken, Tom Robbins is kind of a literary legend in some circles, and at the very least has sold millions of books. And while there's certainly an intelligent, probing mind behind this sexual-philosophical hodgepodge of a book, the sum of the parts of my first foray into Robbins' world was not much fun to read.

I recently read an interview with Tom Robbins in which the author admits to being able to write about two pages a day. This makes sense to me because I was able to read about two pages of Jitterbug Perfume a day. I read this book out loud to my girlfriend, over many months, usually in bed before going to sleep. We thought it would be a fun book to read together, and at first it very much was, but by the end it was a struggle to get through even a few paragraphs without nodding off.

Robbins sets a colorful cast of characters in motion right from the get-go: There's Priscilla, a sexually frustrated "genius waitress" trying to invent perfume in her Seattle apartment. There's Madame Devalier and her assistant V'lu, who also make perfume in New Orleans, and there's yet a third perfume-making team out in Paris, whose names I can't remember so pointless were they to the story. (And yet, they are talked about as if they are important, a penchant Robbins seems to have for... nearly everything. Every sentence of Jitterbug Perfume rings with an air of unfathomable significance, as if Robbins has solved the mysteries of the universe and has taken it upon himself to explain it to us. It's all VERY self-important.)

Anywho! Not one of the aforementioned characters is very interesting, but it's intriguing to imagine how they all might connect. Also, Robbins kept us hooked (initially) with the tale of yet another set of characters, Alobar and Kudra, a couple who meets something like 900 years ago, then proceeds to learn ancient eastern self-preservation techniques and live healthily and happily until the present day. At first, it's fascinating to simply follow these strange, exotic characters around a bygone Eastern world, but Robbins can't sustain the momentum. When they actually start living forever, moving through time and geographical location, it feels like we are living forever right along with them. They have long, tedious conversations expounding on love and relationships and spirituality and immortality and other stuff I can't remember and they meet the god Pan, who makes everyone he encounters extremely turned on despite the fact he smells horrible.

I dunno... I'm getting tired even thinking about this book, let alone trying to describe hundreds of pages of arbitrary plot detritus that I've already spent months slogging through. Simply put, Robbins' pinballing wackiness and juxtaposition of the mythical and the real felt contrived to me, and his relentless stream of off-kilter metaphors and humorous asides felt a.) dated as hell comedy-wise (like the literary version of 1980s stand-up comics), and b.) extremely self-satisfied, as if he was constantly winking and nudging us and saying "can you believe I'm describing something this way? can you believe it? eh, sonny? pull my finger!"

This funny/dirty old man vibe achieves downright unpleasant proportions in the second half of the book, when the Priscilla character falls for a much older man/social theorist named Wiggs Dannyboy, who she bangs relentlessly in scene after scene of squirm-inducing sexual depiction (positions? thrust patterns? fluids? You name it, you got it.) These scenes feel all too much like some kind of fantasy the middle-aged Robbins (At the time of Jitterbug's inception, that is) is enacting on the page—and they're gross.

It would all be ok (gross sex, Robbins' arrogance, meandering plot threads) if it all went somewhere, but it doesn't. It really doesn't. The disparate characters do come together, but not in any meaningful fashion, and last-minute additions like Wiggs Dannyboy, Bingo Pajama and a strangely sentient swarm of bees feel tacked on, and boring in their arbitrariness. There are some nice ideas in Jitterbug Perfume—some pointed stuff about deep breathing, healthy eating, and general soulful living predates the alternative lifestyle movement by at least a decade or more—but lord you have to dig to find it. And dig, and dig, and dig...

Always thought of Tom Robbins as "B Lit," the kind of book that people who read books, but don't read literature, think is literature, so I had to be coaxed into reading this. It was an enjoyable read, and there are lot's of under-dog-ears, so that's worth something. I like his pronouncements, like "the highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being." Yes, I think that and I wanna be loved so I'm irreplaceable! In fact I am afraid maybe I won't be if I find this book mediocre, but that's a chance I'm going to have to take in the name of Goodreads integrity. Robbins has a distinct flavor, and enough depth, yes, to get me thinking a bit, but I sure can't stand his metaphors. They're clever, but self-consciously so, and never quite right, ranging from "just a little off" to "tragically inappropriate." I did chuckle at "the hexane stink would have been off that jasmine oil faster than a Japanese commuter off the bullet train," because I was on a train in Tokyo watching salarymen bolt for the doors as I read it. Unfortunately, they *were* fast, but it wasn't really like stink removal. My least favorite one, being from Seattle, and the best example of his metaphor problems was this "'The mountains were out' as they said in Seattle, meaning that the overcast had lifted and snowcapped peaks were flashing flossed fangs from every quadrant, as if Seattle were the object of some cosmic plea for dental health." Erg, just, so... not what the mountains being out is like at all... a plea for dental health? Baby don't hate me too much, ok? I wasn't disabused of my B Lit notion at all, but your love for this book helped me read closely enough to force me to put my finger on something, the essence of the not-really/not-quite of his work, and I think that's a good thing, so I hope you won't entirely stop putting your fingers on my something as a result.

I LOVE this book. It is my favorite by Tom Robbins that I have read so far. It talks about SOOOOO much. All in all the message is basically: "lighten up." In other words, be light hearted and just live life. It talks about how science and art, although they tend to oppose eachother, actually intercect and are just two parts of the same thing. It implies that everything is just a part of one big thing. It also talks about living life with a healthy attitude. It even gives credit to "the genius waitress" something that so many people can relate to. It also gives a unique look at religion, different gods, and heaven and hell. It was an amazing read. I loved it.

Τερατοτσόντα που άργησε να τελειώσει.

Here's a discussion board assignment I wrote for an advanced English class regarding Jitterbug Perfume:

My favorite author, Tom Robbins, was my favorite author even before he wrote my favorite novel of all time.  My copies of Robbins’ first three books, Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Still Life with Woodpecker (especially the latter) were tattered and dog-eared with repeated readings long before I got my hands on Jitterbug Perfume.  It was 1985, and I was a twenty-one year old single mom, coping with a new baby and a new job and muddling my way through life.  Jitterbug Perfume was my ticket to a fantastical rocket-ride of metaphorical madness, spiritual surmising, and time-skipping adventure, and I loved it utterly.  My rebellious side adored Robbins’ habit of taking liberties with the English language that would undoubtedly be frowned upon in polite society.  While stretching the art of the metaphor to ridiculous lengths at every turn, Robbins coins new words to suit his language-twisting purposes, pursuing (seeming) tangents and (apparently) unnecessary asides till the reader is all a-tangle in his fanciful, sermonistic, even cartoonish prose, only to tie up every crazily flapping loose end in a manner that somehow includes both the delicious itch of tantalization and the sweet release of complete satisfaction (this is the most Robbins-esque sentence in this paragraph, by the way).  Upon reaching the end of Jitterbug Perfume, I burst into tears and immediately flipped back to the beginning and started over.  Since those first back-to-back readings, I have read the book over and over, including once aloud, cover to cover, to my sweetheart.  I never tire of the story, which is densely plotted across time (from the days when the earth was flat to nine o’clock tonight, Paris time) and space (from ancient Bohemia and the Far East to present-day Seattle, New Orleans, and the aforementioned Paris).  Lyrical, silly, romantic, epic, lusty, and illuminating, Jitterbug Perfume never fails to delight and inspire me.  The book blew my burdened, restless young mind open to the extreme possibilities of writing, transforming the art of writing and the English language itself into something decidedly un-boring and sexy in my eyes.  I often wonder if another book will ever come along to tickle and twist and educate my mind as much as Jitterbug Perfume. Perhaps one day the right book will come along at the right time and once again blow my skull delightfully apart, dethroning Mr. Robbins as my favorite author and deepest influence of all time.  I sort of hope so… and sort of not.