Who writes a whole novel in the second person?! Only Tim Robbins! I am a money hugry stock broker in Seatle. I am Philipino, skinny, beautiful, and cut-throat in business. Who knew?

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas offers readers many a sentence that will prompt the question, "Hey, was this written in 2020?" It is a 1994 picaresque novel not unlike Candy by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg (under the pseudonym Maxwell Kenton) published 25 years earlier. The characters Tom Robbins pinballs through one long weekend include plucky young stockbroker Gwen on a quest to survive a plummeting market, her lumberjack-turned-real-estate-star fiance, his larcenous macaque, and a perseverating ex-stockbroker equally committed to mystic cosmology and seduction. Secondary characters may be introduced as eccentric, but they are far more grounded than this quartet. While some humor is tarnished, the action is sprightly from Tarot readings to navigating Seattle's street scene to slide shows of Timbuktu. Robbins' command of similes is superb, but his control of second-person (and female) narrative is fickle. Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas is a weekend's diversion, especially in this time of pandemic.

[Originally appeared on New Reads and Old Standbys in May 2009:]

I initially bought this book at the urging of a friend of mine who swore up and down that it was the best book he’d read “in forever, it’s sick, seriously, go out and read this now.” Before I go any further, let me point out that he uses the word “sick” as a synonym for “awesome,“ and the word pops up in conversation with him rather frequently. For a moment I honestly believed the book was disgusting, depraved or just plain rude, before I realized what he actually meant.

As it turns out, the first time I attempted to read this novel my initial fears weren’t too far off. While not actually rendering me physically nauseous, there was something about this book that got on my nerves so much that, after fifty pages, I put it down and forgot about it for a few years. It could have been any number of things, really.

It could have been the fact that the book is narrated in second person perspective, like a Choose Your Own Adventure, which for some people is so highly distracting and dizzying that they avoid the particular format like the plague. You will really like this book if you are a narcissist, or like to fantasize about being someone else. In fact, if this is the case, you can feel yourself looking the book up on Amazon and purchasing it this very moment, paying for it with your own credit card. See? See how irritating that could become?

It could have been that the book deals in mid-90s stock exchange drama, a subject I could honestly care less about. I have somewhat of a distaste for hardcore white-collar dealings and this book is full of characters and terminology that, while I didn’t have difficulty understanding, I certainly wasn’t all that fascinated by.

It could also be the fact that the main character is a woman I would consider to be the perfect photo negative of myself. She’s career-driven, obsessed to be more accurate, concerned only with money and the stock index and the current going price of Fortune 500 shares. She’s a cultureless bitch in a Porche she hasn’t paid off yet, in clothes she hasn’t yet reimbursed her credit card for, living in an apartment she deems too small and low class for her that she’s desperate to move out of, banking her entire existence on getting into a place with a doorman and and a few hundred extra yards of space inside.

Oh, she’s just a treat, this prudish, squeaky voiced woman with her older, too sincere, rich-as-hell-but-unconcerned-with-money Christian boyfriend that she keeps around for no reason at all. Did I mention the boyfriend lives with Andre, a born-again macaque that was once one of the boldest jewel thieves in France? No?

I spent fifty pages inside the head of this woman, thanks to Robbins’ choice of narrative, and the whole time I was screaming to get out. She hates sex, everything is gross to the point where she blushes at the drop of a hat, she hates her Filipina background and her hippie parents, she hates not having money and the world laid at her feet and she hates the common people of Seattle. In addition to an overly nice but boring boyfriend and his pet monkey, her best friend is a 300 pound tarot reader named Q-Jo, and she hates being seen with Q-Jo in public because, oh yeah, the world hates fat people, especially fat people in purple turbans and other garish attire, so she keeps her best friend swept up under the proverbial rug in order to maintain her professional veneer.

I was rather amazed I got to page fifty, seeing as the whole time I just wanted to slap her. Or myself, seeing as I was supposed to be her this entire time. I felt pretty disgusted as I put it back on my shelf, relieved to find something a bit more enjoyable to spend my time on. And there that book sat, for two more years at least, until I picked it up again a few weeks ago.

I blame my recently-acquired interest in late twentieth and early twenty-first century humor fiction for sending me back to Half Asleep. Having read Barry and Coupland and Nielan over the last six months to a year, my attention turned towards Robbins again, a writer that numerous people have gushed to me over. Rather than buying another one of his books, or trying to find copies in the library (I love libraries but get a bit antsy over their rigid time restraints, due to my short attention span and habit of flitting back and forth between books) I decided to pick up and read Half Asleep. The whole way through. No more putting it off and leaving it shelved, telling myself I’d get around to actually completing it at a later date. Nope. Going to read it now.

And read it I did. I have to say that the second time is a charm for this one. It was so much easier this time around.

I found myself again rolling my eyes and feeling disgusted by Gwendolyn Mati and her obsession with emerging from the long Easter weekend triumphant over all of Wall Street and earning millions during an impending crash. That’s what this book is about at its core, a market on the brink of annihilation and a young, incompetent stock broker furiously trying to cover her possibly illegal (and most definitely amoral) investment strategies from both boss and client.

It’s also about philosophy, capitalism, African tribalism, sex, disease, space aliens, telepathy, hallucinogens and the arcane. It could also, if you stretch your imagination a tiny bit, be about love.

I started off wanting to beat the holy hell out of Gwen, just as I did last time, but pushing through this novel, page by page, I was able to witness her transformation from a completely self-obsessed, arrogant bitch to a woman who might have her heart in the right place even if she’s a bit on the narcissistic side. It was an amazing albeit snail-paced transformation, made all the better and worth waiting for by numerous encounters along the way that leave her humiliated and knocked down more than a few pegs. There are a few places where I had to hold my giggles in.

Is it possible to experience Schadenfreude against yourself? In this instance, I think so. And at the end, after I was flushed of all available derision, I actually felt a bit good for her.

Credo di non essere più in grado di dare un giudizio obiettivo su quest'uomo. Il fatto è che...adoro il suo stile, non c'è niente da fare. Potrebbe scrivere pure la lista delle cose da portare in lavanderia, e troverei straordinaria pure quella. La trama (per quanto meno arzigogolata che in altri suoi libri e abbastanza seguibile, anche se sempre assurda e piena di colpi di tacco - e di genio) passa quasi in secondo piano, perché le parole si susseguono con un gusto talmente piacevole che è quasi come gustarsi una tazza di cioccolata calda speziata. L'uso che sa fare delle parole e delle figure retoriche è tanto affascinante da coprire quasi il contenuto, che pure c'è, ed è sempre interessante. Mitico Robbins!t

Prima lettura: gen 1996
Seconda lettura: nov 2019

Di Hilia Brinis, impareggiabile traduttrice, non esistono foto sul web. Peccato, perché ne avrei voluto conoscere il viso, il sorriso, le sfumature. Poter tradurre un libro come questo richiede trasporto, sensibilità, intelligenza a fiumi. È morta nel 2005, dopo aver tradotto, tra gli altri, molti libri del nostro.

Tom Robbins è qui strepitoso, caleidoscopico, luccicante. La storia è come sempre sopra le righe, ma leggere Robbins è allo stesso tempo nutriente - perché sollecita la curiosità, la speranza, il mistero - e desolante - perché ti piglia per il culo dall’inizio alla fine, e lo sai mentre lo leggi.

Ma non ci si ferma, non c’è un punto di stasi, ogni capitoletto rimbalza su una nuova curiosità (i denti di Washington, ma che c’entrano?) e trascina al prossimo; la capacità dell’autore di far parlare ogni personaggio con il proprio tono, la propria intelligenza, i propri slang è magistrale; la simpatia e la cultura indotta fanno sentire il lettore sempre più intelligente, una pagina dopo l’altra.

In realtà brancoliamo ancora nel buio, ma più leggeri, divertiti, appagati.

Ps: libro pubblicato da Robbins alla tenera età di 62 anni. Sembra scritto da un 30enne schizzato.

Okay, can T.R. please pick some new freaking characters? I am betting sick of the "macho" bad boy, soo deep and misunderstood, who is attracted to the skinny hot but not so smart woman. Get a new fucking plot. and I sure could do with out the pages and pages of rants from the macho man!

Agree or disagree with me if you please, so I will just get the negative out before the positive: Tom Robbins is NOT the best story-writer. And the fact that this is told from the perspective of a 20-something year old woman written by a then 60-something year old man is rather eccentric. However, Tom Robbins is THE BEST when it comes to analogies, idioms, similes, metaphors, illustrations etc. I picked up this novel mainly for it’s style of writing (it’s told entirely in second person), but this isn’t like some Choose Your Own Adventure type story. You are actually a full fledged character named Gwendolyn Matti, who is 29, a beautiful Filipino Seattle stockbroker with a libido more comatose than Tutankhamen’s corpse that is miraculously reawakened at an adventure involving a missing monkey, then later a missing psychic, only to be lured up by this sleazy smut bag Larry Diamond. Now I’ll admit I’m currently only 2/3 of the way through so I haven’t finished it - and not because it’s not a real page turner, but it has A LOT to digest. I remember reading somewhere that Tom Robbins will spend up to 8 hours just to get a ten word sentence down, and he surely does with this one! I will finish this ridiculous story soon, but as a fellow writer this work is one I admire very much.

My first ever Tom Robbins novel and another author ticked off the list from father-in-law recommendations—and another winner at that. I thought this was a good blend of silly yet emotional and the overall progression of time and events was interesting. I also enjoyed some of the more looney science stuff for the lore, but at times thought it was getting a bit full of itself (and felt some of the same way about the vulgarity, as boomer-y as saying that makes me feel). I thought the various threads of the story were tied together quite well and well balanced throughout the novel to keep things moving while keeping you interested. The ending felt a bit haphazard, yet also felt appropriate and I was left satisfied with it. A good variety to some of the more serious material I had been reading lately and I have no doubt that I’ll be in the same boat with another Robbins’ novels at some point in the future. 7.75/10

My first goodreads review! Probably pretty simple compared to other TR books (though it's been a long time since I've read one tbh) but this book was literally about ME so

There is an electrical problem in the women's room. It is as black as outer space in there, and the light switch flips up and down uselessly, like the lips of the President.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
Robbins has a lot of great quips in this; the writing is fast, and the second-person POV launches the reader (who is actually 29-year-old stockbroker Gwendolyn Mati) through a wild Easter weekend. Oftentimes disjointed, to varying results, the book has recurrent questions. Some to be expected, like what's up with Sirus C and what, exactly, do frogs have to do with enlightenment?

However, all of this is marred by the fact that this was a) written and published in the 90s by b) Tom Robbins, a very white man, aged 62 at the time of publication. He handles the fact that the main character is a Filipina as well as one would expect (Outside of an anatomy textbook, I don't think I've seen so many references to female genitalia; and I swear to God, if I see one more reference to white ponies or tides being used as a metaphor for climaxing, I'll lose it). The relationship with the eccentric stockbroker-turned-mystic Larry Diamond is also not very well developed, leading me to believe that, due to his cancer, it's at best pity sex and at worst a manipulative streak in Gwen's character. For the reason of the lack of development, I can't make a claim either way.

And don't even get me started on the autism and dolphins. This book is very clear with its message of anti-capitalism and class divide (-ish, I think Diamond satirizes the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" type but is also where we get the messages of anti-capitalism. It's complicated, but Diamond is an intentionally confusing character), but the connections between Gwen's ruin in the stock market and the Dogon people and Timbucktu aren't super clear.

Tom Robbins is a genius. I love his writing style, his bizarre metaphors that somehow describe life perfectly, the non cliche philosophy interlaced in ridiculous narrative. He does things with words that you couldn’t even dream of doing. He evoke emotion and feeling with both content and style. Frequently, I read a novel turn of phrase and reread it lingering over the simultaneous surprise and feeling-of-rightness of the words. They stun and they feel right.

This book is on the surface about two traders in the stock market (toward which I have what borders on a strong distaste for) following/preceding a precipitous crash and a doctor who found a cure for colorectal cancer (toward which I have an even greater vendetta, the cancer not the cure). In spite of this, and the off-putting and mildly aggressive sexual maneuvering of one of the main characters, I could not put this book down. I loved the journey it took me on. I have emerged a better person, with a deeper understanding of the world.

It is now my life’s mission to read the rest of his books. Three in, he is my favorite author. H U G E fan.