A band of gypsies and circus cast-offs create the ultimate roadside attraction. Along with the hot dog stand and flea circus, there is “the corpse,” which has been hidden in a Vatican basement for thousands of years and which may or may not be “you know who.” There are ex-CIA operatives, shamans, and magicians. There is rock-and-rock, mushrooms of all kinds, and a thread of coarse sexuality. And it is all very vivid, just as Robbins likes it. His language is insanely heaped with wild metaphors and similes; his teeming adjectives appear to simply breed more and more vibrant adjectives (take “mashed banana sunlight”). The air between the pages is fecund and flip. His characters are subversive and fringe, but kind and open-minded.
Robbins was a student of art and religion, and he relishes weaving both subjects into his work. But he weaves disrespectfully, against the warp and weft. If you hold organized religion in high regard, you will not enjoy this book or any of Robbins' subsequent novels—this one, written in 1971, was his first. In Another Roadside Attraction, Robbins puts the feet of “the church” to the fire:
“The history of the Catholic Church is written on charred pages splashed with gore.
It is a history of inquisitions and genocides, of purges and perversions, of ravings
and razzings. Yes, but through those same bloody pages walk parades of saints playing
their celestial radios and sowing their sparkles of love.”
He picks on the Catholics quite a bit, but his bias against any and all dictatorial, didactic, hell-threatening religious institutions is clear. I read this novel at the exact time I needed it. I was in my early twenties, in college, and newly emancipated from born-again Christianity. Robbins style was music to my ears--ears that still had patronizing, pat sayings ringing in them about “God's will” and “resisting the devil's temptations.” His style is rebellious, taboo-busting, free-thinking, silly yet not stupid. His handle of language demands attention. I respected his writing, and I drank in his religious lectures within the story: all the religions are really based on the same idea, searching for the same thing. If there is a God, there's very likely only one of them and all the zealots, priests, monks, pastors and Sunday churchies are all looking at different sides of the same God, and coming back down the mountain with a different description. But damn them if they're going to tell the rest of us that there's only one path up that mountain—or that we have to go up it at all. Now that's music to sermon-weary ears.
I was also knee-deep in philosophy classes at the time I read this book and he tweaked that interest quite a bit. Many of my friends were art majors and I envied their creative outlet and talent; through Robbins I could live in that bohemian artist's world for a while. Hell, I could contemplate the varieties and utility of art, sex, religion and philosophy all on one page of this novel—while characters like Amanda, Plucky Purcell and John Paul Ziller gave me explicit examples to boot.
Robbins appears to be entranced by nature in this book, and if I hadn't already been a budding nature lover when I first read it, it would have shoved me off the couch and into the wild. Take this bit about monarch butterflies: “Indeed, wherever there is access to milkweed....there you will find monarchs, for the larvae of this species is as addicted to milkweed juice as the most strung-out junky to smack. His appetite is awesome in its singularity for he would rather starve than switch.” Robbins goes on for another page and a half about the monarch and their inexplicable migratory journeys—but in language unlike any science text I had ever read.
This book, along with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, played heavily in my decision to buy a motorcycle—against the advice of every adult over 40 that had ever heard me say that cycles were pretty cool. How's that for literal rebellion?
Somehow Tom Robbins manages to be a deft writer, while cramming in over-the-top descriptors. He is both highly silly and heavily sexy, and sexist. He is both intellectual and low-brow. His writing makes me feel alive.
One last quote:
“She carried her excitement lightly, the way a hunter carries a loaded gun over
a fence. Warm chemical yokes burst in their throats. Ziller had the stink of Pan
about him. Amanda heard the phone ring in her womb. In the magnetized space
between them they flew their thoughts like kites.”
If you haven't read this book yet, or any Tom Robbins, you're in for an exotic treat--and a wild ride.
This intro reminds me of a review in the sense that having read it, I know with a deep, strong, abiding certainty that nothing on earth could ever persuade me to open the book. Maybe that's too strong--if I were on a 7 hour transatlantic flight and was too cheap to buy their crappy headphones and the only other reading matter was the inflight magazine, then I...no, no, no!
ReplyDeleteI don't want to read it! And the fact that I have such a reaction, such a strong reaction, even a negative reaction, is a compliment to you, if not to Tom Robbins. Your job always is to engage the reader and that means to get him talking to himself, arguing against what you say (or agreeing with it), commenting to himself on your comments as he reads--and this you have done in fine style!
Your job is NOT to be persuasive! It's to relay your delight, and again this you do in fine style, in an essay that is both personal and deals with the book and its charms, such as they are.
And since I know you assume I am just shining you on unless I say at least one negative thing: the last quotation can't just sit there without a gloss; we need to know why it speaks to your condition, why it jazzes you. If this is a sample of his writing making you feel alive, you would have to unpack that a little.