I was recently turned towards the work of Tom Robbins (RIP) through a few different sources and recommendation requests. Until this year I had never even heard of the guy (though I've read more books in 2025 alone than in probably the last 10 years of my life, so that's not surprising). I bought two of his books a while ago and have finally gotten around to cracking into my first one, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.
Before I go any farther, I DID choose this book on purpose knowing that many consider it to be one of his weaker works. Obviously some people love it for any number of reasons, but the general consensus that I saw about it was that it's not a super popular one to gravitate towards in his body of work.
I'm currently only about 90 pages into it, but I have simply never read another author who writes like this. I'm dazzled, annoyed, disgusted, inspired, embarrassed, tickled, and bamboozled all at once, sometimes all on the same page. It's crass enough to be considered really juvenile and perhaps even cringey, but it's eloquent and artful in the most paradoxical way I've ever come across.
A perfect example of what I mean is the quote below (technically NSFW).
She maneuvered herself beneath it and guided its crabapple noggin through the seam in her being. Like a bullet of thick fish meat, it went to target.
Like WHAT THE FUCK, but also subject matter aside, the words flow together so cohesively. It's like Nabakov with a 14 year old boy's sense of humor.
Or this entire paragraph here towards the very beginning.
As for the oyster, its rectal temperature has never even been estimated, although we must suspect that the tissue heat of the sedentary bivalve is as far below good old 98.6 as that of the busy bee above. Nonetheless, the oyster, could it be fancy, should fancy its excremental equipment a hot item, for what other among Creation's crapping creatures can convert its bodily wastes into treasure?
This is one of the most ridiculous books I've ever read, and I say that endearingly. This man certainly had a very special and unique way with words, and this book fully embodies the utter absurdity that I was hoping for when the plot of the book was described to me.
I can totally see how writing like this can not be everybody's cup of tea, I'm not even entirely sure it's mine. But it's certainly delivering on the promise that was made to me of it being a simply ludicrous story written in an artful way.
Up next is Jitterbug Perfume.
by PsyferRL
2 Comments
He was a paradoxical man. Welcome to the club, his works are amazing!
Wait till you read Jitterbug Perfume.
I’ve only read two of his works (Skinny Legs and All and Jitterbug Perfume) and enjoyed them both deeply. I find one needs to prepare for a Robbins experience, which is probably why I’ve only read the two, but I loved them both.