| Title | : | Skinny Legs and All |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1842430343 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781842430347 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 422 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1990 |
Skinny Legs and All Reviews
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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! -
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. -
I will say this book had a slow middle and was difficult to get through. I almost didn't keep going and I'm glad I did. The end had me so satisfied that I can give it 4 stars, but oh boy, that middle is tough.
It's pacing. Robbins is a purple author who luxuriates in purple prose. He will spend an entire paragraph on one concept and explore every association he can make with that idea and then move on to the next. He does this all the way through the book and so the pace is glacial and yet, it's also revelatory. This is not a plot driven story and it isn't as much a character driven story either, but character is the driving force here. Yet, the real force is philosophy and exploring ideas of life, the universe, and the mysteries of the world.
One thing he decides to focus on is animating some objects, 3 ordinary objects and 2 ancient objects of worship some 3,000 years old. A can-o-beans, a spoon, and a used sock are ordinary and then there is the painted stick and conch shell from ancient Phoenician, religious items in the worship of Jezebel. Each of these things has a personality and a dynamic. They are able to motor about and they are bound for Jerusalem for the building of the 3rd temple to come.
No one out there puts the wild ideas together like Tom Robbins. We start out with newlyweds driving from Seattle across the country to NYC in a silver motorhome that's been crafted to look like a giant turkey driving down the road. Ellen is an artist wanting to make a name for herself and her husband is boomer. Tom then throws in the history of Jezebel from the bible and how it really relates to ancient goddesses before the Hebrews back then. He also takes the idea of Salome and the Dance of the 7 veils and uses that as structure for his story. He explores the history of the Arab, Jewish, Christian disputed land of the holy city of Jerusalem by going back before they all started and digging up what they all have in common. He mixes all these objects with these ideas and shakes vigorously. It's such a story.
Ellen has a hard time in the art world and she becomes a waitress at a restaurant owned by a Jew and an Arab who are trying to create common ground. They hire a belly dancer named Salome. There is Norman, the street performer who takes all day to turn around so that you can't even see him moving and then there is Ellen's uncle who is a street preacher trying to bring about Armageddon making trouble for all.
The book is set up in 7 sections. Each section is a veil and one veil drops and another layer of reality is then understood. The apex of the piece is the bellydancer doing the dance of the 7 veils on Superbowl Sunday. Each veil she drops, her audience understands another layer of life and the ancient secrets of the world. Man, the ending was fantastic. It made the whole book come together and it was worth the slog.
I do love Tom Robbins writing. I love his metaphors and smilies he piles on top of each other. He uses them with abandon. This is my 4th book by Robbins. One of my all time favorite books is Jitterbug Perfume. It's the best thing. This is a great book, but again, that middle was gooey and difficult to keep going. I had to really push to get through it.
Tom is an ideas man. He wants to ponder the universe and reveal in the dance of people, the absurdities of life. It wouldn't be a Robbins novel without sex and it has its place in this story.
The weird thing is that Tom seems to be the band leader for matrimony and he longs to topple the patriarchy with each story I have read. He is no fan of the male world of repression. He does lift up woman in his own weird way. I wish he had one more novel he put out to see how he handles the Trump era or error.
This is far from a perfect book. It is slowly paced, but I still really enjoyed this experience. I want to read a new Tom book each year until I get him all read.
Let me quote a random section, I'm just opening the book, to highlight how he will dissect a point.
"Despite its complexity, its nocturnal richness, there was something slaphappy if not slapdash about it, something careless and childlike. Itch as it might with stellar information, buckle though it might under a weight of ashes, adobe, and bone, it also was as topsy-turvy as a nursery rhyme; it was kachina pinball, an episode from chipmunk television." That is a paragraph simply describing the mural of Ellen Cherry Charles.
This is a history lesson and a philosophy lesson wrapped up in a story. If that sounds interesting, you might enjoy this story. If you need plot and action, you might just hate this book. -
Trying to talk about Tom Robbins to someone who's never read him is nigh on imfuckingpossible. It's even more difficult if you're trying to convince someone who's already decided he/she DOESN'T LIKE him.
This is one of my favourite books ever, I've read it more times than I can count, and yet...
I still have a hard time explaining exactly WHY I want people to read this book.
I mean, I get it. Robbins is pretentious as fuck and his writing is what my husband refers to as masturbatory (yes, I read him sections of books I'm into and he usually makes faces at me, a sort of "really, you're reading this?!"). I've tried several times to get him to acknowledge my love of Tom Robbins, but he refuses.
If you can't understand why a book about a conch shell, a painted stick, a can of beans and a faded purple sock learning the secrets of life, the universe, and everything is brilliant...well, I just can't help you.Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished.
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I started this book at least three times. Tom Robbins is one of my favorie authors, and this was his only novel I hadn't read. However, each of the times I started it I found myself becoming very disappointed. At the beginning it was too weird, or trying to be too cute, even for Tom Robbins. Ellen Cherry and Boomer driving across country in a turkey. A talking and walking spoon, dirty sock and can of beans. It was too much. I couldn't take it seriously. He was trying to be too 'Tom Robbins like' or something.
But when I made a decision to finally plow through all of this beginning crap I fell in love, and now this is my favorite Tom Robbins novel. All the silly and crazy things at the beginning, like the turkey and dirty sock, etc., fall into place, and make sense soon enough. When it all started to come together it definitely restored my faith in Robbins, and made me love him even more. He pulls out all the stops in this book. And though it was published in 1990, it's still feels so very new and very relevant now. Of course, the problems in the Middle East have only gotten worse. -
Για τον Ρόμπινς τα έχω πει! Κάποιος ή θα τον αγαπήσει ή θα τον βρει αλλόκοτο κ θα μισήσει τη γραφή του! Εμένα το βλέμμα της λαγνείας, της ηδονής κ του εθισμού όταν πιάνω βιβλίο του αποτυπώνεται κ σε αυτή τη φωτό. Οπότε το μόνο που έχω να προτείνω, σε όσους τον φοβούνται, να κάνουν μια προσπάθεια κ να ξεκινήσουν να βυθίζονται στην τρέλα της γραφής του!
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Και τα εφτά πέπλα πέφτουν και αφήνουν τα ίχνη από το απόλυτο ανθρωπιστικό μανιφέστο σε έναν κόσμο που δεν θα αλλάξει ποτέ.
Όποιος καταλάβει θα κερδίσει την αιώνια πορφύρα που λέει τα μυστικά της μετουσίωσης και του θεϊκού.
Εξαίσιο. Μαγικό και μαγεμένο.
Ο Τομ Ρόμπινς γράφει, παρέα με μια Κάλτσα, μια / έναν τύπο κονσέρβα φα��ολάκια με κρέας, παλιά και αιώνια φυλαχτά σε χαρτί πορφυρού χρώματος , γράφει ιστορία !…
Το πρώτο πέπλο κρύβει την καταπίεση της οικουμενικής θεάς, σκεπάζει το σεξουαλικό π��όσωπο του πλανήτη,καλύπτει τον αρχαίο θεμέλιο λίθο του ερωτικού τρόμου που που στηρίζει τη θρησκεία του σύγχρονου ανθρώπου.
Τα υπόλοιπα καθορίζονται από το χορό της Σελήνης.
Καλή ανάγνωση
Πολλούς και σεμνούς ασπασμούς -
Σας έχω πει πόσο αγαπάω τον Ρόμπινς; Να σας το πω ξανά;Τον αγαπώ.Γιατι μπορεί να συνδιάσει χιούμορ και πίκρα,ρεαλισμό και όνειρο, αγάπη και κυνισμό, μπορεί να φτύσει κατάμουτρα τον κόσμο σου όλο και μετά να σε πάρει αγκαλιά και να σε ταΐσει κρουασάν με Μερέντα.
Όταν έπεσαν όλα τα πέπλα η ανθρωπότητα μου φάνηκε πιο φτηνή από ποτέ.
Στον απόηχο όλων όσων συμβαίνουν με τον πόλεμο στην Ανατολή,τα τρομοκρατικά χτυπήματα και τα κύματα ρατσισμού, προτείνω να το διαβάσεις.ΛΑΘΟΣ.ΠΡΕΠΕΙ να το διαβάσεις.
Αγάπη, ειρήνη, αδελφοσύνη.
"Όταν συγκεντρώνεις όλη την προσοχή σου στον παράδεισο,δημιουργείς κόλαση."
4,5 αστεράκια, χάνει λίγο,γιατί συγκριτικά με τον τρυποκάρυδο, η ιστορία μου φάνηκε ένα τσακ λιγότερο ενδιαφέρουσα. -
This book is a delightfully messy, trippy, optimistic, big-hearted whirlwind. A hurricane that has ripped through the 1960s and '70s and '80s in America, picking up hillbillies and flower children and Arabs and Jews and artists and Biblical characters who serve as fodder for our fantasies. And don't forget a Can o' Beans, Dirty Sock, Spoon, Painted Stick and Conch Shell. The overused phrase of praise Tour de Force actually applies here. And then some.
This is my personal favorite Tom Robbins novel because of the elements of it that are about art. Robbins doesn't linger in anything overwhelmingly emotional, but there are a few moments that have grabbed onto my heart and will never let go. One character, Boomer Petway, doesn't think he's an artist when the story begins. He seems to be a rather matter-of-fact, not particularly bright chap, a welder who is defined by his hopeless love for the artist Ellen Cherry Charles. But when he sets his mind to making art in order to earn her respect, he makes something so unexpectedly cool and filled with so much soul that it knocked me off my seat. I won't spoil it here, so you can have the same experience. And when he talks about being an artist, it's such a unique and perfect perspective -- he just thinks about something he would like to see in the world that doesn't exist yet... and he makes it. Perfection.
There's also the performance artist Turn Around Norman. He comes out every day and stands on his street corner, very very slowly rotating. At any given moment, you can't see him moving. But if you watch long enough, he turns all the way around. Most people don't Get It, but it moves Ellen Cherry to tears. And Can o' Beans, Dirty Sock, Spoon, Painted Stick and Conch Shell think he's a genius because he's the only person they've ever met who moves as slowly as they do.
I will say this for people who are giving the first pages of the book a browse and finding it hard to decide whether they like it: Robbins starts off with a postmodern BANG that seems to be the product of quite a lot of peyote. I personally thought, "I might love this. But I can't quite give in and love it because it might be just a little too pretentious and only make sense to someone taking hallucinogens." But after throwing you into the deepest end of his weirdest and wildest writing pool, Robbins quickly pulls back and offers a much more traditionally accessibly narrative throughout most of the book. It's still incredibly imaginative and by no means common, but not every sentence seems to require a decoder. Which is probably for the best. But it also makes me love the trippy passages even more.
This is a smart book for smart people, with a surprising number of characters who are not concerned with being Smart People. It is about Love and Art without being sentimental or self-indulgent. It is far more about the journey than the destination, a road trip with the coolest friend you've ever had. The guy who keeps suggesting that you detour to see (dubious) attractions that you never would have chosen on your own, but that somehow add up to the best vacation you've ever taken. When that guy tells you, "Hop in," you take 5 minutes to grab your camera and some sunscreen, leave a note saying "Heading off with Tom. Who knows where! Will send postcards"
And then you hop the heck in. -
Ένα εστιατόριο στη Νέα Υόρκη ιδιοκτησίας ενός Εβραίου και ενός Άραβα, ένα υπερδιεγερμένο σεξουαλικά κορίτσι που έχει μετανιώσει για το γάμο της πιο γρήγορα και από τον Γκλέτσο και που το οποίο αναζητά απεγνωσμένα να βρει λίγη έμπνευση για να κυνηγήσει το όνειρό της στη ζωγραφική, την ίδια ώρα που ο ψιλό μαλάκας σύζυγος αποδεικνύεται κρυφό ταλέντο χωρίς καν να προσπαθήσει («άντε γαμήσου παιδάκι» η φάση)!
Ο σουρεαλισμός όμως φτάνει σε άλλα επίπεδα όταν κατά την ανάγνωση, μας συστήθηκαν κάποια έμψυχα αντικείμενα που φιλοσοφούν, έχουν υπαρξιακές ανησυχίες και ταξιδεύουν για να ολοκληρώσουν το πεπρωμένο τους παράλληλα με τους δίποδους χαρακτήρες μας. Τι αντικείμενα ρωτάτε; Ε να, συνηθισμένα μωρέ... Ένα κουτάλι, μία κονσέρβα φασόλια, μία βρωμερή κάλτσα, μία πορφύρα και ένας... δονητής!
Πώς ένα βιβλίο με τέτοιο περιεχόμενο που με δυσκολία αντιλαμβάνεσαι τι διαδραματίζεται στις πρώτες σελίδες (δε καταλαβαίνεις Χριστό), καταλήγει να μη θες να το αφήσεις από τα χέρια σου, αποτελεί ένα συγγραφικό θαύμα. Ένα κοινωνικοπολιτικό βιβλίο που στη μία σελίδα διαβάζεις για μεταλλικές γαλοπούλες και τις σεξουαλικές επιθυμίες της πρωταγωνίστριας και στην επόμενη, ο Ρόμπινς μπορεί να πραγματοποιήσει τη πιο βαθυστόχαστη κριτική στον ανθρώπινο πολιτισμό και τις θρησκείες. Κάπου εκεί φρενάρεις, λες «ώπα, τι έγραψε ο τύπος;», γυρνάς πίσω, το ξανά διαβάζεις, επικροτείς με ένα νεύμα «not bad» αλά Ομπάμα, και συνεχίζεις μέχρι να ανακαλύψεις το επόμενο απόφθεγμα καυστικής κριτικής που θα θελήσεις να αντιγράψεις για το story σου! Και ω φίλε, έχει πολλά τέτοια!
Επίκαιρο, με καυστικό χιούμορ, ευφάνταστους χαρακτήρες (τα αντικείμενα, όχι οι άνθρωποι) και μία YOLO ιστορία!
Μου άνοιξε την όρεξη να διαβάσω και άλλα βιβλία του… -
this book's jacket description : this book :: funny movie trailer : movie that shot its wad in the trailer
The premise sounds wild and funny and makes you wonder, briefly, how he could pull it off. And then he doesn't. -
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!
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Even though I grew a bit tired of this towards the last 100 pages, the fact that half of the main characters were objects like a spoon, a sock, a can of beans, a vibrator, and a stick, and it didn’t annoy the shit out of me = 3.5 rounded up.
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****First off..forget Formatting...this one is Free Form, all the way***
5 Stars: This book held my interest for over a month (I'm a slow reader, okay!)....like
Gravity's Rainbow it's about Everything..and No One Thing, and it's never boring...Then there's the Wordplay..the lovely English language the most versatile of toys. Mr Robbins spins that top for all it's worth..in his hands it's worth a lot. Zany, crazy, surreal..the gang's all here, with pathos and sincerity in tow.
Art, and its carry-on baggage: I came to this book after reading
The Goldfinch and didn't expect to find another book that dealt with Art. While Ms Tartt's book dealt with ART (writ large, and full of meaning, however misguided) Mr Robbins' book dealt with Art as a process (thanks to Ellen Cherry Charles!) full of foibles and failures. I don't know which book I prefer.
The whole megillah in the Middle East: Oy..from suicide bombers to Palestinian massacres....nothing has changed since this book was published (1990) and I don't want to get into the political side of things...Israelis and Palestinians have been killing each other since Isaac and Ishmael..and nothing will change any time soon..This book takes it all the way back to Jezebel (no "hussy")....and Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils (of Self-Deception)..which I never figured out the specifics...guess you'll have to read the book!
Five inanimate objects on a road trip across the USA (sans Chevrolet)...bound for Armageddon, er, Jerusalem. The "Third Temple" is coming, soon....don't be square...be there...
**in spite of this travesty of a review...I did love this book, and Tom Robbins, the author...don't shy away from the "weird" aspect..that's what fuels his novels**
5 Stars...all the way -
A passage:
"You are an artist. You know that big picture at the museum midtown, that picture by that fellow Rousseau, it is called The Sleeping Gypsy?"
"Yeah. Sure. That's a very famous painting."
"It ought to be called The Sleeping Arab, that picture. An Arab lies in the desert, sleeping under the crazy-faced moon. A lion sniffs at the Arab, the Arab is unafraid..."
See the painting...
I find this to be one of Robbins' better works. By "better" here I mean "more mature" and "fully realized". Which is a bit ironic, I suppose in as much as this (along with Palahniuk's
Diary) is in the upper-tier of my pantheon of books about artists struggling with their voice and their craft. (As
Cory Doctorow would say succinctly: "Follow your weird.")
There is a lot to take away from this novel in terms of art and politics, in terms of brotherhood and forgiveness, in terms of inanimate objects on pilgrimages. You can skim through this one, sucking out just the gooey humorous center (pun-intended) and find little redeeming in it. But slow down a bit, dive a little deeper, and it's on the cusp of overwhelming.
But if you're not up for the challenge of its depth, you can still extract that hilarity without too much worry. Ease your conscience, I won't mind. -
This tainted slab of ham turned out to be a massive milestone in my life of reading stuff. It marked the moment when I decided that a book DID NOT need to be finished once it was started. A wildly masturbatory author, Robbins lays metaphors on everything in triplicate and quadruplicate, spilling similes all over the place like a chimp splatters semen, like a bubbling fountain of tangy fondue cheese, like hand cream pumped from a bellows, like an elephant stomping on a sack of silly putty...
It was exhilarating to close this retarded tome barely a third of the way through. Completely loathing the way it started, I could give a flying fuck how it ended. I felt light and giggly, knowing I'd never slog my way through a bad volume again for some ridiculous personal rule. I toss partially read books in the donation bin all the time now.
Remember life is short, don't waste it reading...
For judicious, yet unsettling, use of metaphor check out:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97... -
''Με τα σφυριά των ψαλμών και τα καρφιά του δόγματος, σταυρώνουμε και ξανασταυρώνουμε, προσπαθώντας να καρφώσουμε στους στάσιμους βωμούς μας το αποδημητικό φως του κόσμου...''
-
Although I have determined that it is impossible for me to pick a favorite Tom Robbins novel, this one is strong in the running.
Ellen Cherry Charles isn't my favorite Robbins woman, but in many ways, she is his most sympathetic female protagonist. Caught between her art, her stupid husband, and her hypocritical uncle, she made me want to jump into the pages and help her straighten everything out.
As with all his other novels, as I read it, I feel that he's got it right, that almost everyone else has it wrong, and that if the world learned to think a little more like him, it would be a far, far, better place. That's not to say that I feel Robbins thinks he's telling us the answer, he's just asking us to think, and not assume that the answer is always apparent, or the societally accepted answer, or even possible to be discovered. In this book it feels especially imperative because a main focus is religion (discussed in terms of the Arab and the Jew who own a restaurant together across the street from the U.N. and Ellen Cherry's fire-and-brimstone-preaching uncle, Buddy*).
* Whenever I think of Buddy, I think of the line from the T.Rex song "Baby Boomerang" that goes "your uncle with an alligator chained to his leg/dangles you your freedom then he offers you his bed". -
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. -
Ortadoğu, din, sanat, tarih, feminizm, futbol, aşk, seks dolu bir roman. Tom Robbins'in kitaplarında yarattığı incelikli ama umursamaz karakterler (canlı, cansız) ve ambians. İsterseniz düz bir macera olarak, isterseniz referanslarına dalarak derinlikli bir kitap olarak okuyabileceğiniz çok hoş bir kitap.
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Perhaps, in this particularly cynical day and age, it is hardly surprising that the most philosophically bent of Tom Robbins' characters in Skinny Legs and All is a can of beans. A redneck welder-turned-artist is a close second, expressing his own brand of somewhat confused philosophies regarding art, love, and the state of the world.
Robbins uses his pontificating Can O'Beans and the can's animated inanimate friends to take the plot of Skinny Legs and All to a higher level of academic thought than it might otherwise achieve; our main link to the tangled history of the Middle East and the legendary city of Jerusalem is a Painted Stick, a Conch Shell, and Can o'Beans him/herself.
We start the story sitting with Boomer and Ellen Cherry in their honeymoon getaway vehicle: a gigantic welded roast turkey on wheels. This is the physical expression of Boomer's love for his brand-new wife. The story only gets stranger from there.
The book follows the structure of the legendary Dance of Seven Veils, a dance so enchanting that John the Baptist was murdered because of it--so the story says. It creates a spiritual and philosophical journey for the reader as well as each character, and flawlessly mixes modern motivations with ancient traditions. In New York City, a Jew and an Arab start a restaurant together, the welder becomes an artist and travels to Jerusalem, an Evangelical preacher believes he can create the Apocalypse, Ellen Cherry just wants to get laid, and Can O'Beans fulfills his/her greatest dreams despite enormous odds.
One of the first comments Robbins makes in the novel is that art is the rearrangement of reality. He's talking about mockingbirds, but the same can be applied the the entirety of Skinny Legs and All. Robbins recklessly pushes his characters into a strange version of our world, one where a bellydancer named Salome out-performs the SuperBowl, one where the ancient god of Palestine is rediscovered by a guy named 'Boomer.' And the characters themselves: they not only go along for the ride, they're aware that they're on a sort of pilgramage, particularly Boomer, who, grasped by the unforgiving Muse, delves deeply into art. His erstwhile bride, however, digs her heels into New York and stays put, stubbornly trying to stop the inexorable enlightening movement...in her defense, however, it's through Ellen Cherry's eyes that we watch the veils drop, and she is by far the most entertaining of the various narrators. Unlike Can o'Beans, who, seeming to regard him/herself as self-nominated historian, translates at length Painted Stick and Conch Shell's history of Jerusalem, Ellen Cherry does her best to keep out of the whole mess. Her stubborn belief that she is neither interested nor involved in the Middle East is jarring next to the other characters' obsession with the place: Abu and Spike wax lyrical about Jerusalem, Can o'Beans and the other inanimates do their best to make it to that famed city, and even Boomer finds himself totally fascinated by the combination of violence and religion that is that citadel, Jerusalem.
One of my favorite aspects of Robbins' writing is his love of women, and that comes to the forefront in Skinny Legs and All with his portrayal of Ellen Cherry Charles. With her obsession with Jezebel, her love of girlish shoes, and the way she clings to a feminine ideal, Ellen Cherry is voluptuously feminine. Even her temperment--quick to anger, quick to compassion, quick to leaps of logic--is practically a stereotypically female one. Robbins needs Ellen Cherry's strength of character to discuss the book's main motive: the feminine pagan religion of Astarte vs. the patriarchal organized religion of Yahweh. Let me put it this way: if you are a fan of Robbins' soliloques on feminist religions vs. masculine ones; if you enjoy his unabashed Whitman-esque worship of bodies, nature, love and sex; if you prefer unexpected metaphors to straightforward prose, you will enjoy this book.
it is impossible to describe Robbins as a purely feminist writer, or Skinny Legs and All as a purely feminist book. In fact, I'm not sure I would call it "feminist" at all. Skinny Legs and All is simply, in my opinion, the finest example of Robbins' ecletic ideas and ideals, his bizarre and alliterative imagery, and his love of people and the world at large. Not even in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, a novel whose main character is famous for her hitch-hiking, is the breadth and width of the U.S. so lovingly described, or its place in the world studied. It's a strange mix of modernism and romanticism, of mythology and street performers. Robbins spins us through the story with breath-taking ease and familiarity. No one who is familiar with Robbins' past work will be surprised to find that Skinny Legs and All evolves into a treatise on religions: ancient, organized and defunct, Robbins considers them all. His main beef is with Christianity, so if you're a bit edgy on that subject, I'd suggest keeping an open mind or avoiding the book altogether. The good news? He's already used the Corpse of Christ in one novel, so it doesn't pop up again. The bad news: two of the Bibles most famous tramps are, welll--unveiled. But that's not so bad. -
I believe this novel was so enjoyable because of its lighthearted mix of the absurd, the everyday, the magical, and the sexual. I consider those the four food groups of fun literature, and they each find a home in this ridiculous tale of self-awakening and revelations of truth. Robbins asserts that patriarchal society has blinded us to a heritage that recognizes and rejoices its feminine deities that embrace expressions of sexuality and the magic of nature. Blinded by “seven veils” of untruth in our modern culture (including the efficacy of politics, our reign over other creatures, and the worship of money), we are disillusioned to the point of not thinking for ourselves. These strong themes are revealed through such farcical characters as a troupe of inanimate, yet mobile objects, an artist with unruly hair and spirit, her redneck welder husband, and a gold-toothed, pustuled clergyman with a penchant for Armageddon.
For a book that doesn’t take itself too seriously, it certainly presents some weighty challenges to the status quo. While I don’t believe that this book will necessarily bring on a feminine revolution, it is a refreshing change of pace and a new point of view to explore. I don’t know from whence Tom Robbins got his Girl Power, but he certainly doesn’t hold back. You go, Girl! -
Μου άρεσε, αλλά δεν με ξετρέλανε. Κάποια στιγμή με κούρασε κάπως. Θα μπορούσε να είναι λίγο πιο περιεκτικό. Για να το διαβάσεις πρέπει σίγουρα να είσαι ανοιχτόμυαλος και να σου αρέσουν βιβλία κοινωνικού, πολιτικού και θρησκευτικού περιεχομένου. Φιλοσοφεί με όμορφο τρόπο και δεν χαρίζει μία σε θρησκείες. Σου δείχνει πως επηρεάζουν την μάζα για να την ελέγξουν και πόσο ανάλαφρος μπορείς να νιώσεις πετώντας από πάνω σου τα "εφτά πέπλα" που θολώνουν την όρασή σου για τον κόσμο και την ίδια σου την ύπαρξη.
3,5/5 -
Θα μουν δεν θα μουν 20 χρονών και είχα πήξει στην κλασικούρα (που ακόμα λατρεύω, αλλά σε αλλεπάλληλες δόσεις προκαλεί πήξιμο) όταν ανακάλυψα τον Ρόμπινς. "Μωρέ, μπράβο, γράφονται και έτσι βιβλία;" αναφώνησα ενθουσιασμένος. Η αφηγηματική του τρέλα με συνεπήρε. Κι ακόμα τον αγαπώ!
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I am a Tom Robbins fan, but I was a little disappointed in this book. Fierce Invalids is still my all-time favorite, closely followed by Jitterbug Perfume. Both are MUST-reads.
My whole theory on how Tom Robbins writes a book:
--step 1: find some random unlikely stuff to be associated-- people, places, things, or topics.
--step 2: weave them together using witty humour, a renegade main character, some sort of historical or theological revelation tied into all random people places or things.
I'm used to his ways and even though he has a formula of some sort, I love him and it's entertainment and originality every time. But.. a can of beans, a spoon, a sock, a conch shell, an ancient painted stick-- why are these main characters? I got over it, but still. The end was still good and tied just about everything together in a nice little sensical bow. -
it seems impossible to review this book other than to say you should read it. It faithfully explores the human condition, the importance of asking/struggling with the best questions (philosophy), religion, sexuality, art, politics, family and biblical history, employing humor, sarcasm, eroticism, history and other novel devices. The storyline is small, like most of our lives, but huge in impact. He is an incredibly unique author who is a joy to read. I thank my dear friend John for giving me the gift of this work of art!
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I want an eighth veil -- revealing the illusion that the dropping of veils of illusion leads to "enlightenment."
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Clever For the Sake of Cleverness (2012)
Robbins, Tom (1990). Skinny Legs and All. New York: Bantam.
This novel is about Tom Robbins, who wants to show you how clever, funny, and sophisticated he is. With respect to that goal, the book succeeds.
However, does he create and motivate interesting characters? No. Does he develop an interesting story? No. Does he elucidate some significant point? No. Does he create a haunting sense of place or time? No. Does he skewer social or political practices with satire or parody? Maybe a little.
After reading this book, I felt like I had watched a TV sitcom. I had a few chuckles and guffaws, then I was angry to have just wasted precious hours of my life. Is there anything to learn from this novel? Perhaps only that some people are good at remote associations, and if you think those are funny, this book is for you. I do happen to enjoy nonsequiturs, sequences of unexpected thoughts or images that have absolutely no relation to each other, so there were giggles here for me.
For example, how would you complete this simile: “It was empty as …”? I might have said, “…a church at noon,” or “…an ice cream parlor at the North Pole,” or some such. I don’t think, even if I were smoking dope, I could have come up with, “a paraplegic’s dance card.”
Funny? Yes, but only because of its extremely low frequency, not because the idea itself is funny. It is clever for the sake of cleverness. Often, Robbins’ comparisons are funny even when they make no sense at all. Consider this description of a sunrise that was “…like a neon fox tongue lapping up the powdered bones of space chickens…” What? Or how about, It was “…a pledge she would stick to like Scotch tape to a Chihuahua.” I chuckled, but this is pointless, goofball humor. The ideas themselves are not funny, only their remoteness and juxtaposition are funny.
Once in a while, Robbins hits gold with an apt comparison, like calling the waning daylight of late afternoon “lame duck daylight,” or describing a woman as being “on the dry side of thirty.” My favorite might have been a description of a man’s gaudy, mismatched clothing making a character feel as though she was being “pistol-whipped with a kaleidoscope.” There were enough of these truly creative – not just clever, but artistically creative – sentences to keep me turning the pages.
There are two and a half parallel stories in the novel. In one, a young redneck couple makes a pilgrimage to New York city in an airstream trailer that the guy, Boomer, a skilled welder, has converted into a roast turkey. His wife, Ellen Cherry, will strive to make it as an artist in the Big Apple. She doesn’t make it, but ironically, Boomer does, as his trailer/turkey becomes the toast of the avant-garde.
In the second story, five inanimate objects are on a pilgrimage from the U.S. to Jerusalem. They are, a can of beans, a dirty sock, a silver dessert spoon, a conch shell and a painted stick. They meditate until they are able to ‘locomote,’ always careful to stay out of the way of curious humans. Some have distinguishable personalities. Can o’ Beans, for example, tends to “fart with curiosity,” whereas Spoon thinks of herself as a Southern lady of taste and breeding. The objects have endless adventures of no consequence. For example, dirty sock gets washed away in a river, but somehow reunited with his colleagues. Conch Shell and Painted Stick get locked in a church basement and have to set a fire to attract humans to open the door. Funny? No. Clever for the sake of cleverness, is what I say.
These characters were not developed enough or motivated enough to be interesting. It would be an achievement to portray convincing characters without human bodies, but Robbins falls short. I confess though, I did like Ellen Cherry’s Japanese-made vibrator that spoke in Zen Koans.
The final half-story is about a cartoony, television preacher who wants to blow up Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, to cause World War Three and hasten the Rapture. It’s a thin character with a thin story, but Robbins uses it in the last quarter of the book to create a theme of apocalypse and the End Times, satirically symbolized by a Super Bowl game.
Throughout, Robbins attempts to comment on middle-east politics. Ellen Cherry works at an Israeli-Arab restaurant across from the U.N., giving the author ample scope for commentary on middle-east politics and for lame Yiddish and Arabic accents and comments that are supposed to be funny. More deadly however, are Robbins’ heavy-handed lectures about the history and politics of religion and on Israel in particular, all of which, in the ultimate scene, morphs into a half-baked philosophical commentary about human self-delusion in general. Never has a novel ended with a more resounding thud.
There are some creative structural elements in the writing that are interesting, such as surprising changes in voice and point of view. But sometimes, even these veer off into weird, reckless, and seemingly arbitrary changes of tense, voice, and mood. Again, I put those surprises down, not to thoughtful innovation, but to cleverness for the sake of cleverness.
There’s no denying Tom Robbins has his fans. His books are widely praised and wildly popular, so somebody likes them. I found this one mildly amusing, but ultimately disappointing for lack of substance and sustained entertainment value. -
I’m very ambivalent about this book. Skinny Legs and All is a dense, intricate spiral of a story with funny characters but serious messages. However, Tom Robbins’ style grates on me a little bit. There’s nothing egregious about it, but maybe I’m just getting less patient with purpler prose as I approach the ripe old age of 26. In any event, I appreciate and respect this book, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to.
Skinny Legs and All follows Ellen Cherry Charles, a small-town Virginian woman, as she grows older and wiser in New York City. Owing to her crazy fundamentalist uncle and estranged art-nouveau husband, not to mention her employment at a restaurant owned by an Arab and a Jew, Ellen finds herself adjacent to all sorts of events related to the tension in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine.
It’s also about a Dirty Sock, Can of Beans, and Dessert Spoon who join up with an ancient Painted Stick and Conch Shell to make their way to Jerusalem and await the coming of the Third Temple.
There’s a great deal of allusion here, Biblical and otherwise, and it’s easy to get lost down the rabbithole. The plot doesn’t move forwards so much as spiral around and around the drain. The main focus seems to be on Ellen’s struggle to redefine herself after separating from Boomer. She was supposed to be the artist, the hip and trendy participant in New York’s cultural scenes. Then Boomer, the welder who couldn’t see the point in art, suddenly finds himself caught in the maelstrom, while Ellen watches from the sidelines and finds her own inspiration and direction drying up.
Meanwhile, the anthropomorphized household articles are on a quest of their own, in a sideplot that is so bizarre I can’t do it justice. Ultimately I’m not sure it ever really comes to fruition—it’s fun, I guess, but it never held my attention for too long. I feel like Robbins is just having fun riffing off these characters he created, while also playing around in the sandbox of Middle Eastern history and mythology. And if that’s what he wanted to do, fair enough.
As far as the commentary on the Middle East goes: this novel predates September 11, 2001. I couldn’t help but fixate on this fact and wonder how it would be different if Robbins had written it ten years later. There is an atmosphere of optimism even amidst all the strange and sometimes upsetting things that happen, as if Robbins believes that humanity might possibly just manage to muddle through this all. The Middle East is an appropriate focal point for exploring our species’ foibles because of how it is the birthplace both of Abrahamic religions and so much strife in the contemporary world—how can a place named for peace be the centre of so much conflict? This contradiction proves to drive the most interesting moments of the book.
Yet for all its intensive soul-searching and intriguing commentary on religion, Skinny Legs and All strikes me as ultimately a disappointing and empty book. It’s nearly five-hundred pages of rumination on why humans band together with common beliefs and then proceed to be massive dicks to the rest of humanity. And none of what Robbins says about religion is really all that original or thoughtful—he says it very well, of course, but if you’ve read any critiques of or apologies for organized religion, you’re already going to be familiar with these themes.
What redeems the book, if anything, is Ellen. I enjoyed reading about her, sympathizing with her, and even being annoyed with her sometimes. Robbins gives Ellen sexual agency in a way that many male authors fail to do with their women characters—Ellen has a healthy internal and external sex life. The sexuality of women and the way our society and religions police it is one of the pillars of Robbins’ critique of organized religion, of course—hence the allusions to Jezebel and Salome and the veil dance that comprises the entire structure of the narrative. Whereas I wasn’t that impressed by the overall commentary on religions, I did appreciate this facet.
This is the third in a trio of books lent to me by a friend (
Gould’s Book of Fish and
Sweet and Vicious being the other two). I think I enjoyed the ride that was Sweet and Vicious most, but Skinny Legs and All is probably the best book of the three. Although it took too long to read for what little reward I got from it, I can still appreciate. For me this book is an example of how literature is like art—sometimes you know something is important, even though it doesn’t really speak to you on an emotional level. It’s intellectually satisfying, even though viscerally you’re left wanting something else, something different. This won’t be everyone’s reaction, of course, and I’m sure there are plenty of Robbins fans out there who love this book to pieces. I’m just not one of them.
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This was my first time reading a book by this author. When I started reading, I particularly was drawn to the thoughts and experiences of the “inanimate” objects. I liked the strong feminine side portrayed in the book, making me realise how uncommon this still is. A book I have read in a long time whose after taste will remain for many days.
