Review: Skinny Legs and All

I tend to resist things that "everyone" loves.  I refused to listen to Tori Amos for years, until From the Choirgirl Hotel jumped me one night in the car and I was hooked.  I avoided Harry Potter like the plague until the fourth book was already out and I couldn't fight it anymore.  The more I hear people I know raving about something, the less I am inclined to give it a chance until I am able to approach it on my own terms.

I used to think it was a fear of conformity that made me run screaming from anything popular; then I thought it might simply be a big dumb stubborn streak.  What I've realized over the years, however, is that sometimes the gods whisper into my subconscious, "Psst...you're not ready for this."  Then a year later I happen across the book/CD/film again, and tumble into it like Alice down the rabbit hole.

The lesson:  trust your intuition.  Deep down you know when you're ready for something new. 

Having heard half my online friends and a variety of authors sing the praises of Tom Robbins, I was immediately suspicious, and though years and years ago I tried (unsuccessfully) to read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (I found it impenetrable and pointless, but then I felt that way about everything in my early 20s), when I started hearing the title Skinny Legs and All everywhere a few weeks ago, I jammed my fingers in my ears and sang "Na na  na, I can't hear you, na na na..."

Then I read Sera Beak's account of a chance encounter with the book on her Spiritual Cowgirl blog.  She mentioned that it caused a spiritual mini-revolution for her, and given how craptastic my year has been so far (2007 is welcome to finish its badly-blocked and overwrought scenery-chewing one-act-play and bow off the damn stage, thankyouverymuch) her love of the book was in the back of my mind as I wandered around Half Price Books last week...and lo, I looked down and there it was, in a conveniently cheap mass market paperback. 

Oh boy.

Three dollars and three days later, I was so deep into the book that only my feet were sticking out of it.  About ten minutes after I finished the last page and dropped the book on the coffee table, I was bawling like a baby.

There is an inherent impossibility in trying to describe Robbins' work--if you were to summarize the plot of Skinny Legs and All, not only would you be unable to convey its essence, you would make it sound kind of stupid.  For example:

Skinny Legs and All has among its cast of characters a frustrated Southern artist/waitress, her redneck savant husband, a Jewish entrepreneur with a foot fetish, and a cartoonish intolerant Baptist minister trying to speed up the end of the world--as well as a can of pork and beans, a spoon, and a conch shell once part of the worship of the goddess Astarte.  You could also list in the cast a giant roast turkey, a vibrator, a dirty sock, and a stick.  With the exception of the turkey, everyone talks.  (The turkey gets its point across without needing words.)

The story somehow manages to weave together the "End Times," strife in the Middle East, goddess worship, the destructive power of organized religion and politics, love, lust, art, beauty, illusion, truth, the Dance of the Seven Veils, and the Super Bowl.

Tom Robbins writes some of the most complicated and insane, yet surprisingly elegant and hilarious, metaphors I've ever seen in my life.  This is one of the simpler ones, and one of my favorites:

"The winter passed as slowly and peacefully as a boa constrictor digesting a valium addict."

Reading Robbins' work requires a shift in consciousness, which makes it really jarring when you're, say, reading at work and the phone rings, jolting you out of his universe and back into the flat dull plane of conventional reality.  I found myself staring hard into my pantry waiting for the beans to talk. 

As you can probably guess, the book has some profound insights as to the nature of reality, and also about the conflict between spirituality and organized religion:

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...

Of course, religion’s omnipresent defenders are swift to point out the comfort it provides for the sick, the weary, and the disappointed. Yes, true enough. But the Deity does not dawdle in the comfort zone! If one yearns to see the face of the divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, the shadows of lily pads. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the "comfort" of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment.

A longing for the divine is intrinsic in Homo Sapiens. (For all we know, it is innate in squirrels, dandelions, and diamond rings as well.) We approach the Divine by enlarging our souls and lighting up our brains. To expedite those two things may be the mission of our existence.

What really got me about the whole experience, though, was how all the diverse parts of the story and all the quirky characters came together into a conclusion that first stunned, then destroyed, then reassembled me.  Very rarely these days do novels make my heart pound with recognition and my brain sizzle with uplift overload--I swear smoke poured out of my ears.  Reading the conclusion of the novel was like being licked into the giggly wiggling hereafter by God's 101 dalmatians.

Good lord, now I'm starting to sound like him.  I need to lie down before I blow my snark circuit. 

At any rate, Skinny Legs and All has shimmied its way onto my Ten Favorite Novels list, and I highly recommend it.  I'll be tackling Still Life With Woodpecker next. 

That is, if I ever find my way out of the room with the wolfmother wallpaper.

Comments

[R]

Funny, I read the same comment by Sera Beak (because of your link to her) and went to the store to find "Skinny Legs". Instead, I came up with "Jitterbug Perfume" which has been quite fascinatingly poignant as well. After I've finished having my mind warped by this book I hope the Universe coughs up "Skinny Legs" that I might enjoy its mindf*ck as well.

Thanks for the tip.

[R]

Funny, I read the same comment by Sera Beak (because of your link to her) and went to the store to find "Skinny Legs". Instead, I came up with "Jitterbug Perfume" which has been quite fascinatingly poignant as well. After I've finished having my mind warped by this book I hope the Universe coughs up "Skinny Legs" that I might enjoy its mindf*ck as well.

Thanks for the tip.

[Beth Owls Daughter]

At the risk of arousing further rebellious streaks (yes, and I admit - I was the same way about Tolkien, haughty as I was in my twenties, long ago), I would venture to say that "Jitterbug Perfume" should be deeply woven into the consciousness of every literary Pagan.

[Hecate]

This kind of reading is an act of love and pleasure, and, as we know, all acts of love and pleasure are rituals of the Goddess.

[Heather]

I went out and got this from the library after reading your review. Thanks to you I was fairly good-for-nothing while I was immersed in this book. LOL.

I'm sure it would take several readings to truly wring the essence from this book. But even if I know I didn't understand it all, it was amazing!

[Beth]

Being a long time Tom Robbins fan it is nice to see he is still attracting new readers. I agree that Jitterbug perfume should be next on your list and don't forget "Another Roadside Attraction" and I would also give even cowgirls another chance.
Happy reading!
Beth

[kay]

Skinny Legs was the first Tom Robbins book I read. I loved it. Then I read Jitterbug Perfume. Then Fierce Invalids. Then Villa Incognito. Next up: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas and Even Cowgirls.

Most of his books have some sort of pagani mention, but even if they didn't I would still read him. He is a damn good writer. :)

[Lil]

Found your through SC...

Tom Robbins is one of my all time fave authors...there are a couple of his books that I just shrugged when I read them, but all in all his ability to see live challenges with a deeper meaning and still write about it in a tongue and cheek manner appeals to me immensely! Good to know that like minded folks enjoy him too...

Lil