Works:
Works by
(b. 1936)Tom Robbins
| 1971 | Another Roadside Attraction. Robbins's first novel, about the discovery of the mummified body of Christ used to decorate a hot dog stand outside Seattle, introduces the writer's characteristic bizarre plots and eccentric cast of characters. It makes little impression until being issued in paperback in 1973, thereafter becoming a counterculture favorite. Born in North Carolina and raised in Virginia, Robbins was expelled from high school and dropped out of college, hitchhiking cross-country until settling in Greenwich Village in 1956. After military service, Robbins moved to Seattle, where he worked as a reviewer and art critic for Seattle Magazine and as a disc jockey. |
| 1976 | Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Having gained a cult following for his first novel, Another Roadside Attraction (1971), Robbins achieves his biggest popular success with this picaresque novel featuring a compulsive hitchhiker with a nine-inch thumb, who winds up at a health ranch taken over by alienated feminist cowgirls. Reviewer Ann Cameron calls its zany humor "a brilliant affirmation of private visions and private wishes and the power to transform life and death." |
| 1980 | Still Life with Woodpecker. Robbins's extravaganza depicts the daughter of an exiled king in Seattle and her activist outlaw lover, known as the Woodpecker. He deciphers messages contained in the illustrations on a cigarette package. Jitterbug Perfume, about a Seattle waitress's attempt to invent the ultimate perfume and the search for a mysterious blue bottle, would follow in 1984. |
| 1990 | Skinny Legs and All. Robbins mixes the erotic exploits of a newly married couple in New York, Middle Eastern politics, and side glances at art, religion, sex, and money. While some reviewers greet the book as a welcome alternative to the current trend of minimalism in fiction, another suggests that Robbins "and we--are getting a bit old for comic books." |
| 1994 | Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. Robbins's comic fantasy depicts Gwen, a stockbroker, torn between straitlaced Belford and his born-again monkey and Larry Diamond, who offers her a trip to Timbuktu. As reviewer Karen Karbo observes, "To love this book, the reader must be entranced and entertained by Diamond's pontificating about, for example, the visit by amphibian aliens to a village in sub-Saharan Africa, occasionally punctuated by Mr. Robbins's breathtakingly nonsensical metaphors." |
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