Emma Goldman would like Tom Robbins. Having amassed a youthful following with his earlier novels, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Another Roadside Attraction, Robbins uses his latest offering, Still Life With Woodpecker, to instruct his constituency on matters of free will and social responsibility. He is riotous yet resolute, not subtle, but shrewd.

Still Life With Woodpecker is a fable for and against the last quarter of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, Robbins relies on the elements used by classical fabulists. There is a beautiful princess, a loyal handmaiden, a barren attic, exile and court intrigue, many varieties of frogs and, most important, an anarchist prince. In this, it is a formula novel. (p. 415)

[It] is a fable. Before there can be a happy ending, there must be truth. Before there can be truth, there must be mystery and confusion. Somewhere in the ruins are a pack of...