Although the fiction of Tom Robbins may not yet appear on the syllabi of many surveys of contemporary literature, his novels seem to have something like the same following among college students as the fiction of Barth or Pynchon did before they became fully legitimated as makers of elitist art. It is interesting from our point of view, however, that concepts from physics, which are for the most part implicit as structuring principles in the art of the more established novelists, are treated in the fiction of this relative newcomer as concerns that must be reckoned with openly. Robbins boldly assumes his reader's familiarity with the fundamental precepts of the new physics and proceeds to explore their metaphysical implications as if that were the inevitable consequence of confrontation with these new ideas. (p. 149)
Another unique aspect of Robbins's fiction relating to physics is the recognition that the unitary conception of being in the great religious philosophies of the East (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism) is far more compatible with discoveries made in the new physics than the dualistic Western model. As Fritjof Capra nicely demonstrates [in The Tao of Physics],… the Eastern emphasis upon the unity and interrelatedness of all things in a cosmos that is forever moving, alive, and organic is rather strikingly close to the understanding of the life process implied in the new physics. Although Robbins is aware of the correspondences and frequently takes note of them, he is clearly not advocating that the spiritually impoverished West take the first boat, metaphorically or otherwise, to the spiritually enlightened East. Even if such a dramatic restructuring of Western consciousness were desirable, it is not, as Robbins makes clear in [Even Cowgirls Get the Blues], a possibility. The backlog of inherited culture is simply too great, as Barth suggested in Giles, to effect such a transformation within any of our lifetimes. Robbins's intent rather is to hammer away relentlessly at those assumptions about self and world in Western cosmology which he feels are injurious to our emotional well-being and a threat to our continued survival as a species.
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