The novels of Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction (1971), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), and Still Life with Woodpecker (1980), are set mostly in Washington state and the Dakotas, yet at first glance seem to have little in common with the formula Western or with Western writing in general. However, a more than cursory reading of Robbins's novels shows that climactic showdowns and shootouts are present, conflicts between unambiguously good and bad guys are, at least temporarily, resolved, an...

In recent years we have seen wild enthusiasm, much discussion, and some handwringing for the likes of Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, and Thomas Pynchon. The latest discovery is Tom Robbins. Several qualities distinguish the novels by these contemporary cult figures from those of authors such as [Henry] James. The most obvious characteristic is their enormous popularity, which entails equally large financial rewards….

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 ...

Can innovative fiction address the world and its problems, yet remain free of the limiting conventions of realism? Following the achievements of the avant-garde, can there still be fiction with feeling? A newly emergent group of writers in the late 1970s has defined itself in response to these problems. Best characterized as the authors of "bubble gum fiction" (as "bubble gum music" of the last decade was an answer to the abrasiveness and stridency of the period's heavier ...

Jitterbug Perfume has a large and exotic cast of characters, all of whom are interested in immortality and/or perfume. There is Priscilla in Seattle, a "genius waitress" who spends her off hours trying to invent the ultimate perfume. In New Orleans, we have Madame Devalier and V'lu, sometime potion-merchants now in search for the same jasmine-based scent as Priscilla is. In Paris there are the LeFever brothers of LeFever Fragrances…. Back in Seattle, there is Wiggs Dannyboy, a Ti...

Tom Robbins is Carlos Castaneda in motley, Leo Buscaglia in love beads. Like his earlier books, "Jitterbug Perfume" is not so much a novel as an inspirational fable, full of Hallmark sweetness, good examples and hope springing eternal. Its message is a simple one—"it is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, conservative, repressed, fearful, and aggressive, like the thunder lizards." While the world has changed substantial...

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...

When Tom Robbins published "Another Roadside Attraction" in 1971 and then topped it with "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" in 1976, it appeared a new madman-genius of fiction had been loosed from the American counterculture. But the counterculture grew up, and in 1981, when he put out the humdrum and commercial "Still Life with Woodpecker," he sold some books, but phrases like "sold-out" and "burned-out" kept coming to mind. Well, not true. T...