The novelist Tom Robbins was one of the foremost writers of the 1970s and 1980s counterculture, joining Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Pirsig as the gurus of the youth market. His novels wittily debunked the powers that be and challenged conceptions of normalcy, earning him a following of college student groupies. His novels' trademarks are episodic, nonlinear structures that mimic psychedelic LSD trips; casts of eccentric characters with names like Bonanza Jellybean and Marx Marvelous; plots that center on the quest for the Meaning of Life; a flamboyant style characterized by over-the-top metaphors and absurd images; and an optimistic philosophy based on Eastern mysticism, quantum physics, anti-materialism, feminism, and above all, playfulness.

Robbins grew up in Virginia and was raised to be a "southern gentleman," although two years at Washington and Lee University convinced him that he did not fit the mold. In the 1950s...