Tom Robbins - any others like him?
Fiona Webster
>O.K. I just ran asearch through this newsgroup on Tom Robbins and only came
>up with stuff on him in postings under the "top 10 books you would part
>with anytime" thread.
>This is not what I was hoping to find. I like Tom Robbins and have read
>everything except Still Life with Woodpecker.
>My question is does anyone know of any other authors who write in this sort
>of style? I'm looking for new stuff to read and would like some suggestions
I, too, have been wanting to stick up for Tom Robbins in the face of
some surprisingly empassioned negative remarks about him. He's light,
he's fanciful, he writes about women. And who else in contemporary
fiction has had the chutzpah to use little stylized representations of
the female genitalia as dingbats? (...which Robbins did in _Even_
_Cowgirls_Get_the_Blues_) My favorite thing about Robbins, though, is
the primacy he gives to the sense of *smell* in his writings.
As for people who are "like Tom Robbins," you're going to get an
argument about most anyone proposed, because the Robbins-bashers will
not tolerate him being in the same league as Author X. Nonetheless,
the Author X I would propose is Richard Brautigan. Brautigan has much
of the same hippy-dippy wit on the sentence-to-sentence level, and
because his books (and short pieces, as in _Revenge_of_the_Lawn_)
are shorter, they're more controlled than Robbins's are.
--hangin' in here,
Fiona
admi...@kean.ucs.mun.ca
up with stuff on him in postings under the "top 10 books you would part
with anytime" thread.
This is not what I was hoping to find. I like Tom Robbins and have read
everything except Still Life with Woodpecker.
My question is does anyone know of any other authors who write in this sort
of style? I'm looking for new stuff to read and would like some suggestions
Here's alist of some authors I like, if you'd like to suggest some others
that you think I'd like please e-mail me.
I like:
Tom Robbins, Douglas Adams, Alice Walker, Spike Milligan
I dunno, it's a short, incomplete list but suggestions are welcome to:
Gary Lee Stonum
>As for people who are "like Tom Robbins," you're going to get an
>argument about most anyone proposed, because the Robbins-bashers will
>not tolerate him being in the same league as Author X. Nonetheless,
>the Author X I would propose is Richard Brautigan. Brautigan has much
>of the same hippy-dippy wit on the sentence-to-sentence level, and
>because his books (and short pieces, as in _Revenge_of_the_Lawn_)
>are shorter, they're more controlled than Robbins's are.
I think Fiona is exactly right about this (isn't she always?) and
would add that both Brautigan and Robbins seem to want above all to
be loved or maybe just to be lovable. The kind of sweetness that
they both distinctively then get
into their books is certainly capable of charming some of the people
all of the time, but it can get a bit cloying, too. Actually, I like
Robbins a bit better because I think his jokes are funnier, or anyway
more likely to be broadly outrageous.
Or do I only slurp on the sweetness metaphor because I sped-read
Fiona's "Robbins-bashers" as a twist on Baskins and Robbins?
Stonum
Steve Albertson
> A nameless person at <admi...@kean.ucs.mun.ca> writes:
> >up with stuff on him in postings under the "top 10 books you would part
> >with anytime" thread.
> >This is not what I was hoping to find. I like Tom Robbins and have read
> >everything except Still Life with Woodpecker.
And by all means, rush out and read Still Life with Woodpecker. Another
good book by Robbins...
- Steve