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*Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I love Tom Robbins. I relate to Tom Robbins as writer, he’s very real. As much as I love my very serious “writer” writers, I like Tom Robbins because he is irreverent and outlandish. Not to mention, he is funny. Not funny like how you and I think we’re funny at a bar but genuinely quick and clever. His books also focus on the weirdos and outcasts in society which is definitely appealing to me as a reader. Basically, Tom Robbins is a weird, cool guy who happens to write really, really well; also, he’s a genius.
I’ve read all his books but I always come back to my favorite at least once a year, Still Life With Woodpecker. It’s a love story about two redheads: a vegetarian exiled princess living in Seattle and a master of explosives wanted by the law. It’s also a love letter to a typewriter, as Robbins writes interludes to his Remington SL3, the machine that holds this very story inside it, waiting to be released by Robbins himself. Still Life With Woodpecker reads like a fairy tale for adults and that’s why it’s so enjoyable. Eventually the plot involves a frog, Camel cigarettes, angry Arab royalty, jail time, and Ralph Nader; tell me you don’t want to read that.
It’s definitely not a book for everyone and to say more about the plot would give too much away. This is a book for outlaws and those who know that the best things in life are the fucked up ones. Tom Robbins writes an ode to love and to the freedom that love is supposed to bring, in theory. It throws away all the rules about novels and becomes something else entirely: a living, breathing document that makes you wonder why you’re not holding out for something more, something spectacular.
*reposting from snarkface.
