Skinny Legs and All

Rating:
Summary: Don't Be Afraid... Honestly.
Review: Let's get this part out of the way: I love Tom Robbins. I adore him. I love Skinny Legs and All because it's a satirical, sociopolitical, fantastical romance. (And you just try to say that three times fast; I double dog dare you.) I recommend it because it manages to be a satire that lets us in on the joke, a sociopolitical work that doesn't leave us yawning, a fantasy that is undoubtedly real, a romance that isn't so saccharine-filled that we can't finish it.

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, let me be a little less over-the-top. When I first picked up "Skinny Legs and All," I admit I was a little turned off by the description on the back, proclaiming that this is a book that deals with "today's most sensitive issues." Well, I'm not looking to be lectured at. I'm looking for something entertaining, something enjoyable, something that doesn't try to force a message down my throat.

This book does that. It managed to make me think without boring me. It managed to make me work to understand it. It made me WANT to. It made me laugh out loud in parts and cringe in others.

So what am I trying to say in my long-winded fashion? Don't let the politics, or the bean can, or the religious undertones scare you away. Don't give up after that first 50 pages. It's tough, but it's so worth it.

Rating:
Summary: A little poem?!
Review: From the title to the characters .. to the events of the story everything seems so complicated and condensed .. though the irony and sarcasm are very obvious regarding manmade beliefs and miseries.

I wanted to read the book becasue I liked the seeming contradiction between the title and the written review .. it touched on a very sensitive subject...an Arab and a Jew building something together!!? and wasn't I confused!! For not till the Second Veil that I began understanding what it is all about .. it is such an amazing experience!!
You start up somewhere .. looking for clues .. still lost ..then it all hits you.. the images .. the connotations.. every word has a resounding purpose and every picture has a multiple effect! The plot is so amazingly intricate that you feel all the events are woven to reach the ultimate ending! You laugh really hard .. but also sympathize with human shortcomings.

I was so impressed that I had to tell my husband about it .. but when I did .. it was the funny part of the story that I shared first ..laughing.. I explained the significance and the "wisdom" of the inanimate objects.. the detailed history.. the Dance!!

Work your imagination and enjoy reading!

Rating:
Summary: Gives meaning to the situation in the middle east
Review: This is a very well written book, but more importantly, it gives us insight into the current middle east situation: It shows that there are people of all the three major religions who do not want peace in the middle east and are therefore determental in its becoming a reality.
A very thought provoking book which should enlighten some people.

Rating:
Summary: Dumb Cartoons of Ecstatic Brilliance
Review: I have this argument with Tom Robbins, sort of like this, "Why can't you just tell me all those amazing things and let me skip this way out stuff?"
Nope, deal with it as it is.
So, I generate some mental fuel and start in on a dumb cartoon. Talking dirty socks, sticks from pre-Christian mystic ceremonies, also talking and ambulating with an adolescent sex charged motor home that's a turkey, symbolically strutting on a honeymoon journey. There are all kinds of theocracy-losers, including a street performer/Christ on the steps of St Peters' mutely turning ourside the human plain of time/space.

What's at stake here is all out nuclear war, and some minor bombings, unclear love.
The resoundingly brilliant author/creator does not make a personal appearance, but deigns to whisper a bit at the end. It's up to `his people'; the walking, talking trash whose insights are often superior to the trash makers. Robbin's 'people' only qualify for feature parts by proof of a pre-existing deforming condition. They are thus a cross section of cripples, oddballs and the unspectacular, unendowed- the alive trash and the trash alive.

They are pleased by television first, a few minor perversions, (the toeless Jew with a shoe fetish,) mediocre food, sex, and unencumbered with aspirations.
Via these loser sideshow sages we explore the visceral and abstract universal forces in existential weightlifting and some goofing on the background checks of the major religions. We intuit quantum physics and do the boogie woogie to a number sung by the singer/songwriter creator backed up by cosmic spinmeisters.

This is a thumbnail sketch of the complex dumb cartoon that is another ecstatic howl of pleasure from Tom Robbins.

Rating:
Summary: The skinny on when the last veil will fall
Review: One of my biggest post-literate mistakes was choosing "Skinny Legs and All" as my first attempt at a Tom Robbins book. It was a big mistake because, for that first pass, I didn't make it past page fifty. And spent the next two years avoiding Tom's oeuvre, for fear of reliving that first awkward experience. Hindsight tells me that those two years could have been spent in an enlightened, blissful state if I'd started my Robbins journey elsewhere. When I tried "Skinny Legs" again, after 'getting' the Robbins of "Another Roadside Attraction" and "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "Jitterbug Perfume", I was astounded at the magnitude of its greatness. And more than a bit embarrassed that I passed off its hyper-creativity as just strangeness for strangeness' sake.

The strangeness I speak of, which rears its ugly (nay, sublime) head before page fifty, concerns an Airstream welded to look like a giant roast turkey, and sentient dialogues between a spoon, a dirty sock, and a Can o' Beans (and later, a mystical Conch Shell and a magical Painted Stick; ancient objects with an enormous task ahead of them). Hmm. A first time Tommer can be expected to run screaming from images like that, skeptical that they can be made credible. But the seasoned pro knows that Tom has something exciting up his sleeve. And can't wait to find out what it is.

"Skinny Legs" follows the 'exciting' adventures of Ellen Cherry Charles, erstwhile artist and sometimes waitress, and her newlywed husband Boomer Petway, creator of said turkeymobile. Their plan is to drive from Virginia, which is too conservative to cultivate Ellen's artistic and sexual passions, to New York City. The goal is to find fame and fortune in the art community. Which they do, but not in the expected way.

While in New York, Tom throws in many issues and ideas that are as relevant today as they were in 1990 when the book was published. More so, even. Talk of New York terrorism, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and Jerusalem as a hot button issue, all inform the story in one way or another (as do Tom's staples: art, love, passionate sex, philosophy, history, etc. etc. etc.). This can best be seen in one of Tom's most poignant creations: a restaurant named Isaac and Ishmael's, owned by a Jew and an Arab in an attempt to call attention to the brotherhood needed to end the conflict in the Middle East. "To a bird in the air, it's beanies versus dishcloths," notes the I&I's Arab owner, Roland Abu Hadee, before he summarize the foolishness of the situation. "To a bug on the street, both groups are the same." Tom's handling of the Israel conflict, and the way he weaves it into his story, is masterful. He takes his position on the conflict (through the I&I, which in an attempt at reconciliation is not-so-incidentally named after Sarah's sons: the bastard child who went on to become the father of the Arabs, and the legitimate child who went on to become the father of the Hebrews), allows his characters their passions, and even offers a number of fanciful solutions.

But he's not always fanciful and flippant about the situation. One character notes that as New York and London and Tokyo, etc. are all about money, "Jerusalem is about... something else." It's a complicated city, with a complicated history, embroiled in a conflict that's "an overload of craziness... a seventy-piece orchestra rehearsing a funeral dirge and a wedding march simultaneously in a broom closet."

While that part of the book is concerned with the unknowable, the rest of the book tries to find a solution to such problems. Enter the stories of Jezebel (idolater, hussy, face-painter, former Queen of northern Israel) and Salome (she of the Dance of the Seven Veils). Both figures make metaphorical and nearly literal returns to our modern world in the book. In doing so, they lift "the veils of ignorance, disinformation, and illusion [that] separate us from that which is imperative to our understanding of our evolutionary journey, shield us from the Mystery that is central to being." This is, in just one sentence, Tom Robbins' goal for this sprawling and magical book.

Along the way to achieving this goal here, Tom's flair for humourous language and analogy is at its peak. This, to me, has always been the sugar that allows Tom's sometimes-harsh medicine to go down easily. Here lie some of my favourites:

...Concerning the name of an ancient leader of Babylon: "Nebuchadnezzar is a poem... a swarm of killer bees let loose in the halls of the alphabet."

...Ellen Cherry practicing the menu of the I&I, at which she is the hostess, with Boomer:
"Now what the heck is 'roz bel khalta'?"
"Yiddish for Mrs. Jimmy Carter?"

..."Eviction was staring [Ellen] in the face like a deviate on the subway". (This last one is important to me because not only is it a powerful simile, but it is a powerful *New York* simile; there's nothing more stereotypically New York than deviates on the Subway. Tom, as you can see, is in full control of his gifts here.)

"Pious dogma, if allowed to flourish," says the Conch Shell. "Will always drive magic away." For Tom Robbins, an author who buys magic wholesale and manages to fashion it into something even more tangible and wonderful, this is the cruelest death that can be inflicted on mankind. Rest assured, he's doing everything within his literary powers to make sure that never happens. "Skinny Legs and All" is a perfect symbol for this fight. Now it's your job as a reader, whether a Tom-newbie or someone who's been down his lush paths before, to have patience, keep an open mind, and know that Tom would never steer you wrong. Least not here, in one of his masterpieces.

Rating:
Summary: A Philosophical Treat
Review: To me, the magic of Tom Robbins is that he can slowly
bring the reader to the point of examining fundamental
questions about existence, before the reader has a chance
to throw up his cultural defenses. He is a rare breed
in that he can spin a great story which plays on different
levels of consciousness. I would be hard pressed to recommend
a better book of this type of folk wisdom genre.

Rating:
Summary: A cultural extravaganza
Review: This is a story that reveals the secrets of getting along with others and playing pin the tail on the donkey while doing it. In Skinny Legs and All, an Arab and a Jew try to make the best of their friendship while a young girl tempts their fates. Read this book and you will learn more about history, dance, and art, than you would in a dull textbook. You might even enjoy it!

Rating:
Summary: When the First Veil drops, everyone will read this book...
Review: Where do I START? This book is one of the most imaginative, vastly entertaining, and socially relevant books i have ever read. Robbins' style is truly unique. He is better with words than anyone else i can think of. The plot is extremely intricate, but the premise is simple: humanity has such a distorted view of reality that it is as if it is looking at the world through "a.....a veil." Actually several veils, but throughout the course of this book you get to see each veil "drop" as if coming off in an ancient cosmic striptease. The veils themselves, (the illusion of money, religion, etc.), are all man-made institutions and abstractions that have taken on a life of their own and often impede our view of reality. Robbins reveals the "secrets" of the universe in a manner not unlike and acid trip.
Although it is a decade old, this book is possible more relevant today than ever before, in the wake of terrorism and hate crimes. This is a book for ANYONE and EVERYONE.

Rating:
Summary: Creative & lyrical, and also a bit obvious and superficial
Review:

In this story, a group of objects (Conch Shell, Painted Stick, Bean Can, Spoon, Dirty Sock) "get legs" and start heading for Jerusalem, while the struggling artist/protagonist seeks to find where she fits in to the New York art world. This is all set against rising tensions in the middle-east in a story that explores religious zealotry, and to a lesser degree, art.

The use of the (not really) inanimate objects as a narrative technique is creative and entertaining, and Tom Robbins' writing style, as usual, is highly creative and humorous. However, the full-frontal attack on organized religion in general and Judeo/Christianity in particular was so obvious that the plot seemed superflous as if it were only a delivery mechanism to allow Robbins' to rant about religious nuts.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading rants about religious nuts - but although he threw in some background information about ancient religion, Robbins didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know. He portrayed religious zealotry as an outsider looking in and essentially recommended that everybody just chill out, but he never really got inside the mind of the zealot so that we could see the world through their bizarre and passionate lens and thus understand why they refuse to do so. (If this is what he was trying to do with the Reverend Buddy character then he missed the boat because true religious zealots are those willing to kill or be killed for their beliefs. And let's face it, your average American Christian, even the right-wingers are mostly hot air, - they might kill or be killed over their right to drive an SUV, - but not over religious beliefs.)

Bottom Line: Entertaining and creative writing, above-average story (due to the band of inanimate/animate objects), but a bit heavy-handed on the anti-religion yammerings.



Rating:
Summary: really makes you think
Review: This is one book that stimulates your intellect and makes you think about the world and your place in it. It's out of the ordinary in a good way. Inanimate objects move and think, and the human characters are eccentric as well. It's a good commentary on politics and religion and how they affect individuals. It's one of the few books I've read that deal with politics and religion without talking down or being too difficult to understand. The characters and their adventures are so hilarious that you don't even realize you're reading something that deals with heavy issues.