A 1967 ad for Robbins’s KRAB radio show, Notes From The Underground, drawn by Walt Crowley. Walt Crowley collection at the Seattle Public Library. Public Domain.
Tom Robbins changed my life. When a friend gave me a copy of his novel Jitterbug Perfume, which I consider his best, in the late 1980s, Robbins was already past his prime, when it was fashionable to think of him as a post-sixties “underground” hippie writer with a “cult” following. By the time Gus Van Sant attempted to bring his “hippiest” work, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, to the silver screen in 1993, it was a flop.
Nonetheless, Jitterbug Perfume worked its Robbins-esque magic on me. In my late 20s and still flailing around to find meaning in my life, filled with immature neuroses, I found deep solace in the book’s simple message: Lighten Up! That might sound like a bunch of pop psychology nonsense, but behind it was a ridiculous, hilarious, and touching tale involving a searching young woman – a Robbins’ staple – the Greek god Pan, lots of sex, and a trip (the psychedelic kind?) through time and history.
Robbins had a gift for slowing or stopping time in his narratives, which the reader experiences as a kind of reflection on mortality and eternity – or at least, that’s how I did. He also had a gift for spontaneity, silliness, and word play, always word play. It wasn’t just that the book’s motto was “Lighten Up”; the book itself modeled how not to take oneself too seriously. That was the brew that made me into a more mature person, I’d like to think, as well as a Robbins devotee.
Robbins went on to produce only four more full-length novels after Jitterbug. He was a slow and reclusive writer. When he died a few weeks ago at the ripe old age of 92, I decided to reread another of them: Skinny Legs and All, published in 1990, six years after Jitterbug Perfume.
Skinny Legs is set in the rural South – where Robbins grew up – Manhattan, and Jerusalem. While the author is up to many of his old tricks – a female protagonist, ancient gods and goddesses, even animated inanimate objects – Skinny Legs has a serious purpose. The overall setting is what we then called the Middle East conflict, and the plot variously involves artists-as-peacemakers, what we now call Christian Zionists trying to hasten the rapture, and the Dance of the Seven Veils as allegedly performed by Salome.
Robbins structures the book around the dance, with each chapter representing the dropping of one of the veils, which are the illusions that humanity hides behind to justify bigotry, war, and destruction. They are, in Robbins’ view — which was informed not only by ancient myth but also by Eastern philosophies — caught up in the denial of the feminine force in the world and the aggressive, oppressive dominion of patriarchy. This is surely why he chooses female protagonists, even though in 2025 such a choice would be more fraught. Once again, the nature of time is a theme, embodied by a character named Turn Around Norman, a Fifth Avenue busker who turns so slowly as to make his movements invisible.
Let me come clean: Skinny Legs and All is too long and didactic, in those senses not his best work. Robbins even recapitulates the “lessons” of the seven veils in the last chapter. And I can’t vouch for the accuracy of Robbins’ lengthy mytho-historical lectures. He goes to pains to tie the name “Palestine” to an early, somewhat Pan-like and bigender deity named Pales, but whether the etymology or the god were those things seems up for debate. Likewise, he uses a version of the Dance of the Seven Veils that he cleverly ties to earlier prototypes, which may or may not have been the same thing. Even so, I had fun spending time with Tom’s kookiness once more.
What impels me to write, finally, is Robbins’ far-seeing vision. Skinny Legs resonates nearly as loudly as it did 35 years ago. I couldn’t read it without thinking constantly about the persistence of illusions, the same “veils” he wanted to rip from us then. He wasn’t always right, though perhaps he may be forgiven for his time; for example, he reduces Israel-Palestine to a war of religions and “Arabs vs. Jews.” We know today that it is anything but that – a crime of white settler colonialism, rather.
Some passages, however, could have been written minutes ago. The “new American dream,” Robbins writes (remember, in 1990), “is to achieve wealth and recognition without having the burden of intelligence, talent, sacrifice, or the human values that are universal.” And of evolution – you can make this about 2001: A Space Odyssey or Donald Trump, your choice – he says, “The monkey wrench in the progressive machinery of the primate band is to take its political leaders – its dominant males – too seriously. … [T]he dominant male (or political boss) was almost wholly self-serving and was naturally dedicated not to liberation but to control. Behind his chest-banging and fang display, he was largely a joke and could be kept in his place by disrespect and laughter.”
I wonder how Robbins would react today to the world.
