Tom Robbins

“Robbins’s comic philosophical musings reveal a flamboyant genius.”—People Still Life with Woodpecker is a sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads.

A Novel

Still Life with Woodpecker

Life with Woodpecker is sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes.  It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders.  It also deals with the problem of redheads.

Jessica Hsu

If I did, all this would collapse. A successful external reality depends upon an internal vision that is left intact.

A romantic, however, recognizes that the movement, the organization, the institution, the revolution, if it comes to that, is merely a backdrop for his or her own personal drama and that to pretend otherwise is to personal surrender freedom and will to the totalitarian impulse, is to replace psychological reality with sociological illusion.

… no matter how fervently a romantic might support a movement, he or she eventually must withdraw from active participation in that movement because the group ethic—the supremacy of the organization over the individual—is an affront to intimacy. Intimacy is the principal source of the sugars with which this life is sweetened. It is absolutely vital to the essential insanities. 

Juan Agrón

There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.

Inessential insanities are a brittle amalgamation of ambition, aggression, and pre-adolescent anxiety-garbage that should have been dumped long ago. Essential insanities are those impulses one instinctively senses are virtuous and correct, even though peers may regard them as coo coo.

Inessential insanities get one in trouble with one-self. Essential insanities get one in trouble with others.

It's always preferable to be in trouble with others. In, fact, it may be essential.

Poetry, the best of it, is lunar and is concerned with the essential insanities. Journalism is solar (there are numerous newspapers named The Sun, none called The Moon) and is devoted to the inessential.

cedar winslow

Still life with Woodpecker

Riley Baker

It took me so long to finish this book. Though it's well-written and how quirky the nature of the characters, it's not my cup of tea.

Angelica Blanche Salva 

Katerina

Patrick Book

A sentimental favourite, though it’s not without its (myriad) issues.

Still life with woodpecker

Laura Mauler

Tom Robbins books all fit into a pattern: beautiful woman needs direction/help, and an eccentric man uses sex to unlock her mind and give her wisdom. Robbins will also focus on a particular thing - in this book it is redheads - and philosophize upon it at length. So basically if you've read one of his books you've read them all, and this is by far the best of the bunch.

Mia Caven

Well-written, but it just wasn't my cup of tea.

Heleah Soulati

Gavin

Cynical comedy about the radical hippies. DeLillo on MDMA. 

The narrator is loud (talking to his typewriter and the moon), louder even than say Douglas Adams: 

  It worked. Mongooses did kill the rats. They also killed chickens, young pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and small children. There have been reports of mongooses attacked motorbikes, power lawn mowers, golf carts, and James Mitchener. Hawaii had traded its rat problem for a mongoose problem... Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem


While it mocks New Age politics, Robbins still loves an outlaw and a weirdo, and so he takes on their anarchic personal project, to "preserve insanity" and all that. 

  A better world has gotta start somewhere. Why not with you and me?

Conclusion is funny and irresponsible: when faced with a conflict between social good and romantic individualism (as we all always are), ditch the former.

Don't take it seriously - think of it as textual scat-singing - and you'll probably mildly like it.

never read a book quite like yours sir tom robbins! somewhere between drunken ramblings and insightful philosophy and conspiracy theorist mumbo jumbo lies still life with woodpecker. packed with interesting and unique characters, plots, and objects this book is just a fun romp through the minds of a genius(?)

jillian tenner

For as charming and wonderful as woodpecker is, i almost had to force myself through this read although I do owe the ending my life as it was absolutely incredible

всеки път, когато лий-шери (си) каже, че е принцеса, се идентифицирам с нея.

Erin

A love story that takes place inside a pack of cigarettes reveals the moon's purpose, differentiates between outlaws and criminals, and presents portraits of powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders

Still Life with Woodpecker A Novel

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