Tom Robbins Forever

I snatched up Tom Robbins’s latest book, his non-memoir memoir, Tibetan Peach Pie, before the Barnes and Noble clerk could place it on the shelf.  I had been waiting you see, had the date of release marked on my calendar, counted

it down.  Then I did my usual binge and abstinence routine I do with works I particularly adore.  I can’t help but voraciously devour such books but I manage to painfully pull myself back every time from reading them all in one sitting.  It has to last, stave off that mystical depression that inevitably accompanies the ending of a wonderful and long-anticipated book.  This inclination usually ends up with the last chapter waiting for weeks until I can abstain no more.  This book was no exception.

It’s always a risk to read about an author you’ve grown up with, one whose

words helped form and forge you.  Time and again I’ve been predictably disappointed with that intimate glimpse behind the curtain of magical words, looking for the wizard within.  Learning they’re a real person always diminishes the created fantasy and power I carry from the words they created.  I prefer to keep my heroes properly in their magical realm and not allow the taint of reality to touch them.  It’s a way of keeping alive the magic, that intangible essence that only exists in those pages.  I don’t want it tethered to anything. 

I’m not disillusioned reading this book, a huge relief.   I come away breathless, still in awe, and still holding that key to the innumerable secrets hidden in plain sight of all of us.  This book, like all his others, leaves the reader with the implicit understanding they’ve been afforded a peek at possibility; that it’s there for the taking, for simply turning with eyes open.  And nobody’s eyes are more open than those of Tom Robbins.  His life is so full, so rich – uncompromised.  His stories reveal a life, if not depicted in his novels, then certainly imbued there.  This book is still just another Tom Robbins book.  And thank God for that.  It’s him, his words, in just another format.  His voice still speaks to us whether from the deep south, overseas in the military, in an art review, or from getting cursed in some remote village; or from just struggling to survive and make love stay.  It’s still the voice of a modern-day princess, an outlaw, the belly dance of life past and present, eternal perfume and Pan, and the lips of a cowgirl.

Tom Robbins insists this book is not an autobiography.  He likewise maintains it’s not really a memoir either, “… although it waddles and quacks enough like a memoir to be mistaken for one if the light isn’t right.”  Indeed.  Instead this book contains what he likes to term “… a sustained narrative composed of the

absolutely true stories …” that he says he’s been telling all the women in his life.  And there we have the first clue of what’s revealed in this book, and in all his novels – Tom Robbins writes women.  Maybe he writes for them, certainly about them, but also somehow from them.  I have never experienced anywhere else what he captures, no, what he embodies – all things female; the heart, emotion, mind and yes, most certainly that glorious little peach.  His portrayals depict our growth, the process of learning to not only stop apologizing for being female, but to learn to revel in that fabulously absurd endowment.  We learn to truly relish the power and all things magic of being female and how to distinguish truth from the mass marketing depiction of the

sex, that we have not only the right, but the imperative to refuse the delineation.  We learn that it’s ok to feel what we feel, to be smart and display that intelligence in crazy different ways.  And Tom Robbins gets this, he reveres it.  And he wrote about it, making it manifest, so that I always have that validation to turn to in times of doubt.  I carry my gratitude for that every day of my life.

This book is not an autobiography.  It’s not a memoir.  It is, as all his novels, yet another mirror reflecting countless portals, endless opportunities, infinite possibility illuminated for just a moment.  He never

preaches, here or in other works.  We are neither encouraged nor chastised.  A Tom Robbins book isn’t “the answer”; it’s not a “how to.”  It’s a gangplank extended over mysterious waters swirling counterclockwise, from a pirate ship captained by a buxom wench and her leather-clad masked mate.  You’re invited to peer over the edge, be regaled by tales told aboard ship, and witness those who choose to execute perfect half-gainers from the plank, or

spectacular belly flops, into the waters just to see what’s there.  And you understand that you can dive too, in any way you want and to any depth.

Like any of his novels “A True Account of an Imaginative Life” exemplifies possibility and expanded lives peppered with tremendous appetite (and thirst), spice, lust and verve.  I’m left, as always after living in one of his books, insatiable for more yet serenely satisfied.  I have the taste of salt, ripe tomatoes and pie

on my lips, infinite sparkling spirals of possibility in my eyes, a distinct throbbing hum of life in my ears, and desire and excitement in my heart.    

Thank you Tom Robbins, now and forever – for all of it.