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crackityjones 's review for:
Still Life with Woodpecker
by Tom Robbins
It's hard to say what exactly didn't work about this for me. It's been four or five years since I've read any of his books, years during which I've become a lot more aware of and opinionated about world events - and to be honest, I'm less forgiving now, too, so maybe that's it. Maybe it's that his trademark drooling misogyny was worse here than usual; I don't really care to read cis men waxing romantic about menstruation, and can't possibly accept that a person would ever refer to their own vagina as 'the peachfish'. I can't discount the racism, either, which was frequent and casual.
I've enjoyed his books before, though, and can't imagine that they're much better w/r/t racism or misogyny, and I don't know that it's solely my own changing tastes that made dislike this so much. Still Life is light on whimsy and dense with boring political rambling, by which I don't mean long-winded or academic but something closer to basic. Robbins, via his mouthpiece, the titular Woodpecker, thinks that racists and people who dislike racists are equally odious; he thinks that too much equality will make people boring automatons and that everyone has the equal ability to make a CHOICE to improve their own situation; he thinks that "doing good" and "group-think" are the same thing and that trying to improve the world somewhat is boring. If that sounds familiar, it's because these are largely the same shit centrist politics that have led to irrevocable climate change, decades of wealth inequality, and a resurgence of mainstream nazism.
Our main character, the dethroned princess Leigh-Cheri, believes in bettering the world; it rankles that the majority of this book is the Robbins stand-in telling her why she's wrong, to no apparent disagreement from the author or the text. (It also rankles that this book was published in 1980 and its boring, ineffective politics are still mainstream.)
So maybe it does come back to my own perceptions. I have primarily understood Robbins as a writer of the counter-culture, and I think that's how he understands himself, but there's nothing radical or interesting about a cis white man calling himself an outlaw and opining at length about how everyone else needs to shut up about their problems. I wanted that to be the point of the book, but if it's meant as satire - and I don't think it was meant as satire - then it's not done enough to distance itself from its subject.
I know to expect a certain amount of bullshit from Tom Robbins. (I wonder, sometimes, if cis men realize how much bullshit the rest of us put up with to engage with media at all.) This one somehow compounded all of his nonsense into something that I struggled to even finish. I think this is an author I'm going to have to leave behind. (We'll always have Jitterbug Perfume, I guess.)
I've enjoyed his books before, though, and can't imagine that they're much better w/r/t racism or misogyny, and I don't know that it's solely my own changing tastes that made dislike this so much. Still Life is light on whimsy and dense with boring political rambling, by which I don't mean long-winded or academic but something closer to basic. Robbins, via his mouthpiece, the titular Woodpecker, thinks that racists and people who dislike racists are equally odious; he thinks that too much equality will make people boring automatons and that everyone has the equal ability to make a CHOICE to improve their own situation; he thinks that "doing good" and "group-think" are the same thing and that trying to improve the world somewhat is boring. If that sounds familiar, it's because these are largely the same shit centrist politics that have led to irrevocable climate change, decades of wealth inequality, and a resurgence of mainstream nazism.
Our main character, the dethroned princess Leigh-Cheri, believes in bettering the world; it rankles that the majority of this book is the Robbins stand-in telling her why she's wrong, to no apparent disagreement from the author or the text. (It also rankles that this book was published in 1980 and its boring, ineffective politics are still mainstream.)
So maybe it does come back to my own perceptions. I have primarily understood Robbins as a writer of the counter-culture, and I think that's how he understands himself, but there's nothing radical or interesting about a cis white man calling himself an outlaw and opining at length about how everyone else needs to shut up about their problems. I wanted that to be the point of the book, but if it's meant as satire - and I don't think it was meant as satire - then it's not done enough to distance itself from its subject.
I know to expect a certain amount of bullshit from Tom Robbins. (I wonder, sometimes, if cis men realize how much bullshit the rest of us put up with to engage with media at all.) This one somehow compounded all of his nonsense into something that I struggled to even finish. I think this is an author I'm going to have to leave behind. (We'll always have Jitterbug Perfume, I guess.)