Two hilarious practical philosophical fiction books from Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas and Still Life with the Woodpecker, reviewed by Blather’s high priest of disambiguity, Daev.
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (Amazon.com)
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (Amazon.co.uk)
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (Powell’s Books – new or secondhand)
A book to be patient with, as its initial uncomfortable second-person viewpoint puts the reader in the position of Gwen, an ambitious, hopeless money driven young Seattle stockbroker, and you have to deal with the collapse of your dreams one Easter Thursday when the market crashes… if that wasn’t bad enough, your 300-pound psychic friend goes missing, as does your idiot fiancé’s born-again jewel-thieving ape, and the intrusion into your life of a mysterious slimy cancer-ridden stockbroker, whose chat-up lines involve asparagus and urine, who wants to whisk you off to deepest Africa…throw in frogs, the tarot, the star Sirius and…
One of three books that has really made me laugh out loud in the last year – not giggle, titter, or grin, but *laugh*, as Gwen’s constructed ideal of fiscal order collapses around her pretty little ears, and she is pulled backwards through the hedge of Discordian enlightenment. Highly recommended.
Still Life With the Woodpecker (Amazon.com)
Still Life With the Woodpecker (Amazon.co.uk)
Still Life With the Woodpecker (Powell’s Books – new or secondhand)
Another hilarously insane mass of metaphors, similes, and practical philosophical fiction from Tom Robbins. A love story inside a pack of Camel cigarettes between a red-headed deposed European princess and a red-headed outlaw bomber known as the The Woodpecker, this wonderful novel deals with sex in pyramids, menstruation and the moon, the difference between criminals and outlaws (hint: criminals are victims – outlaws joyously take resonsibility), the difference between social activism and romantic individualism, the importance of frogs, fairy tales, dynamite and the no small matter of how redheads burn easily. Everything is connected, and we should NEVER grow up. Brilliant.
– daev
