cowgirl blues

My first experience with Tom Robbins was when I was about 25 or so. Skinny Legs and All had just come out in paperback; my Mom and Dad had read it and its was making the rounds in my family. That would been around 1990-91, not long after that book first came out. Robbins is not one of those super-prolific, book a year or four a year kind of writers. Skinny Legs sits at the middle point of his 8 published novels, which span from 1971 to 2003. Robbins is getting close to 90 now, so maybe he has slowed down. I don't have high hopes that we'll see another novel, but who knows, the man is a genius.*

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is Robbins's second novel, published in 1976. So how does this 45 year old book hold up? Wrong question. Sure, you can hear the crackle of Nixon/Ford, the sigh of the ERA's recent passage, the swish of polyester slacks, and the squish of the still young sexual revolution, positively pulsing in the pages of this book. But what sets it apart (other than the quirkiness) is the philosophical undercurrent. 

I don't know enough about Robbins to call him an anarchist or a hedonist, which are two that come to mind, but I think the former is more accurate than the latter. He does seem to advocate free love, but seems more interested in each individual's right to govern what is right for them, and to police ones-self by entering into relationships based on what is right for each of the participants. It seems clear that social constructs such as marriage and monogamy don't appeal to him. He seems to place larger social constructs, such as government and laws, in the same boat, along with more vague notions, like our collective notion of adulthood.  He goes as far as to say that a kind magic exists--or is even brought about by--the relationships that people have with those around them, and all the people, places, and things they come into contact with.

Sissy Hankshaw is the main protagonist in Cowgirls, and she was born with a gift that allows her to excel in her chosen field. So much so, that her understanding of, and her relationship with her chosen field expands to the point where it intersects with everything else. keanu-like whoa  This is another of Robbins's beliefs: it doesn't matter how you get there, as long as you can get there. Its another branch of the same theory: doing what is right for yourself.

Importantly, he ties all of these personal freedom issues together with a ribbon of peace. He clearly believes that the ideas he is advocating are for the self, and while he believes these idea should be shared he does not think they should be preached. he doesn't believe in any kind of preaching it seems Just as he does not think one should fight against what we don't believe in, only ignore it as much as possible. Its the long game: change not by revolution, not by revolt, but person to person. It seems like he believes that we can love one another to change.

Robbins's stories are peppered with strange facts, that he seems to have carefully researched and included in the story, almost arbitrarily; using these little know tidbits as analogies and metaphors for events in the story, in only the most stretched and contorted ways possible. They often come up at the ends of chapters, and there is little breaking of the fourth wall when it happens.

There is really too much to cover in a book review like this. Robbins seems to be winking at us with his impish grin on every page. This is the kind of book I imagine that Rolling Stone, Playboy and National Lampoon, all would have recommended when it came out.**

Surprisingly enough, Cowgirls was adapted into a movie directed by Gus Van Sant in 1993, with Uma Thurman playing Sissy Hankshaw. Not a big hit at the time; and 19% on the Tomatometer as of this writing. All star cast too. Should have been good, but maybe Robbins's ideas are just too difficult to capture in a movie.

Read this book. Then read the others.

* Tom Robbins was born in 1932, so he'll be 89 in July. He published a collection of essays in 2005, a novella about beer in 2009, and what he called an un-memoir in 2014.

** If anyone knows this, let me know in the comments .