Review by Booklist Review
Robbins' belief in the power of defiant humor, exuberant love of language, and playful Zen perspective are key elements in his zestfully comic and cosmic novels, including his most recent, Villa Incognito (2003). It is, therefore, a great pleasure to find this psychedelic son of Mark Twain, this metaphor-slinging, myth-steeped champion of liberation directly addressing his aesthetic and spiritual concerns in this retrospective collection of essays, poetry, and short stories. Robbins' funny and astute short works shimmer with original and piquant descriptions, sensual delight, and a firm grasp of human nature and history. He displays his critical chops in an incandescent review of a 1967 Doors concert, and a richly argued recent essay in praise of crazy wisdom. He marvels at nature in a vivid account of a journey to the Okavango Delta in Botswana, offers resonant tributes to Joseph Campbell and Terence Mc-Kenna, and states his writer's credo: We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain --a mission he fulfills with verve. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2005 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Still Life with Woodpecker has regularly published shorter pieces in Esquire, Playboy, the New York Times and elsewhere. The whimsical, quixotic nature of that work comes through in this hit-and-miss affair-one that remains woefully short on fiction, focusing mostly on the author's travel writing, essays, celebrity profiles and poetry. The best travel piece, "The Day the Earth Spit Wart Hogs," finds Robbins traversing a big game park in Tanzania. His commentary on the '60s, the legacy of burger mogul Ray Kroc and the prose of Thomas Pynchon remains trenchant and provocative; other pieces are dated to the point of irrelevance (his foreword to Terrance McKenna's 1992 The Archaic Revival). As a poet, Robbins is obvious and heavy-handed, but occasionally he hits the kind of mystical note that characterizes "Catch 28" and makes his florid imagery work. The fiction is brief and mostly forgettable. But an essay called "In Defiance of Gravity" starts as a riff on an obscure club and winds up being an ode to the combination of unconventionality and humor that define Robbins's career as a writer. Agent, Phoebe Larmore. (Sept. 6) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A cult novelist turns to nonfiction, some of it published for the first time. There's even an ode to the tomato sandwich. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The whirling dervish lit-hippie of Seattle fires off a shotgun-full of enthusiasms at whatever strikes his fancy--and occasionally hits. Novelist Robbins (Villa Incognito, 2003, etc.) is hardly the kind of writer to exercise restraint, and indeed a restrained Robbins wouldn't be any fun. But even just a little bit of Robbins can be too much, and the proof is in this collection of short fiction, nonfiction, ruminations and poems. The feast of stories included were originally mostly magazine pieces--for Esquire, GQ, Artforum, High Times, etc.--that span almost four decades. Robbins has a lot of likes, and what he likes he really, really likes. Take his spastic review of a Doors concert: "Their style is early cunnilingual, late patricidal...carnivores in a land of musical vegetarians." He can wax enthusiastic on everything from Wonder Bread and mayonnaise (two of the main ingredients of his last dinner, should he ever be on death row) to his rain-soaked hometown of Seattle. Sometimes it all gets drowned in tidal waves of excess. There are still some gems amid the hollering and clowning. On Leonard Cohen: "Nobody can say the word 'naked' as nakedly as Cohen. He makes us see the markings where the pantyhose have been." On Thomas Pynchon: "Pynchon has got both hands on the thunderbolt machine." He even makes a good travel piece out of a search for Nevada's legendary Canyon of the Vaginas. But then there's that awfully unfunny fake feature film treatment and all the poetry. Lord, the poetry. Fun for a time, but marred by the suspicion that Robbins may be trying too hard. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
