Skinny legs and all

by Tom Robbins

Paperback, 1990

Status

Available

Publication

New York : Bantam Books, 1990.

Description

Fiction. Literature. Humor (Fiction.) HTML:An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations.... It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it's the axis around which spins this gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly provocative novel, in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestineâ??while the illusions that obscure humanity's view of the true universe fall away, one by one, like Salome's veils. Skinny Legs and All deals with today's most sensitive issues: race, politics, marriage, art, religion, money, and lust.  It weaves lyrically through what some call the "end days" of our planet.  Refusing to avert its gaze from the horrors of the apocalypse, it also refuses to let the alleged end of the world spoil its mood.  And its mood is defiantly upbeat. In the gloriously inventive Tom Robbins style, here are… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member keithkv
Wow what a fun read this was! After I read the prologue I had to put the book down, take a deep breath, and ask myself, "do I really have the mental fortitude to try and puzzle this out?" When I say that this book was random, it was RANDOM! A talking spoon, a giant metallic turkey, an Arab and a
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Jew. Random assortment of gobbledy-gook? Check. Deep political commentary? Check. Can O' Beans? Double check. Leave your sense of logic at the door when you arrive please.
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LibraryThing member bflatt72
Loved it!!! Loved every minute of it!!! This is one of those books that when you finally finish the last page, you just sit back in amazement and say, "Wow!!" Over and over again!!

I guess it helps that the subplot revolves around religion and the fanatics who so populate it. As I keep saying, I am
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not much of a review writer, but I will try to sum the book up in as few words as possible.

I am actually reminded of an old Red Hot Chili Peppers song, "Blood, Sugar Sex Magic!! She's tragic!! Sex Magic!!" That pretty much sums up the book but to be more precise it is the story of a tortured artist named Ellen Cherry and her new husband Boomer Petway, both of Colonial Pines, VA (which in real life is Colonial Heights, I used to live there), who set out from Seattle Washington for New York in their RV, which has been made up to look like a giant Turkey. Once in New York, things don't work out too well for them, and they become estranged. Ellen Cherry has a very religious family, of the Southern Baptist variety, back in VA, all except for her mama. Her uncle is even a Baptist preacher, of the hell fire and brimstone sort. In short, he is a religious fanatic, preaching about the New Jerusalem and bent on hastening Armageddon.

Along the way, we get the philisophical and religious musings of a can o' beans, a spoon, a dirty sock, a conch shell and a painted stick. Yep, you heard that correct. May sound silly but it's actually nothing short of brilliant. You learn a lot about the real Jezebel of the Old Testament and how the paternalistic religious authorities have maligned her name. You learn about the real Solomon and how he was not really as wise as everyone has been led to believe. You learn about Solome and how she danced the dance of the seven veils for her stepfather, King Herod, before he produced the head of John the Baptist.

All of this is interspersed within the main plot of Ellen Cherry and her purposefully leaving the art world to work as a waitress at the Isaac and Ishmael's, a joint venture between a Jew and an Arab. You learn all about the real historical reasons for all the turmoil in the middle east, why Jews and Arabs hate each other so much. Hint, it has to do with the name of said restaurant.

At any rate, this was a terrific book, all the way up to the end. I just loved how all the 7 veils dropped one by one, both literally and figuratively,but I must say that there were no huge epiphanies here for me. The secrets that were revealed, I have either already thought of myself or read elsewhere, but it was very entertaining and thought provoking none the less.

The book is very humorous, but it does have it's serious side, it is talking about religion and metaphysical truths, after all.

I will just leave you with one little quote from the book that I particularly liked and think is very true, "The dead are all laughing at us."
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LibraryThing member VioletDelirium
Although this is only the second Tom Robbins book I've read, I am now officially hooked. This book touched on the mideast conflict, spirituality, art, and sexuality in a completely suprising way, possibly because it wasn't shy or convoluted. The language and structure is similiar to his other novel
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that I've read (Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates), in that it is raw, crass, beautiful, and truthful from a perspective.

I find myself musing over the book even months after finishing it. Lines, or scenes coming back to my haunt my thoughts.
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LibraryThing member dizzyweasel
Reads like a drug-addled fever dream, and I don't mean that in even the remotest sense of a good way. This book was absolutely awful. The author cannot write a woman - as you read her, you know you read her as a creation of him. Completely sexist. And the sex scenes (the majority of the book is
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spent thinking about, talking about, or engaging in, sex) are so ridiculous that I was ashamed of my own heterosexuality. Sex can be used artfully, tastefully done, or even disgustingly portrayed in pursuit of a narrative purpose or end...but not in this book. Clearly women were not Robbin's Intended or Authorial Audience.

Someone in my book club suggested that the author uses sex to dupe the reader into going along for the ride when he (the author) occasionally wishes to impart some wisdom on the futility of religious hostility. Even a mildly educated reader does not need to be cosseted through this author's vague commentary on religion - it's so shallow that it hardly warrants note. If you're interested in engaging with religion, try something more polemical with less gratuitous sex, like Dawkins or Hitchens.

And finally, the overwrought, so-purple-it-resembles-an-assault-victim prose. Not a paragraph went by without a long-winded exercise in descriptive prolixity. If the excess word count were to trimmed from the manuscript, you'd have about 50 pages of narrative left. Yes yes, I understand the author is 'setting the mood' with his never-ending adjectival phrases - but the mood he's setting is one you could set for yourself with a blank wall and a hit of cheap acid. Neither are particularly appealing to this reader.
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LibraryThing member corey1ynn
I love you Can o' Beans, Dirty Sock, Spoon, Painted Stick, and Conch Shell.
LibraryThing member judithskiss
I don't care what anyone says. I love Tom Robbins. Also, the commentary on our culture's detachment from what is truly sexy and provocative is novel like a little truth that i want to take out and look at sometimes because it's so cute.
LibraryThing member kisokachan
Okay. This is as simple and clear as a review gets. Any man who begins a book with a gigantic turkey is either downright cuckoo-nuts insane or a genius laughing at us all from high above. You make your decision after reading Skinny Legs, but just read it.
LibraryThing member gwoodrow
I can't think of any other book I've read very recently that left my mind as thoroughly blown as Skinny Legs and All. I'd only read one other Tom Robbins book -- Still Life With Woodpecker -- so I was prepared for his playfulness, humor, intricate (but goofy) language, and overall trippy feel that
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all come with just about everything he rights.

But I was not prepared for Skinny Legs. This book is so dense with literary magnificence that you could chew it like you had a whole mouth full of sticky bubble gum. I dog-eared more pages and marked more passages in this book than any other I've ever read by a long shot.

Skinny Legs deals with so many topics, many of which are classical in nature: love, sex, family, art, compassion, work, religion. But it all revolves around a more specific point of the conflicts in the Middle East, primarily between Jews and Arabs. There's lots of history, spirituality, and ridiculousness all spun together -- about the Middle East especially but also about everything else surrounding it (both geographically and more abstractly). Were I a teacher of Middle East studies or any subject that dealt with the Judaism/Islam conflict specifically, this book would be required reading if for no other reason than to lighten the tension -- but hopefully also to open some minds and spark a more creative and intelligent dialogue built not on dogma but on critical thinking and compassion.

The book says great things about all the topics it touches on, but to the topic of the Middle East specifically it is blazingly relevant and even prophetic in its own right. Even now, with the book being 18 years old, it hasn't lost a lick of power or shown its age. Nothing in the writing itself ever gave me the impression that the book was written any earlier than yesterday.

Anyway, I'm mostly just spitting out tidbits -- let me try to formulate something more concrete. It was very, very good. Long and complex, but good. Robbins is a master of language and imagery. He gives the impression of writing with very reckless abandon. It's like he scribbled down every single thing that came to his mind while writing the story, omitting nothing and not even considering apologizing for such craziness. And yet, it works. The madness all comes together without ever seeming structured hardly at all. As if there's not a method to the madness, but that the method IS the madness.

In fact I wish my review of the book could be half as perfectly cohesive as the novel itself managed to be in the end. I could rant and ramble about this fantastic book for hours on end (and probably will to my poor unfortunate friends and acquaintances), but I'll just start wrapping up and say that this one is indeed highly recommended. It's not the quickest read in the world because you have to use your brain, sense of humor, and imagination rather extensively and mostly constantly -- but it's very, very worth it.

I'm not normally quite this scatterbrained in my reviewing of a book, but it really was that good!
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LibraryThing member ShelfMonkey
If there is any justice to be found in this world, Tom Robbins will someday be nominated for sainthood.

Not, it must be said, on the thematic basis of SKINNY LEGS AND ALL, however. There is far too much thoughtful content many of the world’s narrow-minded would consider at best offensive, and at
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worst blasphemous. Statements such as, “not only is religion divisive and oppressive, it is also a denial of all that is Divine in people; it is a suffocation of the soul,” are not going to endear Robbins to anyone of the fundamentalist mindset. Anyone who presents a disparaging, unflinching, and remarkably astute understanding of the inherent damage organized religion causes is a threat to people such as these. And to make matters worse, Robbins accomplishes it in an entertaining, informative, racy, and flat-out hysterical manner. SKINNY LEGS AND ALL is a masterpiece of religious satire, a brilliant polemic against the evangelical righteous, and a provocative plea for understanding in a world that is increasingly divisive. The fact that, fifteen years later, Robbins’ themes are, if anything, timelier than ever, speaks to the weaknesses of the human race. The fact that it is so defiantly upbeat in the face of Armageddon speaks to the strengths of Robbins as a writer.

The story, a phantasmagorical romp through religion, art, politics, and shoe fetishists, is hardly a paint-by-numbers plotline. One narrative theme concerns Ellen Cherry, a wannabe artist who grows increasingly disillusioned with the art world of New York as her estranged husband Boomer, an ex-welder from Virginia, inadvertently becomes a critic’s darling with his enormous land cruiser that he transformed on a whim into a travelling roast turkey. Now, Boomer is off in Jerusalem, becoming far more aware of the world than he ever dreamed, while Ellen toils as a waitress at the I & I, a restaurant jointly-owned by an Arab and a Jew, resulting in far more than a few bomb threats.

Another storyline concerns the INCREDIBLE JOURNEY-like exploits of Can o’ Beans, Spoon, and Dirty Sock, three inanimate items left behind in a cave by Ellen and Boomer after a truncated bout of lovemaking. Inadvertently, the sexual exertions awoke Painted Stick and Conch Shell, two religious talismans who fervently desire to reach Jerusalem. As the five objects travel across the country, they discuss the origins of modern religion, with Can o’ Beans evolving into quite the philosopher, even when he/she faces death at the mouth of a porcupine, resulting in a broken seam that oozes bean juice. Dirty Sock, however, remains sarcastic and bitter to the end, while Spoon dreams of reuniting with her lost owner Ellen.

There is not one page of SKINNY LEGS that does not provide some new insight, or warped yet important way to view the world we live in. It is as if the maestro Kurt Vonnegut, tired of living as a literary legend, passed on his gifts to authors such as Robbins and James Morrow and Neal Stephenson, authors who never rest in pointing out the fallacies of the world. They’d be annoying as sin if they weren’t so freakishly talented. Let’s face it, anyone who can write the sentence “As was customary in modern election campaigns, fair play was shunned from the start,” and not come across as a snide, lecturing theoretician is fully deserving of every accolade than can collect.
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LibraryThing member LyndaInOregon
Robbins romps through this tale of a man-made Armageddon that doesn't quite come off, accompanied by his signature acerbic wit and multiple barbs aimed at the tyranny of religion.

Ripe with pervasive sexuality, by turns funny and acerbic, the story of Ellen Cherry Charles, frustrated artist and
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recoiling from a short and disastrous marriage, wanders across an American landscape in an Airstream RV disguised as a turkey, hangs out in a bar run by an Arab and a Jew in a wildly optimistic partnership, and winds up in Times Square on Superbowl Sunday, after the True Meaning of It All has just been revealed by a skinny teenager slithering out of a collection of purple silk scarves.

There's also an animate, vocal (and highly philosophical) can of pork and beans, side trips through the history of the world's great religions, and a street performer whose talent is to move while remaining motionless.

It's a wild ride. Just strap on your sexiest shoes and enjoy it.
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LibraryThing member barnestorm2004
Typical Tom Robbins...which means it's anything but typical. how do you describe that first acid trip when you realized the world was so much more than you had thought. Difference - after the cascade effect brought on by the acid wears away - Tom Robbins is still there. ok, so is some of the acid
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trip, 'nother story.
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LibraryThing member beau.p.laurence
LOVED IT! Robbins is one of the rare fiction authors that can keep my attention (and get me giggling). so much of what I know about Christian history is from Tom Robbins.
LibraryThing member SugarPlumFairy
However you feel about the sex, the vulgar language, and the ethno-relgious commentary, this book is worth the read, if for no other reason, than be introduced to the Airstream turkey.
LibraryThing member stipe168
Vast story, much happens, nice to snuggle in with. Best thing about this book though: his writing. tom robbins is a master with words. he weilds them like weapons. he juggles with them, plays with them, has so much fun with them. i need to read more of him.
LibraryThing member Nelda.Moore
This one took a while to "get into" but once there, it has remained with me. While the sock and the spoon were OK, it was the can of beans that stuck in my head. I keep asking myself how it crossed the ocean without rusting away...
LibraryThing member jeffreybrayne
Absolutely genius. Much light is shed upon the current state of the world and why it is and has always been in a state of upheaval. A very important book to read. It is very well written and exciting.
LibraryThing member LostFrog
Ridiculous and brilliant, as is expected of Tom Robbins. It's a story about the veiled view that so many have of the world; As Salome dances, the first veil to be cast away is the one covering her genitals. It's an amazing statement. The whole book is. Plus, inanimate objects think and talk. WIN.
LibraryThing member tairngire
Being my first foray into the writings of Tom Robbins, I started reading this novel with no expectations. I sort of half-heartedly followed along at first as it seemed Robbins was being absurd for absurdity's sake (R.V. Turkey anyone?) but as the exposition was exposed and the story congealed I
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found myself in a much more complex and amazing book than I had imagined. Robbins manages to take politics, religion, mythology, marriage, maturity and sex and mix it all together in highly ridiculous and enlightening ways. Not only that, but the climax is one of the most intense climaxes I've read in a while (aside from it being rather dense and a bit trying on the brain). Pedantic and brimming with a LOT of ideas yes, but I think Robbins makes it work.
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LibraryThing member talimckell
I sped through the first half and then got bogged down in his preachiness. Though I agreed with him on most of his sermons, I found myself not wanting to, thus transforming myself into a conservative suffering from reliogiophilia. Still, it was quite humorous in a smack you in the face kind of way.
LibraryThing member kbs25
Who can't love a book about a talking and moving can, stick, spoon, shell, and sock? He manages to incorporate quantum physics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, apocalyptic Christian fervor, existential artistic angst, and an incredible love story all in one book. Robbins is a wild man who always
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delights and charms!
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LibraryThing member s_mcinally
Favourite out of the three I've read, enjoyable read
LibraryThing member april85fool
This book needs a better ending. It felt as though Robbins was rushed into finishing it and just wrapped it up in the quickest and least interesting way possible. Good read up until the end, then it was a bit of a disappointment...
LibraryThing member heidilove
i can never choose between this and Jitterbug Perfume for my favorite Robbins novel.
LibraryThing member amaraduende
This has started like any other Robbins book, which means, I love it right away.

ETA: This was very fun. I feel obligated to list it was my favorite Robbins because I'm a bellydancer. :D
LibraryThing member cjyurkanin
I am enamored with everything I've read by Tom Robbins... until now. This is the third time I've tried to read this in 20 years. I mean, how in the world could I find a Tom Robbins book this awful, it had to have been my own ignorance, but this time, Tom... It's not me, it's YOU. Worst effort I've
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seen by you with such a promising plot. Hard to believe but your snarkiness, sarcasm, and wit comes off more as self-righteousness, egotistical slobber, and sophomoric half-assed unthoughtfulness. Very, very disappointed in you. For shame.
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