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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)
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I guess it helps that the subplot revolves around religion and the fanatics who so populate it. As I keep saying, I am
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."
I find myself musing over the book even months after finishing it. Lines, or scenes coming back to my haunt my thoughts.
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.
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!
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
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.
Ripe with pervasive sexuality, by turns funny and acerbic, the story of Ellen Cherry Charles, frustrated artist and
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.
ETA: This was very fun. I feel obligated to list it was my favorite Robbins because I'm a bellydancer. :D