by Tom Robbins
First published 2014
Tom Robbins opens his memoir by looking back at his Appalachian childhood during the Great Depression, where Baptist preachers shaped his early years. The grandson of devout ministers transforms himself across five decades into a poet, soldier, meteorologist, radio DJ, art critic, psychedelic journeyman, and eventually the acclaimed novelist behind Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Jitterbug Perfume. Robbins travels from his mountain roots to the West Coast's sixties revolution, then across continents in an era before travel surveillance. He navigates New York's traditional publishing world while crafting stories about hitchhiking cowgirls, philosophical beans, and born-again monkeys. His path winds through meteorology stations, radio booths, and art galleries before landing him among counterculture heroes. Each chapter reveals how an unlikely small-town boy became the creator of wonderfully weird fiction. Robbins writes with the same playful linguistic invention that made his novels beloved, turning his own improbable biography into entertainment. The memoir captures a writer discovering that his real life rivals the magical strangeness of his fictional characters.
Genres: literary-fiction, 20th-century, autobiography, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Appalachia, West Coast, New York
Period: Great Depression, Sixties
384 pages · Hardcover · Ecco