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“[Tom] Robbins is fearless, original, mind-expanding, and funny as hell.”—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Part philosopher, part court jester, Robbins uses sparkling phrases mixed with over-the-top puns to impart his Zenlike wisdom.”—Los Angeles Times
Whether rocking with the Doors, depoliticizing Picasso’s Guernica, lamenting the angst-ridden state of contemporary literature, or drooling over tomato sandwiches and a species of womanhood he calls “the genius waitress,” Tom Robbins’s briefer writings exhibit the five traits that perhaps best characterize his novels: an imaginative wit, a cheerfully brash disregard for convention, a sweetly nasty sensuality, a mystical but keenly observant eye, and an irrepressible love of language. Embedded in this primarily journalistic compilation are brand-new short stories, a sheaf of largely unpublished poems, and an offbeat assessment of our divided nation.
Wherever you read Wild Ducks Flying Backward, you’ll encounter the serious playfulness that percolates from the mind of a self-described “romantic Zen hedonist” and “stray dog in the banquet halls of culture.”
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
August 30, 2005 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781415951804
- File size: 218354 KB
- Duration: 07:34:54
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Robbins calls himself a "romantic Zen hedonist" and a "stray dog in the banquet halls of culture." If only this audio presentation of his short stories, essays, and poems were as interesting as his self-proclaimed titles. Aside from a one-dimensional introduction read by Debra Winger, Robbins reads every word. His delivery is dull, his pace excruciatingly slow, and his presentation lacking in vocal dynamics. He even starts each piece by saying, "This next one is entitled . . . ." One can only imagine how the delivery of his eccentric observations might have been improved by a professional narrator. This effort is disappointing. M.R.E. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine -
July 11, 2005
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.
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