Tom Robbins serves up a hippy-fied Nietzsche. The old god is dead -- they literally find his corpse -- and the old religion is to be replaced by some sort of nature mysticism. We are all 'slowed down light,' at one with the energy at the heart of everything. This sort of thing can easily become a big, flaky mess, but after about fifty pages I succumbed to the grooviness of it all -- well, I enjoyed the story but wasn't swept up by the New Age philosophy. Robbins' figurative writing is especially good, and funny. Robbins gets extra marks for having one of his characters demand that the auto makers build an electric car (in a book written in 1971). He gets more bonus points for sticking in a reference to Vonnegut's 'Bokonon'.

Allegedly, Elvis Presley was reading Another Roadside Attraction just before he died. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.... ( )

This is the fourth novel I have read in Robbins’s oeuvre, and although I have six more to go, I feel comfortable saying the man can’t go wrong. He’s creative, thought-provoking, funny as hell, and he harbors a love for language and all things word-y that is infectious. Another Roadside Attraction is his first novel, yet unlike the majority of authors who only fine tune their voice in subsequent works, he already has a grasp on his unique style of storytelling.

Some of the reasons I enjoyed this book: hippies, mushrooms, the Paul Newmanesque Plucky Purcell (a.k.a. Brother Dallas), conspiracies within the Roman Catholic church of vast implications, flea circuses, the Infinite Goof, the traditional American staples that are hotdogs, Bow Wow Mountain (where I could see myself gladly living out the rest of my days after hitting old age), the Indo-Tibetan Circus and Giant Panda Gypsy Blues Band (where I could see myself gladly living out my youth before my retirement to Bow Wow Mountain), Tarzan movies. The list could go on, as the book is fraught with memorable characters, images, situations, and places.

Another Roadside Attraction is often credited with being a quintessential book of the 1960’s, and although there is no questioning that the novel does in many ways capture the spirit of one of the wildest decades etched in cultural memory, in many ways it goes beyond being a mere time capsule and puts the time period in its ideal mold, rather than definitive. Take this small piece from the book:

“While strolling through her cactus garden one warmish June morning, Amanda came upon an old Navajo man painting pictures in the sand.
‘What is the function of the artist?’ Amanda demanded of the talented trespasser.
‘The function of the artist,’ the Navajo answered, ‘is to provide what life does not.’”

This sums up what I think Robbins excels at, especially in terms of thinking of this book as being iconic of the 1960’s. Yes, in Another Roadside Attraction he picks up on some essential quality that makes up the backbone of the time period, but he also creates it anew, and this vision is uniquely particular to Tom Robbins and infinitely enjoyable for the reader. I recommend this book highly to anyone other than you stiffly stiffersons out there, as there is drug use and numerous sex scenes. Also, there are some ideas put forth that may offend staunch Christians, but, ya know, don’t be so serious. It’s fiction (plus, if you hold on to your beliefs but imagine the implications were the book’s plot hypothetically true, you’ll find a feast where the expression “food for thought” can be applied).

This book is certainly going in my “To Re-Read” pile. A last quote from this book to enjoy (although I can’t remember where it is in the book and I am quoting from memory, I think I’m pretty close):

“Life is a fortune cookie in which someone forgot to put the fortune.”

Think about it. ( )

Loved it! The writing is so descriptive and brilliant that I find myself able to still smell and feel what he wrote after reading it years ago. The world-view in the book is at once real, ridiculous, hilarious and thought provoking. ( )

Whimsical and tagential, it can meander at times, though it takes the reader into interesting places if you dont mind drifting in that direction already. I often find that the season I read a book can influence the way I read it and I read this in the summer, so I had a very relaxed attitude when I first picked it up. I think you need to keep that all the way through. ( )

Robbins in fine form ! ( )