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127th out of 236 books
—
53 voters
Wild Ducks Flying Backward
by
Tom Robbins
Known for his meaty seriocomic novels, Tom Robbins’s shorter work has appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Harper’s, from Playboy to the New York Times. Collected here for the first time in paperback, the essays, articles, observations—and even some untypical country-music lyrics—offer a rare overview of the eclectic sensibility of an American original.
Whether...more
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Paperback, 272 pages
Published
August 29th 2006
by Bantam
(first published January 1st 2005)
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Tom Robbins' books are so unfailingly fun, so spectacularly gymnastic in their use of language, that I've often found myself wondering how much of him can be found in his work. Is Robbins the man, in other words, as playful as his writing? Wild Ducks Flying Backward is an answer in the affirmative. There's not much of substance here – it's a slim collection of previously published essays and musings (on art, food, and celebrity, mainly) – but the linguistic somersaults and rhetorical backflips a...more
whoever gave this book less than 4 stars is a totally unsalvageable idiot. this book of short writings, mostly nonfiction with some fiction, was brilliant. i just went up the mountain for a four day solitary retreat with no running water, electricity and only wood heat in an insulated hut, and lemme tell you this book saved my ass. sitting in the cold with only the sounds of my own thoughts for four days threw me into an abyss. tom pulled me out. as always. in fact, i now rank this in my top fiv...more
Wild Ducks Flying Backward is a collection of previously published essays gathered together in book form. Yeah … I know, this never bodes well. Usually these types of collections consist of dog fur, dried food scraps and coffee grounds swept into the dust pan and dumped between a book cover (usually as a blatant attempt to wring some extra cash off of the name recognition of the author). Unfortunately, this book is no exception, but I will say that strewn among the empty milk cartons, egg shells...more
It's hard to know what you're enjoying most when reading Tom Robbins--the playful puns, the intuitive asides, the modern mythology, the vivid metaphors. Usually you're chuckling to yourself too much to quite pin it down. This is a lively collection of short works ranging from fiction to critique to memoir to poetry. The best selections are towards the front, with travelogues like "The Day the Earth Spit Warthogs" or the superb "Canyon of the Vaginas." Other gems are sprinkled throughout, as when...more
Tom Robbins is one of my favorite writers. And I always tend to gravitate towards him when I am feeling a bit lost or stuck in a rut. Whenever I need a jolt to my psyche, or a boost to my emotional immune system. This collection of essays, short stories, poetry/lyrics and other journalistic ephemera came to me at just such a time. And I am thankful for it.
While not as "meaty" as any of his novels, this collection was a welcome respite. Some if the selections are definitely better than others; so...more
While not as "meaty" as any of his novels, this collection was a welcome respite. Some if the selections are definitely better than others; so...more
Nothing fancy but no complaints. Tom Robbins is my second all time favorite author after Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes). WDFB is not slam dunk, front-to-back 'really liked', 4-star book, but it does have some very enjoyable passages. Off hand a few memorable excerpts are The Doors review, the travel essays and the tomato sandwich dedication.
Specifically:
How cool is it that TR was actually 'of age' and writing when The Doors toured his town?! The fact that Tom would have attended (and enj...more
Specifically:
How cool is it that TR was actually 'of age' and writing when The Doors toured his town?! The fact that Tom would have attended (and enj...more
Oct 19, 2010
trina
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
awesome people
Shelves:
oh-how-i-laughed
disagree with his mystical tendencies or his sweet horndogginess if you must, but no one can dispute that tom robbins loves language and language loves him right back. whether he is writing about the weather, redheads/waitresses, the state of modern art, vaginas, or what-have-you, he does it with aplomb, running his sentences on joyfully, drawing absurd-yet-spot-on comparisons, redefining words in such a way that one forgets they were never used that way before, and generally turning the world (...more
http://okudumdanoldu.blogspot.be/2013...
Geçen gün Ursula'nın da denemelerini okuduktan sonra Tom Robbins'in denemeleri de çok iyi geldi. İnsan kitaplarını çok sevdiği bir yazarı tanırmış hissine kapılıyor ama aslında her kitapta sadece onun hayal gücünün küçük bir adasında seyahate çıkıyoruz. İş böyle olunca, Tom Robbins'in kafasına hasta bir kişi olarak seyahat yazılarından, beğendiği müzik grupları veya filozoflardan, hayattan sanattan şiirlerinden çok zevk aldım.
Yine de Tom Robbins okumaya ba...more
Geçen gün Ursula'nın da denemelerini okuduktan sonra Tom Robbins'in denemeleri de çok iyi geldi. İnsan kitaplarını çok sevdiği bir yazarı tanırmış hissine kapılıyor ama aslında her kitapta sadece onun hayal gücünün küçük bir adasında seyahate çıkıyoruz. İş böyle olunca, Tom Robbins'in kafasına hasta bir kişi olarak seyahat yazılarından, beğendiği müzik grupları veya filozoflardan, hayattan sanattan şiirlerinden çok zevk aldım.
Yine de Tom Robbins okumaya ba...more
I got this book as a gift for my half birthday -- in fact, I got HALF of this book for my half birthday -- and I read it with the warm feelings I had towards it's giver.
That was probably a good thing. I like Tom Robbins. I like the way he chews language and spits it back out in a form that is almost unrecognizable and yet more familiar than the individual words were when they went in.
(An example I'm thinking of is how he talks about "the lobby of the tornado." Makes perfect sense -- even more th...more
That was probably a good thing. I like Tom Robbins. I like the way he chews language and spits it back out in a form that is almost unrecognizable and yet more familiar than the individual words were when they went in.
(An example I'm thinking of is how he talks about "the lobby of the tornado." Makes perfect sense -- even more th...more
Count on Robbins to sum up my entire life's philosophy in one amazing paragraph:
"Crazy wisdom is, of course, the opposite of conventional wisdom. It is wisdom that deliberately swims against the current in order to avoid being swept along in the numbing wake of bourgeois compromise, wisdom that flouts taboos in order t...o undermine their power; wisdom that evolves when one, while refusing to avert one’s gaze from the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on joy in spite of everything; w...more
"Crazy wisdom is, of course, the opposite of conventional wisdom. It is wisdom that deliberately swims against the current in order to avoid being swept along in the numbing wake of bourgeois compromise, wisdom that flouts taboos in order t...o undermine their power; wisdom that evolves when one, while refusing to avert one’s gaze from the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on joy in spite of everything; w...more
One of the reasons I adore Tom Robbins' books is that I can never tell where he is going with something, but I'm sure it will intertwine in a way that makes me feel like I should have known all along. He is pulling the wool over my eyes, and I'm blissfully blind and savoring every paragraph until the conclusion.
This book doesn't take that journey as it's a collection of his short writings. The travel writing is short and doesn't invoke the images of the places like it does with images of the ch...more
This book doesn't take that journey as it's a collection of his short writings. The travel writing is short and doesn't invoke the images of the places like it does with images of the ch...more
Wild Ducks Flying Backwards by Tom Robbins
This is a collections of Tom Robbins short
writings so we get several travel articles the
best of which is Canyon Of the Vaginas that is
typical Tom Robbins. then there are tributes to
everyone from the Doors to Jennifer Jason Leigh,
miniskirt feminism and Alan Rudolph. A good
selection of Toms poetry which is mostly pretty
concise and entertaining. Then is a section on
musings and critiques mainly of artists I don't
know such as Morris Louis and Leo Ke...more
This is a collections of Tom Robbins short
writings so we get several travel articles the
best of which is Canyon Of the Vaginas that is
typical Tom Robbins. then there are tributes to
everyone from the Doors to Jennifer Jason Leigh,
miniskirt feminism and Alan Rudolph. A good
selection of Toms poetry which is mostly pretty
concise and entertaining. Then is a section on
musings and critiques mainly of artists I don't
know such as Morris Louis and Leo Ke...more
I always read a Tom Robbins with a box of salt, with the full knowledge that I will not be able to read another Tom Robbins book for at least a half dozen years. I can imagine it's the same feeling people have with sky-diving ("It was exhilarating! Such an adrenaline rush! I'm never doing it again") or like my father with a box of chocolate covered cherries. My father did not like chocolate and did not have a sweet tooth, but about once every five years or so he would buy a box of those confecti...more
Tom Robbins writes on another level. He just does. And I'm not even arguing that it's a better or higher level. He's just far removed from everyone else.
If authors lived in matching neighborhoods, Dan Brown would have the highest, fanciest loft in the overcrowded city of thriller writers, Dave Eggers would be mayor of the reasonably sized town of hipster memoir fiction and Tom Robbins would have a ranch out in the middle of nowhere with his closest neighbor being Vonnegut.
Robbins sees the world...more
If authors lived in matching neighborhoods, Dan Brown would have the highest, fanciest loft in the overcrowded city of thriller writers, Dave Eggers would be mayor of the reasonably sized town of hipster memoir fiction and Tom Robbins would have a ranch out in the middle of nowhere with his closest neighbor being Vonnegut.
Robbins sees the world...more
there weren't a lot of good commuting reads to choose from at my brooklyn public library branch. so i picked this little gem up. it was a compilation of tom robbins short writings -- all those little stories, reviews, critiques and even poems that were thrown into magazines and journals over the years. it was good choice. it's surprising how insightful he is in this collection. you get a very good understanding just who robbins is. his meditations on everything from swampy vacations, the 60's, m...more
It pains me more than you can imagine to write these next few words.
Listening to Tom Robbins’ latest offering, Wild Ducks Flying Backwards, as an audiobook, is an excruciating experience. No, not because it is read by the author, who, by his own admission, has a voice that sounds like it was wrung out of a mop. Robbins is actually not at all a bad reader for this collection of mostly non-fiction pieces, many of them travel essays, tributes, and even the odd review or two. Non-fiction sketches do...more
Listening to Tom Robbins’ latest offering, Wild Ducks Flying Backwards, as an audiobook, is an excruciating experience. No, not because it is read by the author, who, by his own admission, has a voice that sounds like it was wrung out of a mop. Robbins is actually not at all a bad reader for this collection of mostly non-fiction pieces, many of them travel essays, tributes, and even the odd review or two. Non-fiction sketches do...more
i'm not quite done with this book, but i have certainly enjoyed it all the way through. the book is divided into five parts: 'Travel Writings', 'Tributes', 'Stories, Poems and Lyrics', 'Musings and Critiques',and 'Response'.
thus far 'Tributes' has been my favorite section. i love seeing the figures that make one of my favorite authors tick. some of them are pleasantly surprising, like Diane Keaton and Jennifer Jason Leigh. some of them just really make sense, like Joseph Campbell and Terence M...more
thus far 'Tributes' has been my favorite section. i love seeing the figures that make one of my favorite authors tick. some of them are pleasantly surprising, like Diane Keaton and Jennifer Jason Leigh. some of them just really make sense, like Joseph Campbell and Terence M...more
Having waited tables for most of my life and being in love with Tom Robbins for most of my adult life, I was quite pleased to know how much he understands and aappreciates the plight of we humble service women. Of course there are other stories in the book. This one particular tale redeems most of my existence and confirms my lofty opinion of the time I spent getting plantation fasciitis. Everyone on the planet should read this before they ever go to another restaurant.
My only regret is that I borrowed this book from a friend and that it isn't my own. Tom Robbins picks words up and then slays me with them every time, even just in a book of his essays and other short writings. It's baffling, ridiculous and should never be allowed to end. In one passage he described his ultimate "last meal" if faced with the death sentence. It was a loaf of Wonder bread, legitimate vine-ripened tomatoes, and a jar of Hellman's Mayonnaise. The perfection of imagination that exist...more
Even those who have never read a Tom Robbins novel will find this collection of travel tales, tributes to other artists (including Canada's Leonard Cohen '... rowed down from the north in a leather skiff manned by a crew of trolls...'), stories, poems and other musings a must read if they have even a modest love for language. Robbins points his lens directly at the world as the eye beholds it, but transforms it through a filter hot-wired to the cosmos. His puns are marinated in metaphor and slip...more
This is a smorgasbord of poems, stories, essays and criticism. I enjoyed some of it, skipped a bit and suffered through a few pieces as well. I'll always love Tom Robbins because he blew open my mind and my world when I first read him in high school ... but I have grown a little less tolerant of his over-the-top gallery of linguistic tricks as my tastes have change (not matured, necessarily, just changed). Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in a stew of adjectives and abstractions while reading...more
This was a real nice collection of Tom Robbins' miscellany. I liked his responses, travel bits, and heroes writings the most and I don't think the ancient art criticism held up. He could have done without that. For the Robbins fan, this was almost like having a long, revealing conversation with the semi-reclusive author.
This was a real nice collection of Tom Robbins' miscellany. I liked his responses, travel bits, and heroes writings the most and I don't think the ancient art criticism held up. He could have done without that. For the Robbins fan, this was almost like having a long, revealing conversation with the semi-reclusive author.
This was a real nice collection of Tom Robbins' miscellany. I liked his responses, travel bits, and heroes writings the most and I don't think the ancient art criticism held up. He could have done without that. For the Robbins fan, this was almost like having a long, revealing conversation with the semi-reclusive author.
What a synopsis of Robbins' literary genius. The man titillates language out of the hum-drum verbiage of suburban American life and launches it tango onto the hot tin roof of the reader's imagination. We are introduced to Robbins through his fiction. This paperback enlightens the tie and suit side of Robbins' literary pyrotechnics. However, beneath the suited genres of travel narrative, music/film review, poetry, short stories, or interview response, Robbins' prose wears pink flamingo board shor...more
I picked this up randomly, having never read any Tom Robbins before, and enjoyed it. The quality of the short writings varies (not a big fan of his poetry and his art criticism is in a different language) but several are quite good and the rest were fun or funny. I'll probably be picking up some of his fiction soon.
Tom Robbins is a brilliant, funny, incredibly imaginative writer. Two of his books are in my top ten all-time. But this book is just boring. Which is surprising to an extent. However, writing fact rather than fiction inhibits his best quality: his wild, nearly insane creativity.
Aug 03, 2011
Erin Butler
added it
I always wanted to know what Tom Robbins thought about current events, and this is a great collection of his non-fiction writings that have been published. I especially liked his commentary on why he lives in the Pacific Northwest, considering he's from Blowing Rock, NC.
You'll find all the beautiful language of Robbins here, just not the awesome stories of his novels. Really only for the superfan. Those people all must read the first piece Robbins wrote where he gained the voice we all know him for, a review of a Doors show he attended on LSD.
I think the reason I like Tom Robbins is because he has a very different writing style, and is unexpectedly hilarious at times. Also - how can you NOT love a book whose title is Wild Ducks Flying Backwards, or Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas? Different but interesting.
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Thomas Eugene Robbins (born July 22, 1936 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina) is an American author. His novels are complex, often wild stories with strong social undercurrents, a satirical bent, and obscure details. His novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976) was made into a movie in 1993 directed by Gus Van Sant.
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“Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances?
Yeah, I guess I'm ready, but listen:
Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality.
Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils' sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature.
I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes.
I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets.
Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace.
I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve.
I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein's brain.
I want a city's gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods.
And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.”
—
98 people liked it
Yeah, I guess I'm ready, but listen:
Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality.
Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils' sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature.
I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes.
I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets.
Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace.
I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve.
I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein's brain.
I want a city's gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods.
And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.”
“Among our egocentric sad-sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation.”
—
74 people liked it
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05. Dezember, 22:50 Uhr