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Adam's Reviews > Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
by Tom Robbins
by Tom Robbins
Yes! Another fantastical literary trip from Tom Robbins!
Seattle stockbroker Gwen Mati feels as though her life is falling apart when all of a sudden the stock market takes a turn for the worse on the Thursday before Easter. To add insult to injury, her psychic friend goes missing just as a strange and inappropriate character is thrown into her life. To top it all off, she's fallen carelessly into an unwanted relationship that has yeilded nothing more than a search for her 'lovers' lost monkey!
To resolve all this in the course of a weekend would only be possible through the whimsical storytelling of Tom Robbins!
Written in the second person, present tense (or so I'm told by Wikipedia), 'HAIFP' draws the reader in, refering to 'you' as the main character. As with all of Robbins' books that I've read, the joy is not in the story itself necessarily but in the colorfully lyrical text. No description is put forth without wild analogies and vibrantly unexpected language making each line an absolute pleasure to read.
Somewhere in between a story about a jade-cancer-curing-enema-pump and African mythology, Robbins manages to throw in a bit of a moral if you will as the main character, Gwen, must fight between the (relative) 'security' of her job in the world of finance, and the whimsical 'do as you please' philosophy put forth by her new friend, Larry Diamond. With Robbins at the helm, it's not hard to guess which she, or 'you,' as the story is told, will choose!
Enjoy the trip!
Seattle stockbroker Gwen Mati feels as though her life is falling apart when all of a sudden the stock market takes a turn for the worse on the Thursday before Easter. To add insult to injury, her psychic friend goes missing just as a strange and inappropriate character is thrown into her life. To top it all off, she's fallen carelessly into an unwanted relationship that has yeilded nothing more than a search for her 'lovers' lost monkey!
To resolve all this in the course of a weekend would only be possible through the whimsical storytelling of Tom Robbins!
Written in the second person, present tense (or so I'm told by Wikipedia), 'HAIFP' draws the reader in, refering to 'you' as the main character. As with all of Robbins' books that I've read, the joy is not in the story itself necessarily but in the colorfully lyrical text. No description is put forth without wild analogies and vibrantly unexpected language making each line an absolute pleasure to read.
Somewhere in between a story about a jade-cancer-curing-enema-pump and African mythology, Robbins manages to throw in a bit of a moral if you will as the main character, Gwen, must fight between the (relative) 'security' of her job in the world of finance, and the whimsical 'do as you please' philosophy put forth by her new friend, Larry Diamond. With Robbins at the helm, it's not hard to guess which she, or 'you,' as the story is told, will choose!
Enjoy the trip!
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Quotes Adam Liked
“We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a 'reality' that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue--only we've all been issued the wrong librettos. For a text, we're given the Bible. Or the Talmud or the Koran. We're given Time magazine, and Reader's Digest, daily papers, and the six o'clock news; we're given schoolbooks, sitcoms, and revisionist histories; we're given psychological counseling, cults, workshops, advertisements, sales pitches, and authoritative pronouncements by pundits, sold-out scientists, political activists, and heads of state. Unfortunately, none of these translations bears more than a faint resemblance to what is transpiring in the true theater of existence, and most of them are dangerously misleading. We're attempting to comprehend the spiraling intricacies of a magnificently complex tragicomedy with librettos that describe the barrom melodramas or kindergarten skits. And when's the last time you heard anybody bitch about it to the management?”
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
“But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity's a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.”
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
“Are you aware that rushing toward a goal is a sublimated death wish? It's no coincidence we call them 'deadlines.”
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
“If every time we choose a turd, society, at a great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all.”
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
