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Dale's review

Still Life with Woodpecker
by Tom Robbins

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9566.Still_Life_with_Woodpecker?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Still Life with Woodpecker" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1166031048m/9566.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9566.Still_Life_with_Woodpecker?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Still Life with Woodpecker</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/197.Tom_Robbins">Tom Robbins</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5411200?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>The ninth book I read on my commute in 2007.  I read this right after Ulysses, as kind of a palate-cleanser, since Tom Robbins is pretty far from James Joyce.  But I kept thinking as I read this one about how both it and Ulysses were so very much products of their respective times - Ulysses of Ireland in the 1930s, and Still Life with Woodpecker of the U.S. in the 1970s.
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<br/>The example that amused me the most is that, in SLWW, a certain famous figure is held up with great reverence and love ... and that figure is Ralph Nader.  Anyone who was of voting age in the year 2000 remembers the impact Nader had on the presidential election, and the closer one was to the voting age that year, the more likely one thinks of Nader as "ruining" the election and contributing in part to making the world what it is today.  But apparently, back in the 70's Nader was a guy that idealistic kids who wanted to save the world could really look up to and adore.  Strange world.
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<br/>Anyway, this book is classic Tom Robbins, with lots of wacky characters and preposterous plot twists, and a happy ending to boot.  It was a successful antidote to Joyce.  It also contains some of the greatest passages about tequila ever written in an American novel (to my knowledge and in my opinion).  A lot of the cultural stuff is funny because Robbins makes fun of it, and does so with such skill that it doesn't matter if I only barely remembered such 70's oddities.  But in the end it's a story about making love stay, and everyone could use a story like that now and then.
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/329383?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Dale's review
rating:

The ninth book I read on my commute in 2007. I read this right after Ulysses, as kind of a palate-cleanser, since Tom Robbins is pretty far from James Joyce. But I kept thinking as I read this one about how both it and Ulysses were so very much products of their respective times - Ulysses of Ireland in the 1930s, and Still Life with Woodpecker of the U.S. in the 1970s.

The example that amused me the most is that, in SLWW, a certain famous figure is held up with great reverence and love ... and that figure is Ralph Nader. Anyone who was of voting age in the year 2000 remembers the impact Nader had on the presidential election, and the closer one was to the voting age that year, the more likely one thinks of Nader as "ruining" the election and contributing in part to making the world what it is today. But apparently, back in the 70's Nader was a guy that idealistic kids who wanted to save the world could really look up to and adore. Strange world.

Anyway, this book i...more

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message 1: by Bob

10/11/2007 10:49AM

I quite agree with your review of this book, and your critique of Ralph Nader circa 2000.
In order to understand the Ralph Nader that was revered in this book, read his book Unsafe at any speed, and research his lawsuit against GM.