Julia'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://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> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/9869441?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 3 of 5 stars I'd heard this book wasn't as bad as some of the later Tom Robbins, where I think even he was getting tired of his schtick, but... Not by me. So far the decline in my liking of Robbins books had been related to my reading the later ones later (proved by the exceptions), but not in this case. Maybe I'm just overall tired of Robbins, or maybe this one just wasn't for me. Of course, compared to the great mass of uselessness out there, anything Robbins is still going to be pretty interesting. But this review is going to pick at the negatives, because everybody knows what's cool about Tom Robbins... (Or if they don't, plenty of other reviews will tell them.)
 
 The odd analogies in particular just didn't seem as cool as they used to; maybe they were more clumsily integrated (really they often just seem there to be there rather than to be of any use), or maybe I'm just over it. A lot of the specifics were like that; I guess I'll have to reread a Robbins I liked to see what I think of it now. Some of _Woodpecker_ did just seem clumsy, though, in a not-experienced-or-not-great-author kind of way. A lot of author intrusion, which may seem like a funny thing to say about a book where a lot of the innovative form-twisting funniness is in things like the author breaking in to talk about his relationship with the typewriter that's putting out the manuscript, but I'm talking plain old point-of-view slippage and that sort of thing (using 'seemingly' of a character whose POV we were in in the previous paragraph and will be back in in the next, that sort of thing). Sometimes breaking the Rules comes off as interesting and experimental, and sometimes it comes off as just bad writing,* and different components can come off differently to different people. So maybe some people would think the intrusive 'seemingly's brilliantly new, and some people would think the bits about the typewriter just bad writing, but that's the way I slice it, anyway. (And of course it has the usual sexist bullshit, though maybe it was advanced for its time? Hard for me to say.)
 
 Overall... As with anything so full of philosophical BSing, there were a few aha moments, and a bunch of moments where I think it's full of crap. (Robbins does polyphony, in his own unique fashion (interestingly so), but some messages are clear, like Artists Are Superior Beings, which may well be true but I don't buy his reasoning.) And the content? Eh, anyone can write a review about content. :) The supporting characters were much better done than the main characters, in my opinion. King Max and Queen Tilli were quite fetching. 
 
 Tom Robbins does not exactly write character-driven novels most of the time, so what are they? Form-driven? Sounds awful, but it's a good enough form to mostly carry it most of the time. (They're certainly not plot-driven nor setting-driven...) I think the books I've liked best of his have been the closest to being really character-driven, but that's typical for me.
 
 And finally, a comment from my housemate Bao-Tran: "Wait, you bought it new?!? How could you not find that book used? Every single person in Berkeley owns a copy of that book! I think even I own a copy of it!"
 
 * One of my editorial postulates: Experimental form sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from bad writing. Not sure whether that applies here, or whether Robbins was just being lazy.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/634085?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Julia's review
rating:

recommended for: people who really like tom robbins...?
status: Read in December, 2007

I'd heard this book wasn't as bad as some of the later Tom Robbins, where I think even he was getting tired of his schtick, but... Not by me. So far the decline in my liking of Robbins books had been related to my reading the later ones later (proved by the exceptions), but not in this case. Maybe I'm just overall tired of Robbins, or maybe this one just wasn't for me. Of course, compared to the great mass of uselessness out there, anything Robbins is still going to be pretty interesting. But this review is going to pick at the negatives, because everybody knows what's cool about Tom Robbins... (Or if they don't, plenty of other reviews will tell them.)

The odd analogies in particular just didn't seem as cool as they used to; maybe they were more clumsily integrated (really they often just seem there to be there rather than to be of any use), or maybe I'm just over it. A lot of the specifics were like that; I guess I'll have to reread a Robbins I liked to see what I think of it...more I'd heard this book wasn't as bad as some of the later Tom Robbins, where I think even he was getting tired of his schtick, but... Not by me. So far the decline in my liking of Robbins books had been related to my reading the later ones later (proved by the exceptions), but not in this case. Maybe I'm just overall tired of Robbins, or maybe this one just wasn't for me. Of course, compared to the great mass of uselessness out there, anything Robbins is still going to be pretty interesting. But this review is going to pick at the negatives, because everybody knows what's cool about Tom Robbins... (Or if they don't, plenty of other reviews will tell them.)

The odd analogies in particular just didn't seem as cool as they used to; maybe they were more clumsily integrated (really they often just seem there to be there rather than to be of any use), or maybe I'm just over it. A lot of the specifics were like that; I guess I'll have to reread a Robbins I liked to see what I think of it now. Some of _Woodpecker_ did just seem clumsy, though, in a not-experienced-or-not-great-author kind of way. A lot of author intrusion, which may seem like a funny thing to say about a book where a lot of the innovative form-twisting funniness is in things like the author breaking in to talk about his relationship with the typewriter that's putting out the manuscript, but I'm talking plain old point-of-view slippage and that sort of thing (using 'seemingly' of a character whose POV we were in in the previous paragraph and will be back in in the next, that sort of thing). Sometimes breaking the Rules comes off as interesting and experimental, and sometimes it comes off as just bad writing,* and different components can come off differently to different people. So maybe some people would think the intrusive 'seemingly's brilliantly new, and some people would think the bits about the typewriter just bad writing, but that's the way I slice it, anyway. (And of course it has the usual sexist bullshit, though maybe it was advanced for its time? Hard for me to say.)

Overall... As with anything so full of philosophical BSing, there were a few aha moments, and a bunch of moments where I think it's full of crap. (Robbins does polyphony, in his own unique fashion (interestingly so), but some messages are clear, like Artists Are Superior Beings, which may well be true but I don't buy his reasoning.) And the content? Eh, anyone can write a review about content. :) The supporting characters were much better done than the main characters, in my opinion. King Max and Queen Tilli were quite fetching.

Tom Robbins does not exactly write character-driven novels most of the time, so what are they? Form-driven? Sounds awful, but it's a good enough form to mostly carry it most of the time. (They're certainly not plot-driven nor setting-driven...) I think the books I've liked best of his have been the closest to being really character-driven, but that's typical for me.

And finally, a comment from my housemate Bao-Tran: "Wait, you bought it new?!? How could you not find that book used? Every single person in Berkeley owns a copy of that book! I think even I own a copy of it!"

* One of my editorial postulates: Experimental form sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from bad writing. Not sure whether that applies here, or whether Robbins was just being lazy....less

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message 1: by Don

12/10/2007 01:03PM

Ha!

I finally got to ya.

*grin*