Karin read and liked Garen's review of Jitterbug Perfume:

"Hm. What to say about this guy . . . this is totally a guy you either love or hate, and yet I find myself strangely ambivalent. There are some things i really appreciated about the book and his style, and there are some things I really didn't care ...more Hm. What to say about this guy . . . this is totally a guy you either love or hate, and yet I find myself strangely ambivalent. There are some things i really appreciated about the book and his style, and there are some things I really didn't care for. Whatever one says about this writer, the first is that he is a complete iconoclast of Rabelasian proportion. He ignores pretty much every rule that fiction writers generally, in good taste, abide by. And to an extent that's quite refreshing. He's incomparably clever at turning a phrase. His imagination is boundless. Through the first 50 or so pages I was very skeptical, but then he got me, and the reading went much quicker. I also have a lot of appreciation for his message, and that message is consistent with the manner in which he writes. I can therefore conclude that Tom Robins is simply writing who he is, and that's pretty much all one can ask of any author . . .

That being said, here come the complaints. I guess my biggest complaint was the fact that the novel's pull depended so much upon the author's cleverness. The characters all have roughly the same sense of humor (which I suspect is very much like Mr. Robins' own) and I felt they could have been interchanged with one another into different roles and it wouldn't have made a difference. And I guess that's it - I was so aware of the writer and his tongue in cheek (or tongue in ass?) wit that the characters remained at a distance from me, as if they were on a stage, and when the novel stalled (which was not often) I was painfully aware of this distance. At those points they seemed like characters from a Beckett or Pirandello play wandering about in search of direction. Robins is perhaps too overtly the master puppeteer with his many strings dangling from quick moving fingers . . .

The big question for me when I finished the novel was 'Why did I not connect on an emotional level with the characters?' The novel is wonderfully humorous, the author's aim is admirable, and he treats his characters with a decided tenderness; yet despite this I was left feeling a little aloof. And I think it was because of one thing: his characters don't change. They don't struggle. They struggle, but they don't seem to struggle as much with the reasons why they do things. They struggle with two things: bills and cosmic issues. In that order. I might have loved this novel ten or fifteen years ago.

Which leads me to my third and final criticism. This novel reminded me at times of Ayn Rand. Whom I despise. It also reminded me of BF Skinner, who wrote perhaps the worst novel (Walden II) in the history of novel writing. How can I compare someone like Tom Robins to Ayn Rand? How can I compare the leaping imagination of Tom Robins with the clinical sensibility of Skinner? Why they seem like total opposites! Ah but they are, in a way, the same. You see to Ayn Rand things like characters are always subservient to her greater (and stupid) purpose of telling all people to act like butt-holes, and then they will be better off. And though Tom Robins has quite the opposite message, his characters are still subservient to his ideas, and I tend to think that characters need a little more elbow room than that. Characters are people too, after all.

I was going to give this book 3 stars, based on my enjoyment level, but then I realized you know what? I've never read a book like this before and it definitely got me to thinking. Thinking of the serious, head-scratching variety. I can't say I'm going to rush out and buy his oeuvres, but I will pick one up the next time I'm feeling guilty about loafing about or surfing too much. And for that? 4 stars for you Tom Robins!(less) "

Karin read and liked oriana's review of Jitterbug Perfume:

"post-read: Ohhhh, I really missed reading Robbins. What fun!

This book was both more and less wonderful than I'd remembered. More because I'd forgotten just what a superb stylist Robbins is (see mid-read comments). His plots are intricate...more post-read: Ohhhh, I really missed reading Robbins. What fun!

This book was both more and less wonderful than I'd remembered. More because I'd forgotten just what a superb stylist Robbins is (see mid-read comments). His plots are intricate, his characters are rendered in wonderful detail, down to the distinctive vocal stylings. His ideas, though perhaps a smidge stale twenty-five years on, are still interesting and fun and clever and smart, intellectual, but not in a showy or pedantic way. Plus there's that anxiety you get when you're, oh, twenty or so pages from the end of a book, thinking There's no way he can pull it all together satisfactorily in so few pages! But he does! It's a tiny bit cheesy, maybe just a wee bit pat, but c'mon. He had an awful lot of balls in the air.

Less for a few reasons. I'd kindly blocked out the fact that everyone in a Tom Robbins novel sooner or later launches into a discourse that sounds exactly like Tom Robbins, which can get pretty annoying. Also, I forgot how letchy he can be. There's a lot of sex in this book – in fact, it's one of the four pillars of immortality – which is fine; it's just that the descriptions of it are often a bit much. ("Alma hiccupped the mushroom scent of his spurt," ex, not to mention lots of glistening, semen-encrusted thighs, and that sort of thing.)

The other thing, which isn't really bad or good, exactly, is that I think Tom Robbins is kind of a victim of himself. He's too much Tom Robbins sometimes. Too hippie-cliché; too cerebral-in-an-understandable-but-trippy-way; too specific with his characters, to the point where they become caricatures that are hard to take seriously; even, sadly, too over-the-top with his metaphors ("his knuckle began rapping at his eye patch like a mongoloid woodpecker drilling for worms in a poker chip"? Are you kidding?); just too... too much.

I guess taking a few years off between Robbinses allows one to forget these drawbacks just enough to come back to him fresh and be able to enjoy his shimmering originality again.

mid-read: It's not that I'd forgotten, exactly, but no one does metaphors like Tom Robbins. For example: The sky was a velvety black paw pressing on the snowy landscape with a feline delicacy, stars flying like sparks from its fur. Fuck, really??

pre-read: Last night I made the most amaaazing beet salad. And this afternoon, as I was pondering a middle ground between all the new new new new things I've been reading and something (Proust) too, ah, weighty to take on vacation, I saw my little half-shelf of Tom Robbins. I can't believe I don't have Another Roadside Attraction, but I thought I'd maybe check out this one, which I haven't read in like a decade.

The whole book is about beets!!

And oh my god, how have I not read Tom Robbins in so long?? He is so fucking cool. (less) "

Karin read and liked Derek's review of Less Than Zero:

"Why should I care about Bret Easton Ellis' characters if he doesn't care about them? The aptly titled Less Than Zero didn't bother to go into the character's inner-dialogue any more than it bothered to show a character that anyone might care about. S...more Why should I care about Bret Easton Ellis' characters if he doesn't care about them? The aptly titled Less Than Zero didn't bother to go into the character's inner-dialogue any more than it bothered to show a character that anyone might care about. Sure, the things they do (random sex, drug abuse, etc) make great fodder for fiction, but if there's no counterweight of compassion, what do I care if they fuck up their lives?

I get it: they're emotionally vacant and aimless because of the environment they grew up in, and that is reflected by the deadpan delivery of the writing. I get the point, over and over again. And then he goes ahead and makes the point again. But I'm not interested in emotionally vacant writing. Sex slaves, underage girls, cheating, cocaine abuse, and crime: it can only carry itself so far, and the shock value wears off quickly. I was taught in a fiction class that emotionally numb characters are not interesting ones; I wish someone would've shared this with the emotionally numb, 19-year old Ellis when he wrote this book from the comfort of his Bennington dorm room.

I have a hard time understanding how Ellis was put in the same high regard (the so-called "literary brat pack") as his brilliant friend, Jay McInerney. Bright Lights, Big City portrayed the same type of disillusioned young adults in an infinitely more satisfying and emotionally involving way. This one-trick pony only scores points for X and Elvis Costello references. Maybe the Fashion Network can film an adaptation so that the story can reach the target-market it tries so desperately to criticize.(less) "