Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins

I discovered Tom Robbins' writing about 20 years ago. Mitra, a friend from my College St. days recommended his writing as a bit of fun reading. I started with Skinny Legs and All, and then read his more well known Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.  I still have my copies of both those novels on my office bookshelf. They were very entertaining, and I highly recommend them!

The always playful and quirky Tom Robbins continues to entertain his readers with Villa Incognito. One of the most inventive writers I have yet come across, Robbins unabashedly frolics with language. His endless literary jousting almost creates a new verbal sport. He runs amuck with alliteration, and is more verbose than Webster's thesaurus:

“Simultaneously a frantic, high-tech juggernaut and a timeless Asian dream, Bangkok straddles like no other metropolis the boundary between acrid and sweet, soft and hard, sacred and profane. It’s a silk buzz saw, a lacquered jackhammer, a steel-belted seduction, a digital prayer.”   

The language alone makes for a riveting read, that is like being on an amusement park ride with your eyes closed. There is no way of knowing where the story is going, and all the reader can do is sit back and enjoy the ride. You have to let Tom Robbins "happen".   His invented "tanukis" are a badger-like animal that speaks and understands english, boasts a scrotum as large as a parachute and is able to seduce even the most virtuous woman.


Just when Robbins lulls you into thinking that the entire novel is purely created for fun, he slips in a remarkable thought:

“It doesn't matter how sensitive you are or how damn smart and educated you are, if you're not both at the same time, if your heart and your brain aren't connected, aren't working together harmoniously, well, you're just hopping through life on one leg. You may think you're walking, you may think you're running a damn marathon, but you're only on a hop trip. The connections gotta be maintained.” 

There is no doubt in my mind that he is a creative genius, albeit playful and "out there"! (I won't even attempt to analyze the possible social commentaries that his work makes...I'll leave that to the academics.)

But besides the fun, I have to admit that the story fell apart a bit in the middle. I was lost trying to find the plot's progression, and I found myself skipping paragraphs of description. I found it a bit waffling at times, and needed the story to have more momentum. 

Sadly, I doubt that Robbins will ever achieve mainstream popularity. He touches on taboo subjects so frequently, that I almost think he is making a sport flying in the face of our cultural norms. Some of the more controversial topic include the medicinal use of heroine, interspecies copulation (animals with humans), desertion from the US Armed Forces, the ineptitude of the CIA.

I really enjoyed this entertaining work. Tom Robbins is an original. I'm leaving off with a final thought from Tom Robbins...Probably a good way to conclude:

“Why," Tanuki grumbled, "would they fell trees but leave men standing? Trees are a damn sight more useful than people, and everything in the world knows that but people.”