Book Fever
By Marcia Loy July 4, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Book Fever takes the pulse of Tom Robbins

Whoever said truth is stranger than fiction never read a Tom Robbins novel… Clever, creative and witty, Robbins tosses off impassioned observations like handfuls of flower petals. —The San Diego Union-Tribune

Back in 1995 I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago to see an exhibit of Fusion Art. One artist covered a wall with every box and package of cereal, rice, frozen strawberries, etc., he’d eaten the previous year. Other exhibits featured collages with bits of lace, buttons and other odds and ends that looked like they came from my grandmother’s attic. For the first hour I found it ridiculous; then suddenly it was morning and I realized the artists were trying to demonstrate that art was more than just formal old oil paintings in gilt frames hanging in museums.

I had a similar reaction when I started Tom Robbins’ Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates. Who wants to read, I thought, about a 36-year-old CIA agent who loves sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, not to mention his 16-year-old stepsister? If I hadn’t agreed to write this review because Robbins is coming here in August as part of a Summer Literary Festival sponsored by the Authors’ Sala, I’d have set the book aside before I’d read 50 pages.

And if I had I would have missed a very good book. It took a while for the protagonist, Switters, to grow on me. His grandmother, Maestra, I loved from the get-go. An anthropologist named R. Potney Smithe, I liked right away. But Switters took a little longer. When Maestra discovers her grandson is headed to Lima on an assignment from the agency, she asks him to take her aging parrot, Sailor Boy, to the Brazilian jungle. She’s getting older and worries she’ll die long before her pet. She wants him to be free. The only thing the parrot says is, “People of ze wurl, Relax!” Switters reluctantly agrees, although his mission to release Sailor Boy in the wilds of Brazil doesn’t work out quite the way he’d planned. After his adventures in South America, he goes to Seattle, then to Sacramento where his mother and stepsister, Suzy live. He’s agreed to help Suzy write a term paper on Our Lady of Fatima.

If the book took a bit of time to hook me, from the beginning I was taken with Robbins’ writing. Here’s a description of the river he travels on his way to release the parrot:

“The river, on the other hand, was a-gurgle with antics. In exhibitions of reverse surfing, flying fish and freshwater dolphins leapt from the water to catch brief rides on shafts of sunlight. Then, putting a spin on the feat, cormorants, wings folded like a high-diver’s arms, would plunge beak-first into the water, presumably, since they rarely speared a fish, for nothing but cormorant kicks. On benches of gravel, heavy-lidded caimans did Robert Mitchum imitations, seeming at once slow and sinister and stoned. Cabbage-green turtles that must have each weighed as much as a wheelbarrow load of cabbages slid off of and onto mud banks and rocks, while frogs of various hues and sizes plopped on every side like fugitives from mutant haiku. (“Too damn vivid,” Bashō might have complained in seventeenth-century Japanese.) Around a bend, three tapirs, the mystery beast from Kubrick’s 2001, waded the stream.”

His short lines are great, too. Speaking of his meditation session he says, “He’s gotten closer to the Void than airports are to most cities,” and decides if he suggests the children of Fatima might have inadvertently inhaled the tree pollen before their sighting of the Virgin Mary, his stepsister’s teacher, Sister Francis, “would likely have a Sacred Heart attack,” and says, “the golf course that bordered the stucco ranch house that Eunice had won in the marriage lottery was as green as Socrates’s last cocktail.” Another of my favorite lines is, “I’m looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis.” I’ll drink to that.

His dialogue is equally witty, though much of it isn’t appropriate for this publication. Here’s one of my favorites in a conversation between Suzy and Switters:

“Tell me something about yourself,” she demanded.

“Okay. Shoot.”

“No, I mean, like tell me something true about you that I don’t already know. A secret fact. That nobody else knows.”

He pondered this for a moment or two. Then he declared, “The more advertising I see, the less I want to buy.”

He has uncomplimentary words for politicians from JFK to John Foster Dulles and all government leaders since Jefferson and Franklin. He divides the CIA into angels and cowboys, and the cowboys don’t come off well.

According to Wikipedia, Thomas Eugene Robbins was born in North Carolina on July 22, 1936, which makes him even older than I am. He studied journalism at college in Virginia, but left and eventually settled in New York to become a poet. In 1957 he enlisted in the Air Force after receiving his draft notice and spent three years as a meteorologist in Korea. After getting his degree in Virginia, he moved to Seattle and received his master’s degree from the University of Washington. He worked as a journalist and published his first novel, Another Roadside Attraction in 1971. His breakout novel was Only Cowgirls Get the Blues, published in 1976, followed by the popular Still Life with Woodpecker in 1980. He has written eight novels and a collection of essays and short stories. A new novel, B is For Beer, is due out in the fall.

Next week Book Fever looks at more novels. Happy reading.

Marcia Loy is a member of the steering committee of the Authors’ Sala and a volunteer at the Biblioteca Pública. She can be contacted at marciabookfever@hotmail.com.

Literary Festival Schedule

Tuesday, August 19

6pm “Language Is Not the Frosting; It’s the Cake.” Lecture by Tom Robbins in conversation with Alan Rinzler with questions from the audience (Real de Minas, 250 pesos).

7:30pm Reception. Open to Literary Society members only. Entertainment. Gifts to members (Real de Minas, free to Literary Society members).

Wednesday, August 20

11am, 1pm & 3pm Small Book Groups meet to discuss Fierce Invalids (various locations, free).

1pm “The Craft of Composing Memorable Sentences.” Workshop by Tom Robbins for up to 30 writers (Real de Minas, 750 pesos).

3pm Topic to be determined. Workshop by Alan Rinzler (Real de Minas, 750 pesos).

6pm “Weird and Wonderful Writers I Have Published.” Entertaining talk by Alan Rinzler (Real de Minas, 250 pesos).

Thursday, August 21

10am Coffee at Casa de los Ranas (Anado and Richard’s, free, with free shuttle).

2pm & 4pm Movie: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Discussion led by screenwriter Michael Grais (Teatro Santa Ana, 50 pesos).

6pm On-stage Book Club with Tom Robbins and Alan Rinzler (Real de Minas, 250 pesos).

8pm Fierce Invalids dinner for Literary Society benefactors and contributors (private homes, free).

Women in Texas Music: Stories of heart and courage
By Kimberly Kinser

Authors’ Sala Readings
Kathleen Hudson, Ron Hogan
Fri, July 11, 5–7pm
St. Paul’s Church
Cardo 6
50 pesos

San Miguel is so diverse that the city could host two dozen international independence days throughout the year. Certainly El Grito late in the night on September 15 in the Jardín is one of the more enthusiastic 200-year-old parties you’re ever likely to attend.

Kathleen Hudson, Ph.D., educator, actor and author of Women in Texas Music: Stories and Songs, found these lyrics by Susan Gibson and recorded by the Dixie Chicks, as the ultimate affirmation of her life journey:


Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about
Who’s never left home, who’s never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Story and song make a difference, Hudson firmly believes, and an emotional response facilitates learning. She is all about facilitating learning in lectures and workshops, radio shows and videos. She teaches full time at Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas.

The Texas Heritage Music Foundation, Hudson’s attempt to bring all of the pieces of her life together, just celebrated their twentieth year. With her educational focus, the foundation’s goal is to preserve and perpetuate Texas musical heritage. Hudson has established the weekly coffeehouse series; a forum for students of music and life to experience the rich musical heritage of Texas. An annual Living History Day is widely attended.

Texas music is difficult to define. There is something unique about it. Hudson believes, after interviews with many more than the 35 singer-songwriters who are highlighted in her book, that it is a radical commitment to their authentic voices that make the women in Texas music special. 

She did not just interview the women for her book. She is not an objective journalist. Hudson’s life journey is one of connecting the dots. Each dot is a person who interests her, a story that resonates with her life. Her desire to connect with the women she interviewed made it possible to change her life and the life of the musician.

Everyone who reads likes a good story, a good character, someone who overcomes all odds. How about Rosie Flores? Rosie loves to write and perform Rockabilly music and has been in the music business in LA and Nashville for years. The interview with Hudson led to a collaboration between Flores and Hudson’s educational foundation. The radio show, “A Whole Lot of Shakin’,” hosted by Rosie, won the 2007 Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media. Another dot connected.

Hudson did not just interview soul and blues diva Trudy Lynn; they went on shopping expeditions together. She ate in the homes of many of the women she interviewed. She made friends. She made connections.

Thanks to YouTube, each of us can listen to the fantastic women Hudson introduces us to in her book. Search Carolyn Wonderland or Rattlesnake Annie or Katie Webster and listen to these edgy women vocalists and perhaps connect a dot in your own life through their songs and lyrics. 

Don’t think that this reading is going to be boring. Do you know Belle Starr? One of Hudson’s favorite images is of Belle as she rides through the streets of 1860s Dallas in black velvet, sidesaddle on her horse Velvet, with a six-shooter on her belt. Belle Starr might just show herself at our reading. On Hudson’s website, kathleenhudson.net, Belle can reportedly decide to join any event. 

The story of women in Texas music is a story of heart and courage. The theme of the book and of Hudson’s life is to go out into the world and follow your passion and see where it takes you. Let’s all join the Authors’ Sala and Kathleen Hudson on July 11 and see where it will take us.

Kimberly Kinser is the creator of Pizarra Blanca Writers, an Amherst Artist and Writers workshop offered in San Miguel.

Group of distinguished poets return to Merida in 2009
By Sheila Lanham

In January 2009, US Poets in Mexico comes to Merida with its premier workshop event. US Poets in Mexico brings contemporary American and Mexican poets to Merida every year for one week of poetry workshops, readings and lectures. Poetry workshops are held at Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán and readings are held at the Merida English Library. Faculty members are notable and award-winning poets, and always include two bilingual professors and a translator who has participated in the publication of a bilingual anthology of contemporary Mexican poets. The program always includes a reading by a poet who writes in an indigenous language of Mexico. Workshop participants can apply online at www.uspoetsinmexico.org.

The January 2009 Merida faculty includes Forrest Gander, Pedro Serrano, Bob Holman, C.D. Wright, Cornelius Eady and Maureen Owen. Featured readings are by Coral Bracho and Pedro Serrano from Mexico City, Valerie Mejer from San Miguel and Briceida Cuevas Cob, a Maya language poet from Campeche. Faculty members also will give readings. All readings are free to the public.

Along with numerous books of poetry, the January 2009 Merida faculty have collectively received many awards, including three Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur Fellow, three Lannan Foundation Fellowships, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative North American Poetry, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, winner of the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an Obie, a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts award recipient, an American Book Award winner, three Emmys, a Bessie Performance Award, an International Public Television Award, a Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers Award” by Poets & Writers, a Robert Creeley Award and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Please visit the website for full biographies of all poets.

The program was born out of a love of poets and poetry, a love of Mexico, a desire to know more about Mexican poetry and a desire to share that knowledge. A second program will be held in May each year in a different city in Mexico and will follow the same format as the annual Merida workshop program.

Sheila Lanham is the founder and director of US Poets in Mexico.