Tom Robbins: Writer in the Rain

This program was made possible in part by Mr. and Mrs. Samuel strong Bumbershoot and those who support public television like you are. Life is short. Nature is cruel and man is ridiculous. Another roadside attraction really became a sort of regional like sort of Robin. Wright common icon. But he is an important part of our culture cowgirls I think cowgirls is best known book. These books sell in the hundreds of thousands and people line up out the door to see him at every signing. He can't define and he's wholly original he is wild playful outrageous. You're looking to go. What is up with that. Oh you just say where did he get that. And I would say that one of my books is an hallucinogen an aphrodesiac

and a mood elevator and a. Intellectual garage door opener and a metaphysical trash compactor. That will do everything except rotate your tires. I was in to actively attracted to the northwest while still than in the South because I thought I could hear and feel the rain even from there. My internal climate is a rainy one. And I think it's always been raining in my head. I'm here for the weather. In the deepest darkest part of winter when the sky resembles bad banana baby food for months only and in the witch measles that meteorologist called grizzle. Or a chronic gray rationalised of the land.

Folks all around me sink into a dismal funk. Many are depressed few actually suicidal but I are growing happier with each for storm. Each thickening of the currently strato Cumulus what's so hot about the Sun i. Guess. Sun beams are a lot like tourist intruding where they don't belong. Promoting noise and forced activity. Raindrops. On the other. And. Introverted feral Buddhistic really cool. Behave as if they live here. Which. Of course. They do. A steady wind driven rain composes music for the psyche. It whispers in secret languages about the primordial essence of snake. Brain will primitive eyes the city's slowing every wheel animate in every gutter. Diffusing commercial yawning the sneery blooms. Of

esoteric calligraphy. Rain will pour for days and season. It will rain a scream and it will rain a raw honest and it will rain a disorder and hair raising his is from the oldest snake in the world. Rain with his on the freeways. Just around the grounds a fishing boat. On the tips of lips. It will rain America. You know when Robert comes. And it will rain a sense of salvation. From the film the Stinnett. Grasp of. The world. Yes I'm here for the weather. And when I am Lord at last into a pit of marvelous mud a pillow of fern and skunk cabbage may need my skull. I want my epitaph to read. It rained on his parade. And he was. Glad. Tom is wickedly wise

and he's a wizard of words and a punning prognosticator and an eager eccentric and a snappy dresser. And he's also I think for my taste that one of the most important American writers of any time I think he's written some of the most amazing sentences ever committed to print in the English language. He has this way. I remember since I was earlier books of just describing the landscape of the northwest which you know a kind of a kind of sewer of people who write about rain in the northwest. And I don't know if anybody has done it as well as Tom Robbins. I don't know I think it just fills him this this this kind of landscape with an energy and you know he's from the south and that's a very different kind of there very different landscape. I come from a long line of cops and preachers.

Look at the Karma I have to divest myself. Well why did you decide to write your first book. Well I don't really remember I was five years old at the time. So I've been at this for 55 years. My penmanship left a lot to be desired age five. So I dictated stories to my mother. But being a frustrated writer herself she would sometimes make little changes in what I had dictated. And then she would read it back to me and I always knew she had changed so much as a single word. And I would throw a tantrum until she changed it back the way I had it. And I told this story to my editor in New York some years ago and he said My God Robbins you haven't changed in 40 years. I spent a lot of time alone I had a completely secret intellectual life

which a young male growing up in small towns in a rural self had to be secretive about. So I did all that on the sly. And then I went out and raised as much hell as possible with all the other redneck brats. But I felt repressed there. And I looked at the map and saw that I was there and it was. On the map. Richmond Virginia. And. I drove into town Friday afternoon. Saturday the next day I went down to Times on Saturday and the managing editor was was there. And I introduced myself and on Tuesday I started to work. I think you are what finally gave me my voice.

After. Many years of writing and reading and was the phenomenon the cultural phenomenon of the 60s. And. New it was time to go off. And. Start work on my first book. When I moved to look on or here it was a hardworking little. Tugboat town and fishing village in which a number of quite competent artists live. Because it was. Beautiful. It was peaceful. It was private and it was cheap. It's changed enormously since that. Day. Nowadays it. Has a bad case of floaty. We were and is quite frankly

just another roadside attack. My first novel was set in the Skagit Valley because I've always been attracted to that landscape and I thought it would make the perfect backdrop for a roadside zoo whose chief attraction was the mummified body of Jesus Christ. Religion is an attempt to organize spirituality and spirituality does not lend itself to organization you cannot organize spirituality without killing it. My view in terms of a divine is pantheistic I suppose because I think there's

there are guides everywhere. Those trees out there and heavens are inhabited by gods and those clouds up there and perhaps those rocks and that bird that just live by. And be amazed at how much energy you can get from that sound. If you're doing it correctly. So he's making me laugh he's always singing to me. He's always dancing for me. I mean just he delights me. He just truly

does. There isn't anything that he's ever done that I know. That hasn't been the end of it no matter what the circumstance or hasn't had. A humorous take or a hopeful note. Not in a Pollyanna way but in a way that reminds you of you know life spirit basically. I think in general he's trying to tell us to lighten up and have fun. I think he's trying to tell us that life is a lot more of a lark and a joke and we think it is. And I think I applaud him for that. I think that's fantastic you know. The beat. Is the most intense. A vegetable oils the radish admittedly is more feverish but the fire of the radish is a coal fire the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are less DNA yet their runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious Slavic people get

their physical characteristics from potatoes their smouldering inquietude from radishes their seriousness from beets. The beet was rest Putin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes. In Europe there is grown widely a large beat they call the mangle Versal. Perhaps it is mangle for us all that we see in rest puton. Certainly there is a mangle versal in the music of Wagner although it is another composer whose name begins. B E E T. Of course there are white beats beats that use sugar water instead of blood but it is the red beet with which we are concerned. The variety that blushes and swells like a hemorrhoid. By him roid. For which there is no cure. Oh.

The LSD that I had in 1960 three. In one day in my life that I would not trade for any other. I think. The value of psychedelics say for an artist. Is that they ran to keep boundaries. This is it. No cigarettes no coffee no pipe no English Sheepdog no neurotic wife in the next room. Writing a dissertation on the symbolism of hair coloring in Alexander Pope. No props just no computer

no typewriter just. A legal pen ballpoint pen. Watch the ink soak into the wood pulp. One where the time I'm not was a hippie playboy who only sits down to write when when the hangover wears off and I work every day. I'm extremely disciplined. You have you have to otherwise you're an amateur. My hand rain resembles the nasty scrawls chalked on Alley walls by Mongolian monster boys. Times just need a change of venue. Here's a little something I wrote when I was some

kind of scholar at Yale for a day. Each of my novels has as its fundamental thing aims. Liberation transformation and celebration. I'm pretty much convinced that we are in this life to enlarge the soul light up the brain and liberate the spirit. The challenge for me has been how to reflect this purpose or contribute to this purpose and novelistic fiction without producing work that is fluffy abstract or corny. Well at times I will say the sentence out loud to myself because you write where your ear as well as your eyes so I picture when I'm writing but I also have to hear the rhythms of the sentence. That's extremely important to me that sense of being metered correctly. A. Lot of people. A lot of people aren't there a lot of people. May be too damn

many. I like to mix fantasy spirituality sexuality humor Iran's ism and combinations and I've been seen previously. Thank You see you next time. I used to go to copying my work every day and I put the extra coffee. In the freezer. And prison compartment on my refrigerator. You case the house burned down and then I found out that and I house

fire. There first because of the gases in it the refrigerator explodes. So now I bury them in the backyard. I guess that it bothers me a little bit to be referred when I'm referred to as I like Connor writer or Skagit Valley writer. Only one of my novels was set in the Skagit Valley. But several album have been set in the city of Seattle. In fact there's I think there are scenes from Seattle in almost every book I've written built for the Seattle World's Fair in 1962 the Pacific Science Center remains one of the most handsome structures in the city. Perhaps handsome is too masculine. With this reflecting pools and soaring freestanding arches of swan like filigree. The Science Center resembles the Taj Mahal of the Taj Mahal have been eaten away from inside by

trillions of marble even termites so that only a lacy shell remain. To blind itself to its own reflection. A snowy honeycomb secreted by angels. Is gleaming only bright in rainy weather. Sunshine. No the science center is more beautiful. When Hansen. Especially when compared to the beige Kleenex boxes stand on their monolithic monsters in downtown. Buildings that would appeal not to the taste of Billiken in 6. Sure. You know. I don't think of myself as a north west writer. I don't even necessarily think of myself as an American writer. My books are big in the past few years quite popular abroad. I have very strong clairvoyant skills abilities that I was born with and I used to work with individuals and businesses.

How many years difference is there between you and you Tom. I think 30 something like that. Twenty five we've been married for three years and we've been together for seven. Does it bother you. I mean people do get older and you get old. Why would you think your I could carry the luggage then oh me oh it is 80 90. Hope I get him that wrong. Hope I get to keep him that long. I had a a very very long session two and three year relationships and the fact that I've been with Alex for over 10 years had nothing to do with me finally settling down what I had to do with was meeting my match made in soulmate. Meeting someone that it was just too good to let go. I was all of a sudden I was no longer in the

catch and release program. I think people need to be told that their lives are not as limited as they think they are. That all things are possible and love really works. There you go. Bye. Bye. I could live off of sandwiches. One of the reasons is. Because whenever you make a sandwich you get to put all mammy's in Manny's is my favorite food. I eat about least a pint a week sometimes a quarter a week I ate so much. Man if they were going to send me to the Mayo Clinic you order a sandwich in a restaurant you know. First of all they don't put enough Manet's in it's customer in the middle. Doesn't do. Wrong. Bad sandwich making.

You have to cover every square centimeter you got to get the edges get the corners. And now the secret ingredient. Kimchi. Kimchi. Of course it is a. Cabbage an onion and garlic. Pickled in brine. Aged. It's a Korean dish just on the national dish of Korea. Yes and quite pungent when you eat this stuff. When your breath and run a train. We could we could close power plants in this country you just had enough people eating kimchi and hook them up to generators so you don't get to want to get killed you see. But you just put kimchi right on to the tuna.

And smash it a little bit. Longer. Is her thumbs that we remember. It is her thumbs that have set her apart. Ultimately those monsters who haunted an otherwise undistinguished pair of hands were to become her glory her triumph. A personal superball a private Grand Canyon an intimate world trade center whose twin towers it Mitt only the miraculous yet. It would be false to pretend they have never caused her misery or generated shame. Even you. Sophisticated sensitive closed to any notion of freakish deformity even you in the final analysis in the sanctuary of your own mind's eye would be forced to regard her thumbs

as an obtrusive and on the exquisite lines of an otherwise graceful figure as though Leonardo had left a strand of spaghetti dangling from the corner of Mona Lisas mouth. The general public treats me wonderfully the old Iraq they want to stop me on the ground there. There's a huge amount of envy toward my success. Yeah that's it. That's probably a fair criticism. I think the hometown media always stops its own reason Tom would have had the critics would have difficulty with him. Sure is because they can't pin him down. The problem with Robin's for me is that he's still perfectly captures the moment of 1070 in a lot of ways. I think a lot of his characters in his recent books are still sort of searching for the same things they were back in 1970 and 30 years have passed on a

lot of things have changed. I think the problem with with. It is truly serious. You know the eggheads about his work is just too damn entertaining. I think where that gets him in trouble with the critics is he's he's got these these are just fantastic sentences. And I think they tend to sometimes overwhelm the plot. They visit these places thought patterns and that that that take you away from what some people would call the plot. But why you're going the way you are. The other part of you is thinking of how it fits into the story and it's obviously striking a chord with a lot of people. I would love to make one of those films or all of this film. I wanted to make Even Cowgirls Get the Blues that property as they call them has more directors who pass through it or

one sniffed around it than I think any single book and in recent times. How come then said Did the film and you didn't get to do it. Well I mean he was lucky. The film in even Cal rose get the blues from me. It was an

entirely positive experience. I still think the film was better than its critical reception. I'm not. An actor. How could I be with this voice and my voice sounds like it was strained through Daniel Boone's underwear. But I have appeared in four or five feature films in and small parts and my most recent stint before the cameras was as part of a documentary that two brilliant young women completed recently call anthem. And they traveled around the United States speaking to people whom they thought had a vision for the future of America. I and my aunt were there in the creek up there in. The rumor. I don't

care and we're kind of going to your. Right mirror image. Is my cell Mark is worse than my sound bite. If you're a young person today looking to radically change society for the better I think the goal should be this. You can stop planning big families limiting procreation and stop consuming. Right ho my head. We walk hand-in-hand down life's highway. Because that's just the kind of people we are. This program was made possible in part by Mr. and Mrs. Simmons from Bumper shoes

and those who support public television like you.