On Sunday morning, the novelist, philosopher, and satirical writer Tom Robbins passed away at the age of 92, as confirmed by his friend and publishing executive Craig Popelars, reports AP. The writer dazzled and confused millions of readers with outrageous adventures like 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues' and 'Jitterbug Perfume'.
Robbins, who declared himself blessed with "crazy wisdom," published eight novels and his memoir 'Tibetan Peach Pie', where he fondly looked at his world of inexplicable absurdity, author's comments, and zigzag plots. No one had a more overflowing imagination, whether giving us a wayward heroine with elongated thumbs in 'Cowgirls' or landing Jesus' corpse in an improvised zoo in 'Another Roadside Attraction'.
And no one told stranger jokes about himself: Robbins once described his slight, raspy voice as "as if it had been forced through Davy Crockett's underwear." He could understand almost anything except growing up. People magazine would label Robbins as "the perennial flower child and Peter Pan of American letters."
Born in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, but moved to Virginia where he was "the naughtiest boy" in his high school. Robbins could match any narrative from his books with one from his life. There was a time when he had to see a proctologist and showed up wearing a duck mask. (The doctor and Robbins became friends). He liked to recall the Texas waitress who unbuttoned her blouse and revealed a faded autograph, his autograph.
Or that strange moment in the 90s when the FBI sought clues about the Unabomber's identity by reading Robbins' novel 'Still Life with Woodpecker'. Robbins claimed that two attractive female federal agents were sent to interview him.
He also managed to meet some celebrities, thanks in part to the film adaptation of 'Even Cowgirls', starring Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves, and appearances in movies like 'Breakfast of Champions' and 'Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle'.
He wrote about being Debra Winger's date at the 1991 Academy Awards ceremony and almost committing suicide at an Oscar after-party when, hoping to impress Al Pacino, he swallowed a glass of cologne. He had happier memories like checking into a hotel and being recognized by a young, pretty receptionist who praised his work and ignored the man next to him, Neil Young.
In Robbins' novels, the quest was everything, and he helped capture the open spirit of the 60s in part because he knew life very well. He consumed acid, hitchhiked coast to coast, and traveled from Tanzania to the Himalayas.
His path to fiction writing had its own wandering and hallucinatory quality. Robbins dropped out of the University of Washington (Tom Wolfe was a classmate) and enlisted in the Air Force because he didn't know what else to do. He moved to the Pacific Northwest in the early 60s and somehow was assigned to review an opera for the Seattle Times, becoming the first classical music critic to compare Rossini to Robert Mitchum.
By the late 60s, publishers caught wind of his antics and thought he could write a book. A Doubleday editor met with Robbins and agreed to pay him $2,500 for what became 'Another Roadside Attraction'. Published in 1971, Robbins' first novel sold poorly in hardcover despite praise from Graham Greene and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among others, but became a paperback success. 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues' was published in 1976 and eventually sold over a million copies.