Recently, I was raiding my friend’s stacked-to-the-brim bookshelf. When I pulled out Tom Robbins’ Still Life with Woodpecker, she went: “If you haven’t read Robbins before, read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues first.”

Too late. I was already sold on Still life…, having read the blurb. C’mon, how often have we come across a love story that takes place ‘inside a pack of Camel cigarettes’?

Robbins writes beautifully; peppers his narration with phrases like ‘oh-oh, spaghetti-o’ and ‘thingamajigs’. But mind you, it’s no easy read. On page 14 he has a sentence that’s 29 lines long. (I counted.) And I didn’t need Wikipedia to tell me that he must have laboured over them a lot. But I confirmed my suspicions anyway. Apparently, he sometimes spends a whole day sculpting a sentence. No wonder his heroine couldn’t just cry. Her tears ooze like a “fat woman leaning out of a tenement window”; bob, balance, bob again, and reflect on the sheen of the soybean curd on the plate… Oh well, he does write well.

Robbins is extremely opinionated. So we get lectured on pretty much everything. Usually, that would have grated on my nerves. But he presents his case so lucidly — and with his tongue firmly in cheek — that I found myself chuckling every now and then. Even if I didn’t subscribe to half the things he holds dear. Hell, I like my Sundays; no way he is going to talk me into disliking them.

Here’s a snatch of his humour…

The girl: “I’ll bet I’m as old as you are.”

The man: “I’m older than Sanskrit.”

The girl: “Well, I was a waitress at the Last Supper.”

The man: “I’m so old I remember when McDonald’s had only sold a hundred burgers.”

The girl: “You win.”

He refers a lot to the American popular culture of the ’70s, besides the American socio-cultural history. And then he invents some phrases — ahem — like peach fish. Truth be told, a lot would have gone above my head if not for good ol’ Mr Google. Case in point: “Her fiery tresses swung like plantation curtains — the night they drove old Dixie down.” Apparently, The Night They Drove Dixie Down is a 1969 song by Canadian roots rock group, The Band, which talks about the last days of the American civil war.

Ah yes, the story. It has a love story. When the modern day princess kisses a frog, it turns into an outlaw! But to be honest, I lost track of it somewhere along the way, what with all the sermons Princess Leigh-Cheri and Woodpecker, the outlaw, give each other. I was not sure anymore what was important: The love story “inside a pack of Camel cigarettes”, or the author’s cheeky views on environment, CIA, Vietnam war, capitialism, socialism, imperialism, journalism, neoteny, religion, love, lust, coups or whatever; or his struggles with his electronic typewriter, Remington SL3, which kept popping up throughout the novel.

Not that it mattered. Still Life with Woodpecker is one helluva royal romp. I am already on the look out for Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

But, if you insist, yes, the ‘modern day fairy tale’ had a happy ending as well.

jemimaraman@mydigitalfc.com