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Come on in to Captain Kendrick's Memorial Hot Dog Wildlife Preserve (a roadside attraction only bestselling Tom Robbins could invent)--things are going to get outrageous! Published to coincide with Robbins' new release, Skinny Legs and All.
Robbins enlisted in the Air Force in 1957, just one step ahead of the draft, and served three years in Korea. Upon discharge, he moved back to Virginia to attend art school at Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University), graduating in 1961. During this time he worked as a copy editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
According to Robbins, the South's hidebound racism -- perfectly mirrored in the newspaper's policy -- prompted him to move as far away from Richmond as possible "while still remaining in the continental United States." He ended up in Seattle in the early 1960s, enrolled in the University of Washington to pursue his Masters, and went to work for the Seattle Times. If we are to believe the story, it was around this time that he first sampled LSD (not yet an illegal substance). Blown away by the experience, he chucked both grad school and his job at the paper and spent the rest of the decade bouncing between the East and West Coasts -- writing, working as a DJ in alternative radio, and partaking liberally of the countercultural smorgasbord of the day.
Towards the end of the '60s, Robbins began working seriously at his writing, culminating in 1971 with the publication of his first novel, the comic absurdist tale Another Roadside Attraction. A failure in hardcover, it nevertheless sold well as a paperback, prompting publishers to release his next book -- 1976's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues -- in both formats simultaneously. Although he has not been a hit with most mainstream critics, Robbins has achieved rarified cult status with successive generations of 20-somethings who adore his goofy, upbeat satirical fiction. He claims to never read reviews but is pleased to have enjoyed a steady string of bestsellers starting with Still Life with Woodpecker in 1980. In 2005, he produced Wild Ducks Flying Backward, a volume of shorter works, including poems, stories, essays, articles, and reviews.
Rumor has it that Robbins polishes each sentence to perfection before moving on to the next. Whether or not that's true, he does admit to being a slow writer -- and to needing a long period of rest and recuperation (usually involving travel to some exotic place) in between books. All of which explains why his output is surprisingly slender, especially for a writer who inspires such passionate, fanatical devotion!
Anonymous
Posted December 20, 2011
I first read "Another Roadside Attraction" as a teenager in the late 70', (before I'd smoked my first joint even!). Whole files of it's indisputable intelligence have resided in my mind, and thousands of wisps of its indestructable emotional morality have floated around my soul, since. Amanda's final words to Marx Marvelous have come to save the day at several agonized junctures in my path. Passages describing John Paul Ziller's musical philosophy resonated so strongly with my instincts as to give me an unbreakable yet flexible outlook I carry with me onstage every time I perform.
As a novel, ARA has it all: a driving central plot, extremely rich characters, multiple themes (authority vs. individuality, magic as a practical tool for everyday life, the vast extent yet eventual limitations of rationality, the enormous consequences of official mythmaling, etc). Through it all laughs the ummistakable voice of Robbins, shown in full flower to a global audience for the first time in this book. As he usually did through his earlier works, Robbins even self-indulgently (as Charlie Kaufman does decades later with his screenplay for "Adaptation") writes himself into the rollercoaster proceedings, with surprisingly happy results.
I reread ARA every 5 to 10 years, and while I do still find new angles from time to time, the experience is usually more like returning to your hometown at Christmas, only to find that your high-school buddies have been learning and growing at least as much as you have, and are maybe even more fun to ne with now. If you've already read other Robbins novels but skipped this one, pick it up & see how it all started, with most of the traits you know & love already there on the page. If you've read it already, pick it up again; its as good as you remember. And if you've yet to be exposed to Robbins, I highly suggest you make it happen, and that you start here!
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted October 19, 2011
Great book! You would've thought the religious backdrop was happening today instead of 40 years ago. Robbins is a fantastic author when it comes to portraying colorful characters you can envision in your mind, making his books classics for generations to come.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 2, 2005
Copyrighted in 1971, during the troubled days of hippies, mind altering drugs (LSD was legal) 'God is dead' pronouncements, and massive distrust of our federal government, the novel is populated with strange-behaving characters given names such as Nuclear Phyllis, Nearly Normal Jimmy, Plucky Purcell and a domesticated, babysitting, checker playing baboon, named Mon Cul. One might think these were entirely fabricated monikers, however, my older brother (Crazy Brother Pat) who inhabited a commune during this same period, had friend's named Tommy Tornado and Spurt. Just, 'Spurt'. Barely dated by the three decades since it was penned, the book wears well on the reader and gives a damn good taste of just how screwed up we were in those days searching for mystical or drug driven answers to our questions. (In those years I honestly believed that the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band dinner-plate-sized, black, grooved phonograph album, had all the answers I needed.) In this novel, artist, musician, and magician, six foot, six inch, John Paul Ziller, adorned simply with only nose-bone and lion-cloth and overbite-burdened Amanda (psychic, mushroom and butterfly expert) and her bright-eyed infant son Thor, romp through the emerald green and sodden Washington State backwoods. Using John Paul's immense artist income they lease and then remodel an abandoned roadside cafe fitting its roof with a custom painted (by JPZ) thirty-foot long hot dog and stuffing the insides with wieners, steam warmed buns, snakes, a costumed flea circus and, around page 247 . . . a Corpse in the pantry.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted October 31, 2004
this book was great for all those introspective people out there who are pissed off at religion and the Church in general but have no way to express it. i was one of them, but after reading this my paradigm shifted, and i'm more at peace with everything now, somehow. i know it's cheesy to say that this book changed my life, but really, what book doesn't change your life, at least a little? easy to read, and it draws you in with its quirkiness from the first page and its blatant and unforgiving sexuality. a true sagittarian, this book will leave you reeling.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 4, 2011
Good read!
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Posted December 17, 2007
Amanda, her green eyes and her lisp changed my life forever. I read this book 2 years ago and I still think about her almost everyday.
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Posted July 2, 2006
While I loved this book and always will, Robbins's EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES for me is his best work. This novel comes in a strong second. ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION is by far one of the funniest and most memorable books I've ever come across. It's going to make some angry--the religious right probably--but then, if a book doesn't disturb you on some level it's not worth reading, in my opinion.
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Posted June 18, 2000
considering how whacked out this tale really is... i believe it could happen. no matter what the plot was, amanda's mindset was mystical, natural, and beautiful. all that other stuff about the body was just a bonus.
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Posted April 8, 2000
This book turns Western civilization on its ear, without hurting it! It's been very difficult to read anything else since.
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Posted January 9, 2000
Although the subject matter may seem initially to be offhanded and offensive to some, this wonderful book not only builds faith by testing it but bombards the reader with well-placed and well-spoken humor throughout. Truly a must read.
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