Friday, January 21, 2005

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Tom Robbins)

I wish I had read this book years ago. It was both funny and insightful. After being introduced to me the week after I graduated from highschool Tom Robbins has become one of my favorite authors, if not my favorite.
This book is a feminist manifesto that takes place during the hippie-counterculture vietnam war era of the 1960's. Sissy Giltchen Hall is a women hitchiking throught america by way of her very large thumbs. Acording to Robbins these thumbs are a symbol of american culture.
The book explores Sissy's life, from the time she began hitchiking, until she finished. Sissy becomes a model for a femine hygine company, and as a result ends up living on an all-cowgirl goat ranch, after she has married an Native American who has denied his heritage. Along the way she meets the Chink an oriental man with a very interesting philosophy of life who lives in clockworks that is counting the end of time.
Tom Robbins has some exellent things to say about life. He is obbsessed with lesbians, which is kind of a problem for me in that I really don't care about them one way or the other, since I am a straight female. Its just really distracting. I loved the book anyway, even if (and maybe because) it made me realize why the femist movement has pretty much failed. Tom Robbins has an amizing gift of being able to make such great social statements in such an entertaining an comical way ( much like Kurt Vonnegut Jr. light).

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