If you asked most people what Skinny Legs and All is about they'd probably say something like...
Skinny Legs and All is about newlyweds--artist Ellen Cherry Charles and welder Randolph "Boomer" Petway--and their pilgrimage from Colonial Pines east-central Virginia to New York in early spring.
If you ask most people that's what they would tell you.
But ask me, ask me...
Skinny Legs and All is about five inanimate objects--Conch Shell, Painted Stick, Can of Beans, Dirty Sock, and Spoon--and their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
"Is it not time that inanimate objects--and plants and animals--resume their rightful place in the affairs of the world? How long can humankind continue to slight these integral pieces of the whole reality?"' (p. 88)
Few authors can tell stories like Tom Robbins. He twists, turns, and inverts knowledge to serve story. What he creates....? Oh, what he creates...
In his skillful hands, he creates a story of opposites...
empowering women objectifying women
human inanimate
United States Middle East
maternal religion patriarchal religion
general fiction magical realism
He explores questions such as...
what is art?
who decides?
are artists born or made?
what is the purpose of art?
'a bright, defrosted, pussy-willow day' (p. 5)
Skinny Legs and All
Tom Robbins
Bantam Books
1991
479 pages
I was in my twenties when I turned a page in Skinny Legs and All, for the first time. I'd never encountered anything like it before and I fell in love with each page--especially the pages about the inanimates. In my heart, they were and remain the stars of this book.
Re-reading this book many years later, it is still the magical realism that captures me. However, other parts... Other parts... Well, let's just say the book has aged. In fact, I am tempted to release Skinny Legs and All so that it may find a new reader, a younger reader. A reader whose hair it can set on fire. I'm almost ready... Almost...
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