Skinny Legs and All | 
|  | | | Title: | Skinny Legs and All | | Author: | Tom Robbins | | Publisher: | Bantam | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 01 November, 1995 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0553377884 / 9780553377880 | | List Price: | $14.00 | | You Save: | $2.80 | | Amazon Price: | $11.20 | |
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Product Description
An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations…
It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it’s the axis around which spins Tom Robbins’s gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly provocative new novel, in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine—while the illusions that obscure humanity’s view of the true universe fall away, one by one, like Salome’s veils.
Skinny Legs and All deals, in Robbins’s audacious manner, with today’s most sensitive issues: race, politics, marriage, art, religion, money, and lust. It weaves lyrically through what some call the “end days of our planet. Refusing to avert its gaze from the horrors of the apocalypse, it also refuses to let the alleged end of the world spoil its mood. And its mood is defiantly upbeat.
In the gloriously inventive Tom Robbins style, here are characters, phrases, stories, and ideas that dance together on the page, wild and sexy, like Salome herself.
Or was it Jezebel?
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Customer Reviews:
• Tom Robbin's At His Best 17 July, 2008
This book presents a magical story of humor, adventure, fantasy, sex, violence, spirituality, peace, love, and beauty. I opened and closed this book in a matter of days being sucked into Tom Robbin's world. This book in my opinion is the embodiment of Tom Robbin's super consciousness - a timeless work of art for the sake of art and humanity. I've read numerous TR books and must say he really unloaded all of his proclivities of humanity. Robbin's points out hypocrisy, delusion, greed, and pretty much the ridiculousness of our current state of humanity in a humorous, creative, and enlightening fashion. TR has a wild imagination introducing the reader to inanimate objects (conch shell, spoon, can o' beans, dirty sock, painted stick, etc) Christian fundamentalists, starving artists, and an ethereal belly dancer named Salome. Robbin's books are a breath of fresh air in comparison to other fiction writers that without generalizing fall into that illusionary tale of reality. If there were another veil to drop off it would be to this masterpiece of writing TR eloquently presents to his audence.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1G1PX4U6RSZEA
• Destroy Your Dogma 07 September, 2008
If you are a dedicated follower of some religious dogma you will either experience a life changing epiphany or you may well burn this book. Tom Robbins is out to blow your rigid dogmatic mind and bring you down to the truth that Jesus wouldn't recognize himself in modern Christianity and you should not either. The "hammers of CANT and nails of DOGMA" that attempt to "pin down the light of the world" are exposed in delightful and terrifying (depending on your belief system) prose that is hysterically poetic.
The right Reverend Buddy Winkler attempts to blow up the Dome on the Rock to hasten the Biblical Armageddon as both Jews and Arabs attempt to blow up the I & I cafe (named for Issac and Ishmael) jointly owned by a Jew and a Muslim. This book is a pertinent and important today as it was the day it was written.
I've read this book a dozen times and quote it often. All of Robbins books are widely quotable, but this one is it. Robbins perfectly reduces everything to it's fundamental essence; politics, religion, economics, sex/gender, and conflict. He distills his world view into a handful of concise delectable paragraphs that resonate with truth and illumination.
TR is the master - but you have to figure that out for yourself - nobody can do it for you.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3KIXHXKOGZS1T
• For Pilgrims And Frustrated Artists; Also: Foot-fetishists 02 February, 2008
A passage:
"You are an artist. You know that big picture at the museum midtown, that picture by that fellow Rousseau, it is called The Sleeping Gypsy?"
"Yeah. Sure. That's a very famous painting."
"It ought to be called The Sleeping Arab, that picture. An Arab lies in the desert, sleeping under the crazy-faced moon. A lion sniffs at the Arab, the Arab is unafraid..."
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The painting is easily found on Wikipedia.
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I find this to be one of Robbins' better works. By "better" here I mean "more mature" and "fully realized". Which is a bit ironic, I suppose in as much as this (along with Palahniuk's Diary) is in the upper-tier of my pantheon of books about artists struggling with their voice and their craft. (As Cory Doctorow would say succinctly: "Follow your weird.")
There is a lot to take away from this novel in terms of art and politics, in terms of brotherhood and forgiveness, in terms of inanimate objects on pilgrimages. You can skim through this one, sucking out just the gooey humorous center (pun-intended) and find little redeeming in it. But slow down a bit, dive a little deeper, and it's on the cusp of overwhelming.
But if you're not up for the challenge of its depth, you can still extract that hilarity without too much worry. Ease your conscience, I won't mind.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1L94WV25FV2QT
• Hard To Follow Even For Robbins' Fans 09 May, 2008
This will be short and not-so-sweet. As a hardcore Tom Robbins fan, I was very disappointed by this novel. Granted that the author's narratives are always a bit far-fetched and twisted--and delightfully so--I found myself wanting to quit this several times, and ultimately I did. I could not relate to the inanimate characters, and Robbins attempts to make too many political and religious statements throughout the narrative. The story just doesn't seem to hang together as in his other novels, and I kept asking myself "When is this plot going to start developing." For me, it was too rambling and yes, downright boring.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2ULQ5MVNGI18P
• I Think I'm In Love. 21 October, 2007
I am in love with Tom Robbins. I've read all of his books & this is among my top 3. Tom Robbins is the only author that I've made a point to read every novel he's ever written. This book stirred feelings in me that I didn't know could be brought about with something as simple & as wonderful as the written word. Mmmm... Tom.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3K551U4DIWW7H
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