Talking objects, messy love, art, philosophy, and global conflict. All in one book.
“In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak.”
Over time I have come to believe that the higher the element of fantasy in a book, the more serious it often is. There are books one can easily talk about – the plot lines are defined, the magic is easy to spot, and the lessons are simply understood. And then there are books that fall apart the moment you try to explain them because what they teach you is unnameable and unexplainable.
Skinny Legs and All is one such novel.
By its name, you can tell that it’s absurd. A talking spoon. A chattering can of beans. A garrulous (and dirty) sock. A conch shell. A painted stick. Then there is an artist chasing after her dreams, lovers circling each other in the uneasy dance of relationships, and naturally, politics and history with their own ideological choreography.
What kind of an Ironist are You?
What struck me first was the portrayal of the inner life of a struggling artist in New York – Ellen Cherry Charles as she confronts personal trials, professional challenges, and the many artistic dilemmas that life throws her way. What is worse but to see your unartistic partner make waves in the art world and then leave you behind?
Should she resume her identity as an artist? Could a person choose to be or not to be an artist?
A girlfriend in Seattle once said to her, ‘I’d give everything if I could paint like you,’ and Ellen Cherry had replied, with only a trace of pomposity, ‘I did give everything.’
This irreverent medley of philosophy, satire, reality, and fantasy was Tom Robbins’s fifth published novel, and perhaps his most daring attempt to examine the sacred through the ridiculous. Robbins, who died at the age of 91, and was always seen by his friends as “a sunny sunny guy” said that his aim was to “twine ideas and images into big subversive pretzels of life, death and goodliness on the chance that they might help keep the world lively, and give it the flexibility to endure.”
At the center of the book is the politico-existential part of the book – “An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations…” Much as it sounds like an opening to a poor joke, it is not. There really is such a restaurant in the book; it receives bomb threats left, right and centre and it is also the place where our artist decides to waitress while moonlighting at her art. Her renewed attempt at painting inspires a belly dancer-who-is-also-a-nurse student to perform an unimaginable dancing feat at the said restaurant.
The artistic quest to make the ordinary meaningful echoes Robbins’s own aesthetic philosophy. Around Ellen’s orbit are lovers and seekers pursuing spiritual goals, and political tensions that reflect the real-world conflicts of Jerusalem and the Middle East. Robbins situates the personal within the geopolitical, suggesting that identity, belief, and belonging operate on both intimate and civilizational scales.
“…It was futile to work for political solutions to humanity’s problems because humanity’s problems were not political. Political problems did exist, all right, but they were entirely secondary. The primary problems were philosophical, and until the philosophical problems were solved, the political problems would have to be solved over and over and over again.”
Running parallel to the human story is the novel’s most peculiar pilgrimage – a band of animated objects namely a spoon, a can of beans, a sock, and a painted stick who undertake a metaphysical journey across America. These objects, originally misplaced by our protagonist, question religious relics, diasporic displacement, and the migration of sacred symbols across cultures. Their quest reflects humanity’s own search for origin and meaning.
“…You just can’t tell the boundaries of reality and fantasy…” was often said of Robbins’s works.
Even his working habits carried a whiff of ritual theatre. He was particular about how and where editors read his manuscripts. His preferred editorial conference site was Two Bunch Palms. Robbins refused to show them his work until editors relaxed in the mineral pools of a desert spa near Desert Hot Springs. I suppose it makes sense if you are going to read about a talking can of beans, you better first get into the mood.
His irreverence extended to his day job too. “I called in well one day,” he wrote in his memoir. “What do you mean, well?” his editor responded. “Well, I’ve been sick ever since I’ve been working there, and now I’m well, and I won’t be coming in anymore.” Exactly the kind of line a writer like him would write.
A similar irreverence animates Skinny Legs and All, along with love, sex, romance, and silliness which might make the reader feel as though the author is trying to achieve too much within the pages of a single book. Some may find his ultralong sentences annoying but as a verbose writer, I can identify with the inability to finish a thought without spiralling into ten different directions. Maybe that’s why I sympathized with him while reading his work.
“Those people who recognize that imagination is reality’s master, we call sages, and those who act upon it, we call artists.”
The ridiculous and the sacred have always shared a border and laughter may be the last remaining bridge between them.
