Tom Robbins, author of “Jitterbug Perfume”, died at 92: NPR

Tom Robbins dazzled millions of readers with fantasy and imagination in his successful novels, like the years 1984 Jitterbug perfume,, Lean legs and everything, from 1990, and Even cowgirls get the blues, A 1976 book adapted by director Gus Van Sant in a 1993 film.

Robbins died at his conner’s home, Washington, according to a statement from the friend Craig Popelars. He was 92 years old.

Tom Robbins lived in the state of Washington for most of his adult life, but he was born in Blowing Rock, in North Carolina, his family moved to the South, settling in Warsaw, In Virginia, where he took a talent for narration. As a child, he told stories aloud, outside, with a stick in hand.

“I was fighting the ground by telling the story,” he told NPR in 2014. “And we moved quite frequently. We left houses behind where a section of the courtyard was completely naked from where I I destroyed the grass. but I achieved much later in life, which I was doing was drum.

In addition to the rhythm and the humor of his novels, Robbins is the author of Essays on subjects ranging from the life of an amibe to oriental philosophy. He said he often had periodical ideas.

“I do a lot of unnecessary reading and I read a lot of scientific magazines,” he explained to NPR in 1994. “I subscribe to around 30 magazines, and every Thursday evening, I put a satin jacket that I ‘AI bought in a second – Melrose avenue store in Los Angeles, and light a large Cuban cigar and read magazines.

In its 2014 memories, Tibetan peaches pie, Robbins wrote that he started to take LSD in 1964. Admittedly, the eccentric characters and the bizarre situations of his novels reflect a hallucinatory vision. In his first novel, Another attraction by the road From 1971,, The mummified body of Jesus Christ presents itself at a hot dog stand by the road. His 1980 novel, Still nature with peak takes place inside a packet of camel cigarettes.

Consequently, criticisms tended to pigeon him like a tripppy hippie. “The criticisms of the establishment to date lighten me as a counter-culture writer, even if (de) my nine novels, the last six have nothing to do with the themes of counter-culture”, a Declared Robbins in 2014. “, the 1960s, for a billion dollars, but neither me nor the work of my life can be defined by counter-culture sensitivities.”

The long -standing professor of the University of St. Joseph, Catherine E. Hoyser, now a professor Emeritus, is the author of a guide to Robbins novels for students. It should be that the scope and the ambitions of her work far exceed her reputation as a university dormitory. “The people who believed that he was a good alive of drugs that was not particularly serious in his work did not pay attention to the deep nature below this humor,” she said.

Under fantasy and fantasy, Hoser says that Robbins was a defender of feminism, social justice and the environment. She chooses her 1994 novel, Half asleep in frog pajamas, In which the frogs disappear: “He wrote on this subject long before people even notice the decline of species on our planet of climate change.”

In 1994, Robbins said that his intention in this novel was to tackle the disappearance of frogs much more. “I tried somewhat obliquely, I hope not didactic, to establish a correlation between the disappearance of the frogs and the disappearance of the middle class, because the middle class also disappears from the planet,” he declared. “And I suppose that the connection is that just as the frogs are a bridge between water and earth and between fish and reptiles, and perhaps between stars and planet earth, so the middle class is a bridge between abundance and rarity. “

In the end, which made Robbins to whom he was perhaps his meticulously designed sentences. “I suppose that when everything is said and done, which really interests me – which really throws the newspapers on my fire – it’s the language,” he said.

The language that a writer uses, said Robbins – dense, sparkling, shiny, evocative and attractive – was ultimately more important than their message.