Invisible ink no. 270: Tom Robbins

For publishers, timing is crucial; if they’re lucky they can catch the zeitgeist, or refashion a long-dead genre.

Fifty Shades of Grey partly owes its success to the fact that romantic fiction had been unfashionable for years. The idea of palpitating young ladies contracted to stern millionaires dates back to the mid-19th century, the only difference being the level of sensation and the paucity of the writing. Other bits of execrable tat, such as Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and Love Story, also rose to fame in dark times. Students made Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance a bestseller, and a new generation of mystical, befuddled dopehead writers became popular.

Tom Robbins was born (in 1932) to be hip. The grandchild of Baptist preachers, he described his youthful self as “hillbilly”. After four years in the US Air Force, he read beat poetry in a Richmond, Virginia, coffee house, became an art critic for The Seattle Times and hosted an alternative radio show. Rarely photographed without his Ray-Bans, Robbins was building the hipster credentials that would ultimately give him a dedicated fan base.

For an avowedly private man he gave plenty of interviews, but what he said was contradictory. He felt readers should focus on the work, not the author, but shamelessly courted publicity. He was considered a wild, dangerous writer, but carefully honed his prose, producing less than two pages a day. One novel was described thus: “Still Life with Woodpecker is a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes.

It reveals the purpose of the Moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders.” Jitterbug Perfume concerns a janitor and the god Pan.

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates is about parrots, Finnegan’s Wake, a South American shaman’s pyramid-shaped head, a Matisse painting, stilt walking, government intelligence policies, and rogue nuns. The tangled plots are messy mosaics informed by the 1960s counter-culture. The big student hit was Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, about a beautiful hitcher with enlarged thumbs – but a terrible film version rendered his idiosyncratic prose into gibberish.

Robbins’s novels were not about these random oddities, of course, but about the liberty of free-falling through ideas and making connections. Another paradox; in the conformist hell of the 21st century he seems an increasingly unique voice.