Another Roadside Attraction (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
My first Tom Robbins (and his)... This book taught me that he is indeed the literary guru that he and all the coffeehouse cave-dwellers who can't pry their cigs away from their rot stained teeth long enough to save their lives... save 9$!... save my airspace... think he is... and like most egomaniacal freaks who are sure that their spiritual dick is bigger than everyone else's this work is fairly masturbatory-did he not have an editor, a friend, someone to help curtail the gluttony? Did he have no one to tell him that he was cramming ten books into one? Gurus usually surround themselves with suck and swallow yesmen so I'm guessing, "no." I kept wanting to pack a bowl to battle the nausea-the kind inspired by a one sitting's indulgence of an entire pie. But after one effort I realized that mary jane was not going to help me wade through an already tangentially challenged muck pit. Since I was reading it for my book group I clamped onto the rope of the story line while it dragged me through all of its manipulations and this intimacy made me realize that I actually liked it-the story. A bit 1972-ish, but likable nonetheless. And you'll never catch me protesting the development of a meaty and self-possessed heroine who is worshipped for being so. Also, he gifts the reader with some very beautiful moments... descriptions you can taste... and visuals that will suck you down his rabbit hole. And yet he over gifts (it's a 5$ limit Tom). I enjoyed the "word-find" of Terrance McKenna's influences and the feeling that I was getting a freshly decorated house tour of the Puget Sound (since I am a fairly new resident). But I will leave anyone brave enough to have read this far with the hybrid word I developed to describe my Tom Robbins experience: VERBASIVE.
What a book! I honestly can’t believe it myself, but this will be my third five-star rated book in a row. A cousin of mine sent me Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume for Christmas, and then a co-worker advised me to read Another Roadside Attraction, describing Robbins as “C.S. Lewis on mushrooms.” That seemed interesting, so I picked up the book and started reading it. Immediately, it seemed reminiscent of the works of Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea (most notably, The Illuminatus Trilogy). And it took about 100 pages to get into the book, but then it sucks you in and takes you on a wild ride.It’s a hard one to summarize, but I’ll give it the old college try. A newly-married couple, John Paul Ziller and Amanda, decide to open up a hot dog and juice stand on the side of a road. The stand is just another roadside attraction, complete with a flea circus and a collection of snakes. They have with them a baboon by the name of Mon Cul and a child, Baby Thor. Ziller is a legendary magician/musician, while Amanda really digs the old religions of Tibet and China. She experiments with trances and yoga a lot. A friend of theirs, Plucky Purcell, corresponds with them via air mailed letters for a good portion of the story, and his own tale is too crazy to describe in this little blog post. And finally, Marx Marvelous, a sensitive scientist who has a hunch that the Zillers will help him on his anti-religious quest, shows up unexpectedly for a job interview at the hot dog and juice stand. When these characters meet up together, a lot of crazy stuff happens.This one is really good - be patient when you begin the story and let is carry you through to the end.5 Stars. 337 pages. Published in 1971.
What do You think about Another Roadside Attraction (2004)?
Tom Robbins writes one sentence at a time. I read that in an interview once. He has a general outline or story arc for his books but he starts out by writing the first sentence, and then perfecting it. Once he is totally satisfied, he moves on to the second sentence and then perfects that one... and so on. I'm not sure if it's 100% true but reading his work certainly makes me believe it.Another Roadside Attraction has always been in my top 5 of all time. Is there a way to mark that? Guess not. Oh well.
—Bryon
Robbins is a mad genius. All of his books are uniquely his; there isn't another author out there mad enough or genius enough to even try to emulate his voice. I read this many years ago. Most of the details have faded, but he central plot remains clear: some friends discover the body of Christ, thereby disproving the resurrection and making pretty much all of Christianity a lie. What else to do but to set it up in a roadside attraction (like the giant ball of twine, or the two-headed baby) in Washington state? Soon they're pursued by Vatican hitmen, who have to retrieve the body to save the family business. No one but Robbins could seamlessly morph the Roman Catholic church into the Mafia... I love this guy.
—Rich
Stylistically this is by far one of the strangest books I've ever read. It seems as though writing Another Roadside Attraction was some sick excercise in metaphorical expression by the author, Tom Robbins.I picked up the book used based on a recommendation from a booklist I found online, The Essential Man's Library. I had previously read a Robbins piece, Still Life with Woodpecker, at the recommendation or a friend, Ari, but rembered nothing of the book. Thus I figured I'd adventure down a new ally of fiction for the time being.While I didn't despise the book I can't aver that I loved it either. A wild tale of religious enlightenment I found the story to be more a description of its characters than the events that they are engaged in. Perhaps this was the point. Either way, I felt like a lot of the book was spent waiting for something to happen.What I gained from this book is almost entirely unrelated to what I read in it. Tom Robbins absurdly turgid language offered me a great chance to pick up a couple dozen newbies to throw into my vocabulary. Sure, the majority of them I'll likely never use but at least now I know they exist!Thanks for the vocab lesson!
—Adam
