In recent years we have seen wild enthusiasm, much discussion, and some handwringing for the likes of Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, and Thomas Pynchon. The latest discovery is Tom Robbins.

Several qualities distinguish the novels by these contemporary cult figures from those of authors such as [Henry] James. The most obvious characteristic is their enormous popularity, which entails equally large financial rewards….

A second characteristic of these recent novels is a fascination with travel, but the sort of travel that precludes round-trip fares and forty-five-day limits. Concerns of time and cost do not matter, because neither the destination nor the purpose is always very clear. In Robbins's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, the heroine, Sissy Hankshaw, "the world's greatest hitchhiker," freely admits that "it was the act of hitchhiking that formed the substance of her vision," and that she was never really going anywhere. Movement itself, rather than any specific place, is the goal, and Kerouac, rather than Kafka, is the guide….

A third distinguishing quality of these popular cult novels is the appearance of the wise man who usually comes from the Far East or at least the Third World. Indian mystics, Oriental sages, and an occasional witch doctor behave as if they have cornered the market on Truth…. Cowgirls features the Chink who, depending upon the circumstances, is equally adept at displaying his philosophy or phallus before an enraptured audience.

Finally, what these writers have is the ability to express themselves in a wonderfully accessible English. Except for moments where one or another lapses into that form of verbal flatulence currently termed "lyricism," most employ an exciting, often very witty prose….

If Tom Robbins's writings were nothing more than compendia of the qualities listed above, they would be fun to read, but not worth an extensive review. To a large extent, [Another Roadside Attraction] falls into this category. While the book has its humorous moments, it is finally nothing more than a collection of outrageous situations and boringly typical counterculture posturings….

Cowgirls, however, is quite different. In this novel Robbins manages to parody many elements of the popular cult novel, while at the same time he makes an interesting commentary on both the American novel and the American way of life. (p. 5)

In Cowgirls Robbins is not primarily interested in one more debunking of intellectuals and the radical chic East Coast. He is concerned instead with teasing the commonly touted alternatives: counter-culture life-styles, the new gurus, and militant anybodies….

An important moment in the novel occurs when the cowgirls switch their herd from cows to goats. In pastoral literature this change usually heralds a transition from fantasy to reality. Robbins appears to be waggishly playing with this tradition because, when goats replace cows, right-on feminism suddenly encounters the return of the repressed….

It would be a mistake to assume that in Cowgirls Robbins is seriously attacking Women's Liberation or any other ideological commitment. Rather, he is exploiting the humor implicit in any militancy and thereby suggesting that however important a movement's goals, no writer can pass up the chance to make fun of a sacred cow….

Just as the thumb is the "cornerstone of civilization," so Sissy Hankshaw is the cornerstone of Cowgirls. She means different things to different people, but for Tom Robbins author, who must occasionally but not always be distinguished from Dr. Tom Robbins, psychiatrist and closet flowerchild who shows up in the book, Sissy is most certainly all that is vital in America, i.e., the United States. Pretty as a picture, even better looking in motion, capable of giving a "fairytale" quality to life, part Indian, and somewhat flawed (remember the thumbs!), this is as much Robbins's vision of America as it is Sissy Hankshaw's. His celebration of her innocence, beauty, and occasional wisdom is a salute to a fabulous America where every event or person who buzzes by is just one more roadside attraction to be enjoyed and not pondered. The novel has an episodic structure, a series of set pieces (Sissy on the road, Sissy at the Countess', etc.) which function mostly to make us laugh while we marvel at the degree of zaniness human beings have been able to maintain in this somber century.

There is, alas, a sad edge to the laughter. What threatens Sissy and those she loves is what menaces America. [Sissy's husband] Julian started out as a full-blooded Mohawk who might have been a great artist and a fine lover, except for a type of education that pushes him toward European culture as an unassailable ideal and which fostered a subtle contempt for what might be unique in the American experience. The end result was a "brainy" watercolorist. Sissy narrowly escapes a similar fate. But she does lose a thumb. In order to please Julian she has one thumb amputated by a friendly European doctor who has gone mad, and, after an elaborate operation, she manages to grow a new, boringly common thumb in her womb. This is apparently for Robbins the great danger that threatens America: sacrificing what is special even if it is a little strange, for what is more normal. Happily, Sissy does not lose both thumbs and, at the novel's end, she is pregnant and destined to produce a large-thumbed progeny; yet, except for circumstances, she might have given away her birthright and not even gotten a decent borscht in return.

Something much less scary, but still quite interesting, is what Sissy represents to American letters. Throughout both of Robbins's novels the reader is made aware that he is not just writing an American novel, but writing about the American novel, and specifically about the failure of his contemporaries to fabricate the by now mystical "Great American Novel." In Roadside, a dead fascist monk pollutes one of Brautigan's trout streams, and in Cowgirls things get worse. Early on we learn that Kerouac had a tumble in the hay with Sissy, and although she admired his efforts, he could not quite make it. The Countess usually has pretty good instincts, but he keeps getting bad advice from a fellow named Truman who now lives on Long Island. The Barths, copywriters for a New York advertising agency, also have a go at Sissy, but their interest in sodomy gets them off on the wrong track. Julian might eat a bowl of Joyce Carol Oats every morning, but it does not seem to help. Delores del Ruby declares that "Violence is the dullard's Breakfast of Champions," and John Updike provides sustenance for overfed suburbanites. Dr. Tom Robbins, who might now also be the author, would like to bed Sissy, but so far he has not had much luck.

The author of Cowgirls could have two things in mind. Perhaps he believes that his talent has yet to grow to the point where he can do Sissy justice. My personal preference is, however, for another explanation. I think Robbins is saying that no artist will ever be able to control Sissy totally without violating what she is, and that for him America must be experienced in fragments since that is very much the nature of the country. The trick then is to catch the piece of Sissy-America that you can, and it should come as no surprise that her best lover was the Chink. During the war this Japanese-American was informed that he was not a "real" American (no such animal exists. By now, not even the Indians qualify.), but who proved capable of enjoying the woman who came his way without presuming either that he completely understood her or that she was his forever. Since the Chink's efforts with Sissy proved fecund, the next generation, the next subject for American writers, will be liberated, travel-loving, Chinese-looking Japanese-Southerners whose rednecks are as much a result of their Indian heritage as they are of their racist heritage and who know how to increase their sexual pleasure by the skillful manipulations of big thumbs. For Tom Robbins, America's greatness lies in her ability to unite contradictory forces and this is the principal source of joy and frustration for the American novelist.

Noel Coward, in a moment of feigned modesty, once described himself as possessing "a talent to amuse." A wonderful compliment, indeed, and one that can easily be extended to Tom Robbins. Cowgirls is a particularly funny book and provides a great deal of pleasure. Yet it remains true that on second reading even Cowgirls falls a little flat. Like a number of his colleagues, Robbins depends to a large extent on a fast pace and lots of jokes so that the second time through, foreknowledge considerably lessens the impact.

Henry James sought to capture in his writings some sort of eternal verity about the human psyche. His aim was to do more than detail the unwholesome confrontation of the American with Europe; it seems to me that his genius resides less in his depiction of a particular social class at a particular historical moment, than in his description of the ways that human beings often live the best and worst moments of their lives in their minds. The purpose of Tom Robbins is otherwise. His focus is the milieu rather than the individual, and he wants to seize the transient instead of the eternal. This is why his characters are most often caricatures; yet it is the rush of events and not the artist's lack of skill which distorts the individuals he describes.

Milieu, especially in ultra-modern America, is never a permanent place. It changes with each new fad and counter-fad, with the latest whatever that comes hurtling down the road. Tom Robbins is a chronicler of the experience of transience; he can make the traveling circus stop for an instant and let us partake of a particular moment in time with all the disparate personalities, half-digested ideas, and residual myths which inform it. This is a noble service to the reader, but one fraught with danger for the writer. His books take on the very ephemeral qualities they describe, and once read and enjoyed they can easily be put aside. Nevertheless, Robbins is an undeniably talented artist whose fascination with America and natural gifts promise greater things to come. Only the future will tell us how much of Sissy Hankshaw Tom Robbins will finally get. (p. 6)