Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

Tom Robbins was one of those authors whom I always heard referenced, but never understood their contribution to literature. This was finally remedied in Robbins’ case by an old friend of mine who (citing a conversation we’d apparently had but which I only vaguely remember) pushed Still Life With Woodpecker into my hands and insisted that I read it. It surprised me, and that’s difficult to do.

A shallow retelling of the plot would go something like this: Leigh-Cheri, a teenage princess living with her exiled royal parents in a drafty CIA-supplied house in OregonSeattle, has sworn off men (and all hope, apparently) after one abortion and one miscarriage (the latter while in the middle of cheerleading). All of this is changed when she meets a terrorist in Hawaii and falls in love with him, has all sorts of kinky sex with him, and the brings him home, where he is soundly rejected by her parents and eventually imprisoned for prior crimes. While waiting out his relatively short sentence, Leigh-Cheri finds the meaning of life in a pack of Camel cigarettes, and eventually other hijinx ensue. I won’t remark on the ending in order to preserve it for potential readers, though it should come as no surprise that the machinations of the plot are not the reason you pick up Still Life with Woodpecker.

I won’t pretend to understand everything that Robbins intended; maybe the book is, as I’ve heard casually suggested, merely a pretty piece of poetry that plays at depth; perhaps it is a richly-woven tapestry of allegory, poetry, and philosophical insight. Perhaps it is an acid trip gone sexual.

The pervasive theme seems to be a conflict between technology and humanity—or, more appropriately, between the mechanized/technological and the “organic”. It is also about the conflict between the left-brained and the right-brained; between people of the “sun” and people of the “moon” (Robbins’ narrator’s parlance); between squares and hippies; between the wonderful, squishy humanity of sex and the chemical, soulless nature of some contraceptive devices; between the safe and standard and the dashing, daring, and dangerous. In some ways Robbins both illustrated the conflict from the era in which he wrote, as well as anticipated the conflicts to come in the nearly 30 years between then and now. Perhaps it says something that these core conflicts are essentially timeless. Robbins’ narrator (some version of Robbins’ himself) begins the novel by extolling the virtues of his brand new Remington typewriter, on which is his constructing the very tale we are reading; at various intervals, Robbins breaks from the action in order to expression slightly more disappointment with the typewriter’s performance vis-a-vis the nature of the story which seems to so exquisitely elude the ability of a machine to capture. The last few pages are hand-written, the typewriter having been discarded, and finalize the fates of the characters and cap up the thematic thrusts. It’s not the most subtle narrative device ever employed, but it’s certainly clever enough.

Layered on top of Robbins’ surrealist comedy are all these questions or pointed suggestions about an unexamined life—it is the prerogative of the reader, of course, to decide that Robbins is full of shit and his characters are babbling nitwits. Leigh-Cheri is, after all, something of a flighty bimbo with big boobs and poor taste in men, too easily drawn to facile solutions to her perceived problems, and too prone to fanciful invention—and she’s the most likable. Either we were not meant to sympathize with the characters, or the book was written for people of a different temperament than I

Perhaps the single most memorable line I’ve ever read about Robbins was written by Frank McConnell: “If Thomas Pynchon were a Muppet, he would write like Tom Robbins.” Take the same madcap plots, and the same overtures toward narrative depth, and the same genuine lyricism, but then give it a soundtrack of “Rainbow Connection.” It doesn’t necessarily make it bad or simplistic, but it does make it difficult to compare Robbins’ literary equivalent of The Muppet Movie with the Citizen Kane of a more meaningful author.

On a purely rhetorical rubric, of course, I can give Robbins nothing but high marks. It’s true that Robbins sometimes digresses from a simple expository passage in order to wax grandiloquent about something, but consider, for instance, this tangential paragraph about tequila:

Now, tequila may be the favored beverage of outlaws, but that doesn’t mean it gives them preferential treatment. In fact, tequila probably had betrayed as many outlaws as has the central nervous system and dissatisfied wives. Tequila, scorpion honey, harsh dew of the doglands, essence of Aztec, crema de cacti; tequila, oily and thermal like the sun in solution; tequila, liquid geometry of passion; Tequila, the buzzard god who copulates in midair with the ascending souls of dying virgins; tequila, firebug in the house of good taste; O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate!

Immediately afterward, the tequila-drinking Bernard blows up a conference of UFO conspiracy theorists—cue the laugh track and the sad trombone sting. Robbins’ tendency to vacillate between the poetical and the prosaic actually reminds me somewhat of David Foster Wallace, though of the course the comparison is superficial and goes no further. It does have the effect of discombobulating the reader, who must either give up trying to figure what Robbins’ is trying to accomplish—if anything—and simply enjoy the ride.

The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave

It wasn’t until this year that I finally read Nick Cave’s first book, And the Ass Saw the Angel, which was great in a coked-out poet sort of way. For a lot of authors who publish few books, there tends to be a great expectation which accompanies a new work, and I think The Death of Bunny Munro was very much a recipient of this. How might Cave have changed after 20 years? Would it be as edgy? As apocalyptic and wondering? As fiercely poetical?

It is, in brief, both interesting and disappointing.

A Plain Story with a Sad Ending

The Death of Bunny Munro is one of those books whose title gives away its plot. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I tell you that it’s not a metaphorical death, or a figure of speech. Bunny Munro, (arguably) the main character, dies by the book’s end, and you see it coming the entire way: there was a similar sense of impending doom in And the Ass Saw the Angel, but its wandering narrative somewhat distracted the reader from this inevitability. Bunny Munro, however, has no such wandering narrative: it is linear to a fault, and so far as I can tell offers little in the way of structured plot. It’s more akin to running down a bulleted list of terrible and disastrous personal faults, or watching dirty water swirling down a drain, tightening into smaller and darker circles before disappearing completely.

Bunny Munro is a door-to-door seller of cosmetic supplies—lotions, soaps, exfoliants, etc.—and a consummate womanizer. Such is the depth and breadth of Bunny’s sexually profligate tendencies that his wife—and the mother of his young son—commits suicide by the second chapter. The reason is never explicitly given, though readers may take from later clues that the suicide is precisely what it appears to be: a lonely and scorned woman, desperately taking her own life. Having read about Bunny with a prostitute in the first chapter, and Libby’s death in the second chapter, I assumed that the two would ultimately having nothing to do with each other, in the same way that the conspicuously suspicious character in a mystery is never the culprit; grandly linear and one-dimensional, however, the second appears to have everything to do with the first.

I was immediately reminded of the works of Chuck Palahniuk; the easy reference here is Choke, since both books feature odd and dispassionate “protagonists” who attempt to copulate every woman they meet, and whose lives quickly unravel into a Dali-like fever dream of melting clocks and ghosts. This thin veil of madness functions as an effective insulator not only between the characters and the expected consequences of their actions, but also between the characters and the readers. It’s difficult to feel any sort of empathy with a character who merely harbors the niggling suspicion that he feels somehow responsible for his wife’s death…. while he’s essentially raping a coked-out addict in a dilapidated shack.

The other literary parallel, I think, is Ellis’ American Psycho; the interesting bits about narrator reliability don’t apply, but if you replace most of the violence with wanton and gratuitous sex, you begin to see the same patterns: a devolution, these narrative acts (sex) as mile markers, from a relatively functional character into a gibbering mess whose wild thoughts are confusing to him as to the reader. In Ellis’ case, even this somewhat linear plot served a larger dramatic purpose (for which see the review); Cave, conversely, wasn’t making a postmodern point, nor a particular adept character study, and therefore reading the story of Bunny Munro more closely resembles watching a YouTube video of a drunken college student falling off a roof. The nature of the material disinclines us to literary or social criticism, therefore, and inspires pith or a stuporous sort of pity at the slow, deliberate and predictable mortification of Bunny.

I can’t help but feel disappointed by The Death of Bunny Munro; the infamous Irvine Welsh so obsequiously wrote “Put Cormac McCarthy, Franz Kafka and Benny Hill together in a Brighton seaside guesthouse and they might just come up with Bunny Munro,” but I think this gives far too much credit to the character (not to mention doing a disservice to great writers, Benny Hill excluded). Bunny is a caricature, and in so being he’s neither difficult to create nor difficult to dismiss and ultimately forget; his kind are illustrators of larger points or images in allegories, but Cave’s latest offering contains none of those. Oh, it’s got his same tortured poetical style, but even that glorious logorrhea feels dilute; the language has more impact from a mute raising Cain in the deep south than from an inebriated satyr in Brighton.

Incubi

This section is more likely to contain plot spoilers.

The one point of interest is Bunny’s relationship to his son, who Bunny largely ignored before his wife’s death and, it must be said, continues to do so afterward. The difference is that in his funereal breakdown, Bunny decides to take Bunny Jr. out of school and bring him along as he goes door to door selling his beauty products (and invariably swiving most of his clientele—Jr. stays in the car). Later, when Cave inelegantly inserts Bunny Sr.’s dying father into the story, one gets the definite sense that paternal neglect is hereditary in this instance, but this idea is never really expanded or used, much to the story’s deficit. Bunny’s hallucinations and paranoia even seem to affect his son, who appears to share in the psychosis; the unstated question is, despite our desire to like Bunny Jr.—bright, affable child—is he doomed to become some form of his father in the same way that Bunny Sr. became some form of his? Or do the events of the book therefore take a salvific tenor insofar as they deliver the boy from “evil”?

There is a recurring theme of a serial killer who dresses in a devil costume which remains unexplained (his progress reported on the news), but which closely tracks the decline and demise of Bunny. The killer attacks women and invariably parades around public places in order to taunt authorities.

Is Bunny, in this crude parallel, an incubus? The subject of an incubus was brought up earlier in the narrative, with regard to Merlin the Magician, which Bunny Jr. reads about in his encyclopedia. Broadly speaking, an incubus is a demon who copulates with women, sometimes fathering a child as a result; these children are called “cambions” and sometimes have the same wicked tendencies as their demon-father. Repeated copulation with an incubus may result in deterioration and death for the female. Given the odd subplot of the serial killer, and the explicit reference to Merlin, it would approach the bounds of credulity that Cave didn’t intend for us to read—or at least consider—the notion of Bunny qua incubus, but I find it a somewhat belabored allusion, in part because it still gives the reader nothing of any importance to take away from the story. If Bunny is a fallen angel whose uncontrollable lust causes him to violate and/or destroy women, or if he is merely a somewhat depraved cocksman with self-destructive behaviors, how does that inform or improve the story apart from being a bit of cleverness on Cave’s part? I’m not sure it does.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

I picked up Bonk entirely on a whim: it was sitting precociously on the shelf of new books at the library. It wasn’t until later, when I was reading that, I noticed that “Amazon.com customers who bought Bonk also bought: When You Are Engulfed In Flames.” And was also asked by a friend of mine if I’ve ever read Stiff, which is Roach’s previous book. Clearly, the stars had aligned on this book in some way.

I’ve said before that I compare every “[science|history|other] made fun” book to the superb Bill Bryson, who I believe has mastered the right proportion of fact, narrative, and whimsy. An unfortunate side product of this is that every science-related book that I read ends up falling pitifully short of my unfairly high standard.

Bonk is a book about sex—not just any sex, but sex through the eye of the Scientific Establishment™ both contemporary and historical. Needless to say, the studies of Alfred Kinsey make an appearance, though they don’t play as large a role as you think. There’s mention of other sex studies of old (Masters & Johnson, for instance); the overriding theme throughout the book seems to be that sex is very complicated, but it’s also such a touchy subject that there’s no good way to learn about it.

Mostly, I find the author interesting: she’s an attractive 30-something woman, and by her own admission a student of the old school of sex—that is to say, it stays in her bedroom with her husband and nobody else needs to know anything about it. Her involvement in the topic of her book grows as the pages turn; at one point, she convinces her husband to let a doctor perform an ultrasound on their naughty bits while they, er, reconsummate their marriage on a hospital bed. She feels the newly-prosthesetized penis of a Taiwanese man suffering from 8 years of impotence. She goes to conventions/galleries featuring sex machines: literally that machines do nothing but mechanically thrust a fake rubber penis, and which have apparently spawned a whole category of fetish porn. Interestingly enough, Roach’s reasons for attending such a conference are not curiosity about particular fetishes, but the fact that famed sexologists of old (Masters & Johnson, again) used just such a device in order to test female physiological response.

The book is an interesting mix about the vagaries of erectile dysfunction, the vagaries of female sexuality and sexual physiology, the heated debate over vaginal orgasm (!), the continued quest for scientific knowledge about sex and its effects, &c.

I keep hearing about Roach being the “funniest science writer,” and I admit that I got a few chuckles out of the book, but mostly her humor comes in casual asides to the reader, and more often humorous footnotes. But it’s strangely detached from the meat of the text: Roach will very seriously cover a topic, ever the responsible journalist, and at the end of a thought or section will suddenly tack on a quip as though it was an afterthought or a poorly-timed delivery—and yes, some of the quips go for the easy laugh, as you might expect in a book about sex.

I mentioned that Kinsey plays a relatively minor role in the book, and that’s true: Roach isn’t merely a Kinsey worshiper; in fact, she seems very careful to not be particularly enthusiastic about endorsing any sort of school of thought other than a modern, pragmatic one. In other words, you won’t likely find anything offensive in here unless you think that God only accepts missionary style.

So is it worth it? Having not read any of Roach’s other (recommended) books, I can’t compare Bonk to any of them. The latter didn’t blow me away, but it was a solid read nonetheless, and remained interesting more or less throughout. If you’re looking to laugh uproariously, this isn’t for you. If you simply want a quirky look at the scientific history of sex, this is your book.

The High-Tech Knight by Leo Frankowski

It may be of interest to you to read my review of the first book, The Cross-Time Engineer

The High-Tech Knight picks up seamlessly where its predecessor left off. One new narrative device that Frankowski employs is alternate narrators: this novel begins in the voice of Sir Vladimir, initially a minor character, but one who will become increasingly important.

As the novel opens, Conrad Stargard has been slowly expanding his wealth and influence as he introduces new machines and better quality of life at his adopted home, Okoitz. In bringing modern technology to medieval Poland, Conrad is setting into motion a plan that will (hopefully) allow the backwards country to defeat a Mongol invasion in 8 or 9 years time.

The High-Tech Knight contains much of the same narrative stuff as The Cross-Time Engineer: Conrad makes new machines, gains more wealth, kills a few more bad people, and has a godawful amount of sex. The major story arc which is unique to this particular book is an incident wherein Conrad and Sir Vladimir save a gross of Pruthenian children from being sold into slavery by the wicked Knights of the Cross. To modern readers, this seems only natural, but you can bet that in backwards medieval Poland, a Church-sanctioned group selling heathens as slaves is just peachy keen, and so the issue can only be resolved via a duel to the death between Conrad and and the Knights of the Cross’ champion.

I won’t tell you how it ends—though you can certain extrapolate such information from the fact that there are more books—but in fact the story arc is a minor plot point compared to the smaller strings of narrative that go into the invention of each new device. I think this is what I find so charming about these books: each chapter is almost like a short story, and while some stories are fights and some are basically sexcapades, most detail the vagaries of invention. Conrad teaches algebra, but first he creates a base-twelve numbering system. Conrad builds a coke oven, but first has to drain a coal mine so he can dig for clay. It goes on. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s the sort of thing I like.

Love and Other Near-Death Experiences by Mil Millington

I don’t recall how I stumbled upon Millington’s book—some oblique link on Amazon, no doubt—but he seemed of the trendy sort of writers who came into prominence from the internet. No doubt, I thought, he would be easily digestible and sharp-tongued. He would say snarky things about relationships, and cuss with British slang.

I’m happy to announce that I was right on all of these counts. Millington’s career as an author came out of some awful-looking website he put together in 2001. It’s essentially a list of Seinfeld-like witticisms about the difference between the sexes, of the What’s the deal with men and T.V. remotes? variety. This was adapted into his first book, and a long string of mediocre ‘sequels’ followed.

Love and Other Near-Death Experiences is one such mediocre sequel. It’s a quirky mix of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity and James Othmer’s The Futurist: a hum-drum radio DJ has a dysfunctional relationship with his fiancé that only gets worse after mere chance prevents him from dying in an explosion. Now, crippled by uncertainty about his actions (which, I believe, was the plot of an episode of Duckman 10 years ago), he has to go on a journey to find himself. Along the way, he meets a corn-fed Nebraskan evangelical with a penchant for combat, a suicidal chain-smoking woman who cusses like a sailor and reminds me of Helena Bonham Carter’s character in Fight Club, and a ditzy Wiccan conspiracy theorist with a “nice arse.”

Toss in an assortment of minor characters, a lot of cute cockney curses and other turns of phrase, and you’ve got a ready-made novel without any sort of character development that didn’t telegraph itself within a few paragraphs. The plot’s absurd, which would be perfectly fine if Millington had just gone ahead and written the novel as an absurd comedy and not some ambivalent bastard dramedy. Instead, it’s a muddled mess that I only finished to finish, and not out of some sense of curiosity or emotional involvement with the characters.

Perhaps Millington’s original site-based book is much funnier; I’ll likely never know, as Love and Other Near-Death Experiences was tepid enough to turn me off to the author in general. Avoid this one unless you’ve got a particularly good reason to do otherwise.

Yes, I understand that they’re trying to deal with a serious issue in a “hip” way, but did you notice that there was no mention at all about “safe” sex, or any indication of multiple partners? Intravenous drug use? Anything? No, it is simply “Have sex, and you risk AIDS.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: abstinence is a best idea that no one practices. In lieu of that, hammering home the idea of responsible sex activity and protection is paramount. But we need to stop pretending like if we wish hard enough, everyone will be a virgin until they’re over 21 and married. It’s a laughably puritan idea that should have died long ago—and did die long ago in many European countries which now have a very open attitude toward sex (and, you may have noticed, much lower abortion/rape/STD rates than the US).