Author Tom Robbins, author of bestselling books, including Jitterbug Perfume, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Still Life With Woodpecker, died February 9. He was 92.
His "early books defined the 1960s for a generation and [his] publishing career spanned more than 50 years," the Seattle Times wrote. Robbins "was unclassifiable, and he liked it that way. He was a shy, dreamy kid who became a class clown and bad boy, a native Southerner who moved to Seattle from Virginia."
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Speaking on behalf of Robbins' family, friend Craig Popelars said: "Tom's wise and weirdly wonderful novels were filled with magic, mayhem, mythology, imagination, and high-wire humor--always humor. His books touched readers in the most profound ways, and up until his death he continued to engage with them by responding to their fan mail, sending them hand-written thank you letters. He loved connecting with readers in every way imaginable."
Robbins was born in Blowing Rock, N.C., and the mountains, woods, family, and friends in that Appalachian community shaped Robbins' sense for adventure, storytelling, and for odd and the unknown. When he was still a child, his family moved to Richmond, Va.
After arriving in Seattle in 1962 to attend the University of Washington's Far East Institute, he also started working at the Seattle Times. He soon "left graduate school and evolved into an art critic, and his freewheeling style earned him the label 'the Hells Angel of Art Criticism,' in the words of one Seattle Art Museum associate director," the Seattle Times wrote.
In 1966, an editor at Doubleday asked him to do a book of art criticism, but Robbins pitched a novel about the kidnapping of the mummified body of Jesus Christ, which he hadn't written yet. Published in 1971, Another Roadside Attraction drew praise from Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Graham Greene and lackluster sales, but "word of mouth spread throughout the counterculture and it became a phenomenon, as its paperback version, dubbed the "quintessential Sixties novel" by Rolling Stone, was snapped up by young counterculture readers," the Seattle Times noted.
His second novel, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), led Rolling Stone to call him "the new king of the extended metaphor, dependent clause, outrageous pun, and meteorological personification." By 1978, his first two novels had sold two million copies. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was adapted into a 1993 film by director Gus Van Sant.
Robbins published 12 books, including the novels Skinny Legs and All (1990), Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994), Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000), and Villa Incognito (2003); a children's book, B Is for Beer (2009); and his memoir, Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life (2014). In a New York Times interview about the memoir, journalist Rob Liguori asked, "Have you ever been to Tibet?" Robbins responded, "I didn't go to Tibet for the same reason I never slept with Jennifer Lopez. Sometimes it's better to imagine things."
In 1997, he won Bumbershoot's Golden Umbrella Award, which recognizes "one artist from the Northwest whose body of work represents major achievement in his or her discipline." He was a "member at large" of the nonprofit service Seattle 7 Writers.
The Seattle Times noted that Robbins once described his books as "cakes with files baked in them..... I try to create something that's beautiful to look at and delicious to the taste, and yet in the middle there's this hard, sharp instrument that you can use to saw through the bars and liberate yourself, should you so desire."
In 1970, Robbins adopted the small artist community of La Conner, Wash., as his home. Eventually Robbins married Alexa D'Avalon and together they created a joyous and adventurous life, lovingly surrounded by family, friends, art, the natural world, and cosmic interlopers. D'Avalon shared, "Tom's hope was that his books would continue to be discovered and embraced by new readers, and that we would all find every opportunity to smile back at the world."