From bubblegum to personism: the cycle of choice in the novels of Tom Robbins.

Abstract

The four novels of Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Still Life with Woodpecker, and Jitterbug Perfume, represent an apparent shift by Robbins from the post-modernist conventions in his first two novels to certain conventions of mimetic literature in his last two novels. Robbins' critics as yet have not adequately explained this shift, nor have they defined a central theme in his fiction. However, Robbins reveals in his last two novels that a controlling theme, choice, is present in all four novels. The existence of this theme, which consists of a two-part cycle, explains the movement in Robbins' fiction from non-linear to linear structures. Robbins' gradual awareness of his theme also indicates that his novels have progressed not from a post-modernist to a mimetic literature, but from the techniques of bubblegum fiction to the aesthetic of personism. Robbins' theme of choice manifests itself in the response of the reader to each novel, which in turn affects the roles of the thematic character who embodies choice and the narrator of each novel. In Robbins' first two novels, the reader is a participant in the non-linear structures and a passive observer of the cycle of choice as it is represented by the static thematic characters and unreliable narrators of those novels. The reader of Robbins' last two novels, in contrast, is a passive observer of the novels' linear structures and a participant in the cycle of choice as it is illustrated by the dynamic thematic characters and the omniscient narrators. Robbins' four novels all contribute to the theme of choice individually. They also serve as a collective representation of the cycle of choice.