* this is not meant for someone who has NOT read the book! It is a discussion of the book for those who have read it.
An homage (in progress) to "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates"
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TAGLINE: |
Fun, intellectual, and philosophical - This book blows the mind |
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SUMMARY: |
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I loved this book. I have not read a book this influential in recent memory. I read this book only ten pages at a time. After each sitting I would swim in what I had read, wanting the book, this pocketful of uncomfortably honest ideas, not to end. I loved the attitude of the protagonist and the author, which lifted the spirits on every page. You can tell the author loves words, he loves people, and all the baggage that comes with them. For some people, this may've just been light reading, good old fun. It was a riot for me, I laughed out loud believe me. I also think it is a very important book and is very valuable to me. For those others who also felt this book resonated with something deep inside of them, I hope they find some connection with what I have experienced in response to the book as well. This is a book that well deserves to be read every year. |
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TECHNIQUES: |
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Descriptive finesse I love the way he concisely captures human interchange. Describing a manner of flirting:
Not infrequently, he'd spot one of them [girls] in the market again and exchange with her one of those futily desirous smiles that are like domestic postage on a letter to a foreign destination. (186)
What a way to describe the perfunctory nature of most street flirtations !
Or in describing a stranger's polite response to a controversial statement:
The Latino smiled, but it was not a friendly smile; it was, in fact, the sort of quasi-smile one observes on small dogs in the backseats of parked cars just before they begin to bark... (22)
Robbins geniously sheds the bounds between man and canine. Note how he brings a heroic quality to a most mundane pathetic scenario: a dog trapped in his master's car. He stretches language to its limits, and you bask in his creativity, which is rarely presumptuous and usually a source of joy. A one-sentence paragraph twenty lines long describes an outdoor market in rainy weather:
The old market, worn half away by dampness and fingerprints, sweat drops and shoe heels, pigeon claws and vegetable crates; soiled by butcher seepage, sequined with salmon scales, smelling of roses, raw prawns, and urine; blessedly freed for the winter from the demanding entertain-me-for-nothing! gawkings of out-of-town tourists, the market bustled now with fishmongers and Vietnamese farmers, florists and fruit vendors, famous chefs and food-smart housewives, gourmets and runaways, flunkies and junkies, coffee brewers and balloon benders, office workers and shopgirls and winos of all races... (184) Robbins paints a picture with his lyrical linguistic paintbrush! He highlights such key environmental cues, has a rhythm to his description, and has the flamboyance for assonance. Metaphors
Tom Robbins creates metaphors of such beauty and insight that they are works of art. He can capture landscapes with a sentence:
[Rivers] as sleepy and sullen as pupils in ninth-grade algebra. Describing Dev, the casual rompmate he embraces in his Seattle convalescence: When she unhooked her bra, it was like a farmer unloading a cart, and when she pulled down her panties, Switters thought he was back up the Amazon. (186) Robbins treats the touchy topic of female anatomy with inventive tribute. The first example describes "abundance," and the second makes parallel to his sweaty and exotic experience in prior chapters.
There are times when we can feel destiny close around us like a fist around a doorknob. Sure, we can resist. But a knob that won't turn, a door that sticks and never budges, is a nuisance to the gods. The gods may kick in the jamb. Worse, they may walk away in disgust, leaving us to hang dumbly from our tight hinges, deprived of any other chance in life... (39) This is a metaphor of such complexity that not only does it compare ourselves to doorknobs, but then we have the power to hold back the door itself, and the gods trump us again. Superconscious narrator cum protagonist
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THEMES AND PERSPECTIVE: |
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There is no topic off-topic in this book. The boundaries between ideas shed themselves as the author's mind explores new possibilities, interfaces, and discoveries. Robbins alternatively (but connectedly) ponders language, sacredness, paradox, innocence, romance, culture, and subversion. They retain the readable nature of an internal dialogue. Politics, religion, sex, spirituality, culture, language, these are the themes treated in this book. Even when I didn't agree with the author, I had to admit he has an enormous charm and sensitivity.
Each part of the book has a focus, a fetish if you will:
Robins treatment of "culturally-invented" pedophilia and the culture of victimization is excellent. A reading of the dialogue that takes place between Switters and Bobby Case is essential, though it serves as a mere springboard to further polemics. And shining through the controversy is the very endearing and tender feeling that Switters feels toward his love. Switters does not just want to take all that he can get and then leave behind a broken heart, which is so often the case with stereotypes of the dirty old man. He takes from her a little juice at a time, and treats her heart with rubber (well at least latex) gloves. Lively Dialogue Plenty of the questions raised in the book have to do with the Middle East and have to do with religious affrontism. Switters, an experienced CIA op, waxes about the very adolescent nature of terrorism:
Do you know why young males, especially, love, simply love, to see things blown apart? "[It's] freedom," said Switters brightly. "Freedom from the material world. Subconsciously, people feel trapped by our culture's confining buildings and its relentless avalanche of consumer goods. So, when they watch all this being demolished..., they experience the kind of release the Greeks used to get from their tragedies." (22)
Switters compares the loftiness of Greek drama with modern day do-it-yourself warfare. Switters dares to show that terrorism has more to do with just politics and religion. And with his ever-present wit, he notices, "If they [volunteer martyrs] were required to martyr themselves by being dragged behind a bus or sticking a wet finger in a light socket, volunteers would be few and far between." (22) Indeed! The concept of "vivid" Switters can be a patient man - whether he is forced to podunk down the Amazon on a raft or respite in an isolated Middle Eastern oasis. He can also handle conflict and confrontation gracefully, whether it's disarming a supposed Italian gunman or debating anthropology with a professor. The one thing that Switters cannot seem to handle is when things get too "vivid." What "vivid" means is one of the keys to understanding Switters. Here's a running list of times that Switters refers to "vivid":
How do we feel about the protagonist? Good/bad? Likeable/disdainful? Paradox For example, let's take a look at Switters taste in women. The two loves of the story are Suzy and Domino. Let's compare the two. Suzy is innocent, chaste, young, and curious about sex (as Switters would admit, as a result of her youth). Domino is world-wise, was sexually precocious, mature, and yearns for a return to a state of virginity. Something about each of them touches Switters. The crux of the choice Switters makes in the end is between these 2 destinies that are almost polar in their meaning. In some ways, though they are ultimately the same; such is love. Diverse in its forms, yet uncannily similar in its essence. Furthermore, do the labels really stick? In Suzy, Switters finds a certain maturity, such as in the solemnity of her approach to religious orthodoxy, and in Domino a certain playfulness, such as in her ability to engage the absurdities that preoccupy Switters's mind. Speaking of religion, it is odd that for a protagonist so completely opposed to the dogma and downright triteness of organized religion, Switters fixation is on 2 rather pious women. This observation does ring true to me though, as I have seen for example in my life as a person of religion, that agnostics are frequently drawn to me. This alludes to the theme that Robbins speaks of when he says that the "interplay of opposites is the engine that runs the universe." (Back cover) "Only the obtuse are unappreciative of paradox" (38). To Switters, the analysis and experience of life reveals paradox. Indeed, those who truly try to understand the world and everything in it, like him, are constantly faced with paradox. For example, what may appear at first to be perfect goodness, perfect chastity, or monstrous evil, may also be seen as relative Ok-ness, somewhat-corruptedness, or rather-ugliness, respectively. The quest for truth entails staying aware of paradox and embracing it is, as much as entails searching for objective black-and-white answers. Language For Switters, language is more than just a way to convey fact - it creates meaning. Though he maybe attracted to Gloria in the night club, the fact that she says "chew" and "eat" in reference to intimate acts all but kills his desire. When he asks to know in which language angels speak, he is almost begging himself to answer "in some transcendental tongue," and Suzy's religious parrot answer of "Aramaic" doesn't really seem to get what he is even asking about; that most human language is just historical phenomenon. Switters talks about the liberation of not knowing a tongue. "...I spend a lot of time in countries where I can't understand the language at all...I'm coming to prefer it that way. It's uplifting. When you go for a while without being able to understand a word of what anybody around you is saying, you start to forget what banal bores our blathering brethren be." (36) By becoming deaf, we get the opportunity to experience a fresh reality devoid of empty environmental narrative. Anybody who has traveled to foreign lands can also testify to the converse - the freshness that comes with each new word that we learn, though the meaning of the actual word be familiar. Maybe that's why cursing in foreign tongues doesn't leave such an impact - because we have been conditioned to fear the word, but only in our mother tongue. Knowledge and innocence Transcendence Transparency in thought and action Nuns and teens Ageism At peace with chaos of human condition Today is tomorrow Finnegan's wake People of zee world, relax Technology Being a "neutral angel" and moral relativism Switters is an employee of the U.S. Government, specifically the CIA. But he is not a cheerleader. He tells it as he knows it. At some level, all of us who aspire to simultaneoulsy fit in to the system while actively questioning it can relate to him. Switters conceives the archetypes of "cowboy" and "angel." A cowboy is a company man who follows orders blindly and does not see a greater picture than the Unites States. An angel is a liberated soldier who has a very personal sense of right and wrong that usually goes against established norms. Before he ventures off to Latin America, Switters engages in a conversation about "the CIA's history of illegal interference in Latin American affairs, particularly, perhaps, its heinous behavior in Guatemala and El Salvador, not to mention Cuba, Chile, and Nicaragua...." (31) Not saying much more on the subject, the narrator perhaps hopes we will do some research of our own. Few may know that once upon a time, Guatemala was governed by a series of democratically elected regimes until the U.S. helped overthrow them and prop the country up with a puppet president. And Cuba was once the great American servant until they decided to stand up for themselves (Cuba: from US imperialist playground to mortal enemy). And Nicaragua, hmm that would be a good subject for a historical (fiction) play about selling arms for drugs. Switters, who as a CIA operative we might expect to be synonymous with "zealous patriot," has a few words to set us straight on the matter of what he thinks about heroes a.k.a. cowboys: You know: flag-wavers and Bible-thumpers. Trigger-happy patriots. They're the one who create the international incidents, who're always embarrassing the CIA and the United States....Of course, they tend to win promotions because basically they're the same kind of dour-faced, stiff-minded, suck-butt, kick-butt, buzz-cut, macho dickheads who oversee the company as political appointees...(33) What a rhythm Robbins harnesses in the middle of that description. And how rapidly examples come to mind of the type of personality profile he is referring to.
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CHARACTERS: |
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Switters: What makes Switters tick? This is a central preoccupation in the book, as we do not know much about him. About his past, we are a given only a few certainties. We know much more about his thoughts and his words than about his inner life, though his preoccupations about religion, spirituality, and consciousness are central to his character. In a way, Robbins' omniscient narrator avoids giving us a strict experiential view of what it is like to BE Switters. We witness his folly from a slightly higher plane. Almost like a "Gospel of Switters." A slight note: I found myself indelibly attracted to Switters. Coincidentally, he is born on the cusp of Cancer and Leo (p. 132), often said to be the 23rd of July, which is my birthday! (Not to mention he has a Performa 6115 (p. 18). I had Performa 6116 in college! Of course, there are a ton of things that are different between us. But finding connections is always more fun, ain't it? Also to boot: What kind of name is Switters? And what is his last name? |
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WHAT MAKES SWITTERS TICK: Language, truth, art, adventure, understanding, innocence, email, women, rebellion a la neutral angel, partying, "Send In the Clowns"
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