Is Tom Robbins still a thing? Are wide-eyed high schoolers still devouring Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, and Skinny Legs & All? Those books were like bibles for young, hippie, innocent me.

I can still quote a couple lines from those books, 30 years later. Lines that seem tailor-made for a non-jock 14-year-old. "In the haunted house of life, art is the only step that doesn't creak"...

To think of them now - and I mean this with respect, though it might seem uncharitable - they were perfect beginner pomo novels. Like test-run Pynchon, or Barth. I wouldn't have made head or tails out of Gravity's Rainbow or Sot-Weed Factor if I hadn't read Robbins.