Tom Robbins: A Critical Companion (Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers)

This is the first book-length study of the popular novelist Tom Robbins. Whimsy and humor characterize Robbins' work, but style and language are the keystones. Hoyser and Stookey show how Robbins deftly uses style and humor to depict the absurdities and injustices of our world. His novels constantly challenge perceptions of the world that people automatically label as normal. His fiction criticizes the complacency of humans in a world becoming increasingly alienated from nature and the joy of life. In addition to a critical analysis of each of his novels, the study contains biographical material never before published and the first full-length bibliography on Robbins, including a bibliography of reviews of his fiction.

This is the first book-length study of the popular novelist Tom Robbins. Whimsy and humor characterize Robbins' work, but style and language are the keystones. Hoyser and Stookey show how Robbins deftly uses style and humor to depict the absurdities and injustices of our world. His novels constantly challenge perceptions of the world that people automatically label as normal. His fiction criticizes the complacency of humans in a world becoming increasingly alienated from nature and the joy of life. In addition to a critical analysis of each of his novels, the study contains biographical material never before published and the first full-length bibliography on Robbins, including a bibliography of reviews of his fiction.

The study features a biographical chapter, a chapter on context and style, and individual chapters on each of his novels, ^IAnother Roadside Attraction^R, ^IEven Cowgirls Get the Blues, Still Life with Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume, skinny legs and all^R, and ^IHalf Asleep in Frog Pajamas^R. Each novel is analyzed for plot structure, characterization, and thematic elements. In addition, Hoyser and Stookey define and apply an alternative critical perspective from which to read each novel. The reading of each of Robbins' novels will be enriched by this perceptive study.

CATHERINE E. HOYSER is Associate Professor of English at Saint Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut. She publishes on women, Victorian and early 20th-century literature, and detective fiction and is coeditor of Woman: An Affirmation (1979). She authored chapters one through five and the bibliography of this study.

LORENA LAURA STOOKEY is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she teaches courses in mythology, poetry, and British literature. She is the author of Robin Cook: A Critical Companion (Greenwood, 1996). She authored chapters six through eight of this study.