Still Life with Woodpecker

Today I finished Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins. It was my first time reading a story by the infamous Mr. Robbins and I enjoyed the experience. His narrative voice was fun and playful, but his topics were thought provoking and meaningful. Still Life with Woodpecker is a modern fairytale. It is a romance between two redheads who believe their flaming hair is not just a genetic trait; it is an entitlement to a lifestyle beyond social norms. Woodpecker is an anarchist outlaw, constantly establishing himself as more than just a criminal with a cause or a social disease. His reason for disobeying the rules and laws of society has no purpose or goal. His reason for being criminal is to cause general unrest among communities and most of all: to spend the life he has doing what he pleases. Throughout the fairy-tale, Woodpecker does not change. He is constant, never without his matches and dynamite (except a few instances out of his control). Princess Leigh-Cheri is a political exile from the country of Mu. She is an evolving character that begins the fairy-tale as a celibate environmentalist, but goes through enough worldview changes to fill this blog. The most enduring of her character traits is her undying crush on none other than Mr. Ralph Nader, hero to the progressive world. Her attic decor includes numerous posters of the left's righteous poster boy. The story weaves these two characters together in an unexpected knit of romance and adventure. I am not commonly inspired into feeling romantic by stories of this nature (if anything philosophy brings out the romance for me), but Woodpecker and the Princess certainly have made me feel closer to my partner in crime. Sure, the love scenes were awkward and overly detailed, but they didn't leave me with the usual disgusted voyeuristic feeling that Palahniuk and Vonnegut constantly drop on me unexpectedly. The scenes were unclassy (and did I mention awkward), but within them Robbins made sure to know that it was all rooted in a form of true love (even though Woodpecker would scoff to know that I described it that way.) I'm not going to get all deep and technical like I have in past book reflections, but I will say that Robbins did a good job expressing and encouraging a feeling of love for his readers.

Oh yeah. He also created a love inside me for the original packaging of Camel ciggarettes. I even went out and bought a pack. Too bad I was a year late, they dramatically changed the pack design for the first time in years in 2008. Ah well, I guess that keeps me from wanting to purchase multiple packs.