Conversations
Some BuFoonery from the The Infinite Goofmaster, novelist Tom Robbins, excerpted from his novel, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates.
…
…
The fierce invalid in Tom Robbins’s seventh novel is a philosophical, hedonistic U.S. operative very loosely inspired by a friend of the author. “Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll are enormously popular in the CIA,” claims Switters. “Not with all the agents in the field, but with the good ones, the brightest and the best.” Switters isn’t really an invalid, but during his first mission (to set free his ornery grandma’s parrot, Sailor, in the Amazon jungle), he gets zapped by a spell cast by a “misshapen shaman” of the Kandakandero tribe named End of Time. The shaman is reminiscent of Carlos Castaneda’s giggly guru, but his head is pyramid-shaped. In return for a mind-bending trip into cosmic truth–”the Hallways of Always”–Switters must not let his foot touch the earth, or he’ll die.
Not that a little death threat can slow him down. Switters simply hops into a wheelchair and rolls off to further footloose adventures, occasionally switching to stilts. For a Robbins hero, to be just a bit high, not earthbound, facilitates enlightenment. He bops from Peru to Seattle, where he’s beguiled by the Art Girls of the Pike Place Market and his 16-year-old stepsister, and then off to Syria, where he falls in with a pack of renegade nuns bearing names like Mustang Sally and Domino Thiry.
* * *
Conversations between Switters and Sister Domino Thiry
in Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates. – Tom Robbins“And what is your faith, exactly, Mr. Switters? What do you believe in?”
“Umm. Well. I try not to.”
“You try not to believe?”
“That’s right. I’m on the run from the Killer B’s.”
“Pardon? What have killer bees to do with?…”
“B for Belief. B for Belonging. The B’s that lead to most of the killing in the world. If you don’t Belong among us, then you’re our inferior, or our enemy, or both, and you can’t Belong with us unless you Believe what we Believe. Maybe not even then, but it certainly helps. Our religion, our party, our tribe, our town, our school, our race, our nation. Believe. Belong. Behave. Or Be Damned.
“But human beings have—-”
“A need to belong somewhere, to believe in something? Yeah, Sister–if I may still call you that–they seem to. It’s virtually genetic. I’m on guard against it and it still overtakes me. The concern is that we may annihilate ourselves before we can evolve, or mutate, beyond it, but you may rest assured that, even if we survive, as long as we’re driven to Belong and Believe, we’ll never be at peace, and we’ll never be free.”
“Ooh-la-la! That’s crazy. A human who belongs to no group or believes in nothing? What kind of robot, what lost animal? No longer human at all.”
“In the sense that a frog is no longer a tadpole, you may be right. And it may never come to pass, or have to. We just might learn enough tolerance, and jettison enough fear and ego, to compensate…..”
* * *
“Well,” she said, “even if you don’t object philosophically to active withdrawal, that doesn’t mean you are personally suited for it. For example, we are very orderly here.”
“So? Nothing wrong with that – as long as you don’t deceive yourself into believing your order is superior to somebody else’s disorder.”
“But disorder is -”
“Often just the price that’s charged for freedom. Order, so-called, has claimed more victims historically than disorder, so-called, and besides, if properly employed, language can provide all of the order a person might ever need in life…..”
* * *
“Suppose the neutral angels were able to talk Yahweh and Lucifer—God and Satan, to use their popular titles—into settling out of court. What would be the terms of the compromise? Specifically, how would they divide the assets of their earthly kingdom? Would God be satisfied to take loaves and fishes and itty-bitty thimbles of Communion wine, while allowing Satan to have the red- eye gravy, eighteen-ounce New York steaks, and buckets of chilled champagne? Would God really accept twice-a-month lovemaking for procreative purposes and give Satan the all-night, no-holds-barred, nasty “can’t-get-enough -of-you” hot-as-hell fucks? Think about it. Would Satan get New Orleans, Bangkok, and the French Riviera and God get Salt Lake City? Satan get ice hockey, God get horseshoes? God get bingo; Satan, stud poker? Satan get LSD; God, Prozac? God get Neil Simon; Satan, Oscar Wilde? Can anyone see Satan taking pirate radio stations and God being happy with the likes of CBS? God getting twin beds; Satan, waterbeds; God, Minnie Mouse, John Wayne, and Shirley Temple; Satan, Betty Boop, Peter Lorre, and Mae West; God, Billy Graham; Satan, the Dalai Lama? Would Satan get Harley motorcycles; God, Honda golf carts? Satan get blue jeans and fish-net stockings; God, polyester suits and pantyhose? Satan get electric guitars; God, pipe organs; Satan get Andy Warhol and James Joyce; God, Andrew Wyeth and James Michener; God, the 700 Club; Satan, the CRAFT Club; Satan, oriental rugs; God, shag carpeting? Would God settle for cash and let Satan leave town with Mr. Plastic? Would Satan mambo and God waltz? Would Almighty God be that dorky? Or would he see rather quickly that Satan was making off with most of the really interesting stuff? More than likely he would. More than likely, God would holler, “Whoa! Wait just a minute here, Lucifer. I’ll take the pool halls and juke joints, you take the church basements and Boy Scout jamborees. You handle content for a change, pal. I’m going to take—style!”
Cheers,
Steve
