Skinny Legs and All, by Tom Robbins

Can o’ Beans, Dirty Sock, Conch Shell, and A Few Too Many Veils
Reviewed by Karina Chahal
January 10th, 2008

A tale that cannot be told without depictions of challenging conflict and lyrical imagery, this novel must be read. It is a unique story that is difficult to imagine, as Tom Robbins blurs the thin line between comedy and the real political and social issues we face. Every page serves as a step towards either the solution or the fall of their world.

What we now know as Skinny Legs and All is a whimsical journey painted with lyrical words on a never-ending canvas of controversy. It is a comical tale of two newlyweds, a Jewish man and an Arab man, a preacher man, a belly dancer, a few inanimate objects, and the art that surrounds them and takes them places (quite literally). As humorous as the story starts out, woven between the lines are undertones of severe issues that the characters in the book and the people in today’s society face.

The author, Tom Robbins, is fairly successful. His second book, Even Cow Girls Get The Blues, has become a movie directed by acclaimed director Gus Van Sant. Tom Robbins takes the obscure from vague to mind-stimulating. Skinny Legs and All is no exception, as it includes Robbins’ trademark themes: lust, politics, and religion, a.k.a. controversy. If I were a newcomer to Robbins’ drift, I probably would put the book down. Robbins begins the book with his lead characters, Ellen Cherry Charles and Boomer Petway, driving in a turkey. Suddenly we begin to sense a real side to the story. Ellen doesn’t feel like she made the right decision in marrying Boomer, a man lacking class and intelligence, because she doesn’t feel the same incendiary passion with Boomer that she feels with her art. Ellen doesn’t think she is ready to begin a new, different life. While her orthodox preacher uncle and callous father try to suppress Ellen, she rises in spite of their poison. After selling out in her hometown, she moves to the big city. There she finds Roland Abu Hadee, an Arab man, and Spike Cohen, a Jewish man, two co-owners of a restaurant across from the United Nations Building. Written in 1990, Skinny Legs And All addresses the historical conflict between these two cultures. Ironically, this may be more relevant now than ever.

Robbins doesn’t just scatter political problems throughout the story; he subtly suggests his own answers. However, he leaves the characters to find their own ways to some sort of solution for their immediate social problems. Most, if not all of Robbins’ book is dedicated to the open-minded. For example, he lets “living” inanimate objects like a dirty sock, conch shell, or a “can o’ beans” do the talking. Nick Bantock’s epistolary novel, Griffin and Sabine, is easily related to Skinny Legs And All. Both contain obvious relationships between people in which lines are blurred and people find themselves questioning what they want to happen and what is really happening. Once immersed in the story, you begin to find yourself falling into a spiral of challenging concepts backed by acid harmonies mimicking Terrence McKenna’s philosophies.

Personally, I would recommend this book to anyone with a relative maturity and respect for radical ideas. In Skinny Legs And All many questions are asked, yet few are answered. The questions left unanswered are questions that everyone needs to answer themselves, which is why I feel everyone should experience the picture that Tom Robbins paints. The tale of Skinny Legs And All cannot be told, but can be read, and is a story that cannot be thought up, but only felt.