Still Life With Woodpecker.

Wow, I recently finished Tom Robbins' Still Life With Woodpecker and it was amazing. I've read a handful of his other books (there are not that many) and Woodpecker is by far the best so far. The story is a fairytale at heart, it just happens to be the craziest fairytale ever. Plus, Robbins pulls out some great tricks.

First, the book was written in 1980 on what was at the time, a high powered machine: The Remington RL3 Typewriter. The author periodically pauses the story to talk about the typewriter. Over the course of the novel the reader begins to see that the author's relationship to the new typewriter is analagous to a new relationship.

Second, he poses a question before the story gets moving and will attempt an answer by the end of the story. That question is: How Do You Make Love Stay?

By the end of the story Robbins is fed up with the typewriter and decides to make a single closing statement in longhand that deals with both his ending the relationship with the typewriter and with the fairytale itself. Brilliant.

What follows are the last few pages of the novel.

"Enough already. I'm going to pull the plu ug gggg.

(Ha! What's the matter, Rem[ington RL3], got a speech impediment?) and finish up in long hand. Not that my handwriting is any aestetic improvement. It resembles the narty scrowls chalked on alley walls by Mongolian monster boys. But it will encourage me to be brief. And, really, what else is there to say? If that pissant typewriter has got me in a situation where I must make a closing remark, well then I guess in fairness I should say one more thing about making love stay.

When the mystery of the connection goes, love goes. It's that simple. This suggests that it isnt love that is so important to us but the mystery itself. The love connection may be merely a device to put us in contact with the mystery, and we long for the love to last so that the ecstacy of being near the mystery will last. It is contrary to the nature of mystery to stand still. Yet it's always there somewhere, a world on the other side of the mirror (or the camel pack), a promise in the next pair of eyes that smile at us. We glimpse it when we stand still.

The romance of the new love, the romance of solitude, the romance of objecthood, the romance of ancient pyramids & distant stars are means of making contact with the mystery. When it comes to perpetuating it, however, I got no advice. But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts I know:

(1) Everything is part of it.

(2) It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

And thats how the book ends. Is he right? Who knows. But in classic Robbins fashion, it sure is food for thought.