046. Still Life With Woodpecker (1980).

Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins (1980).

Tom Robbins is a writer who can summarize rise and fall of human race in one short paragraph and in that paragraph, you will find humor, knowledge, satire, tragedy and everything else to make your life more meaningful (also, each sentence will be all nicely rhyming with one another cause he is somewhat of a poet, too).

He is an intellectual, a philosopher, a poet, a writer and a guy who knows everything around us past, present and future.

This kind of package can’t come with training. You either got it or else and Tom Robbins got it great. So really great, I think he is one of the champions of 70s through 90s, up there with likes of Hunter S. Thompson, Douglas Adams, Phillip K. Dick…but probably the funniest of all.

It’s really unfair that one guy can have so much for so long…

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layers. -

Princess Leigh-Cheri. The last heir to the kingdom. Or so the CIA is thinking. Ridiculous. She is a retired cheerleader, a social activist, etc. Your typical tragic beauty who after a bitter split with her boyfriend, exiles into attic of her huge house.

 She has a pet toad named, what else?, Prince Charming!! which she secretly kisses once just in case, you know…(according to Tom Robbins, when your are an actual princess, however ridiculous they are, you have to try certain things that we normal people are not eligible to do like kissing a toad or growing hair 3 story long so a prince can climb on the building with it.)

The story starts when a broken hearted, absolutely gorgeous princess decides to go to Hawaii for some kind of hippie convention called Care Fest and meets terrorist Woodpecker. How romantic.

Bernard Mickey Wrangle. aka Woodpecker. A mad bomber who receives 30 yrs sentence for all his explosive-related terror but blows out of the high-security cell within a year. Some sort of twisted genius.

Now he is in Hawaii with 7 dynamites which he somehow smuggles into the country and is thinking about his next move.

I think his voice is that of Tom Robbins because he supplies us tons of crazy wisdoms which is, off course, Tom Robbins’ specialty.

King Max Furstenberg-Barcalonas. After his exile thirty some years ago to Seattle, USA, King Max becomes a professional gambler. However, after heart-implant surgery, whenever he gets good hand or nervous, you can hear his heart beat which is Teflon verve’s metallic noise from across the street.

So he was forced to quit his profession and, these days, he just sits and watches sports on TV, hoping one day his beloved Seattle Mariners and Seahawks win the championship. Well, at least one did.

Queen Tilli Furstenberg-Barcalonas.  Once a beauty queen of all the known world, now, she is just overweighed, really dumb ex-celebrity. 

Her job these days is attending the tea party/gala/charity, etc which is simple enough task. However, since they don’t have any servants and she is clinically fat and it takes her two hours to dress/undress and she changes her outfit three times a day, Queen’s actual full-time job is dressing/undressing her wardrobes. Brilliantly stupid.

She speaks with really thick accent which I can’t place and whenever she gets embarrassed, instead of saying Oh my God or cursing various kinds of Gods, she says “Oh-Oh, spaghetti-o” 

Gulietta. A really old servant who comes to USA with king’s family to run the household smoothly. 

She is in her eighties, but still very efficient and energetic and strong enough to run all the household chores and prepare six meals per day. (Six meals because Princess is a vegan and King and Queen eat everything but veggies-carnivores. So two meals for each meal).

She is probably the smartest person in this book even though she doesn’t speak a word of English after staying 20 years in US. Since Princess speaks nothing but English, they communicate with gesture, I think.

She is the one who gives a frog to a Princess and goes to Hawaii with her too and later on, she plays a very significant role for the lost kingdom.

Chuck. After CIA provides the house for the exiled King's family, they sends Chuck as an informer which everyone in the house knows about. 

He works as a gardener, a body guard and a driver but as soon as he has time, eavesdrops all the phone calls and conversations even if they are absolutely NOT necessary. Another one of those big, dumb CIA agent.

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lace. –After leaving their home country which is now run by a group supported by US government and, what else?, Roman Catholic Church, the King now resides in a huge three-story house on the shore of Puget Sound, Seattle provided by CIA.

Since their mansion is almost covered by blackberry trees, King Max names his castle, Fort Blackberry, and expects one day, he will be the first king ever to kill by blackberry trees. I love this guy.

After a bitter split, Princess goes to Hawaii for Hippie Fest and somehow ends up in Middle East oil rich country at the end.

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lot. – For Tom Robbins, the story is just a vehicle to carry his philosophy forward. He has so much to say about everything, he doesn’t really need story to tell the story.

However, if there is no storyline what so ever, it will be really hard for simple guy like me to actually read the book. So He comes up with most unlikely love-story between beautiful and legitimate Princess and Mad and twisted Bomber (terrorist) which is strange, funny and gets stranger and funnier at the end.

It starts in Seattle where all the King’s family has been spending their boring life with not much events. Then after couple of broken hearts and miscarriages, princess decides that she absolutely must go to Hawaii to attend Care Fest which is a convention for environment and spirit and hippies. 

On her way to Hawaii, she meets Bernard the Woodpecker and they deeply fall in love with each other.

Just out of excitement and be true to his reputation, Bernard blows up couple of buildings with his dynamite and finally runs out of his luck and get arrested by FBI.

By this time, King and Queen finally realize that their daughter is an unbelievably hot sexpot and starts shopping around for possible candidates for her daughter’s husband and their chance to regain wealth.

After moaning Woodpecker’s imprisonment for months, Princess Leigh-Cheri finally gives in and marries ultra-rich oil man named A’ben Fizel and somehow convince him to build a pyramid for her( yes, actual life-size pyramid). Something to do with spirit and UFO and love, etc, etc.

There is coup and explosion and believe or not, a happy ending at the end.

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erdict. – This is a strange LOVE STORY nicely wrapped up with all the crazy wisdoms which probably will not help improve your life at all but surely gives you a good laugh and something to think about.

Also, in this book, a lot of sentences are neatly arranged with rhythm giving it a song-like feeling which is quite amazing for a novel. According to his recent interview, (yes, he is still alive kicking hard and in fact, just releases his memoir) it takes sometime a week for him to come up with one right sentence. So after all, he is not just a genius but a hard working genius which in my opinion is invincible.

So, this is a book written by an invincible genius, and although according to my friend who read all his books, this is not one of his best works, it still is a fantastic book which has so much in it. You probably have to give it a couple of shots to fully appreciate the value of his wisdom and world view like I do. 

A really funny and interesting book which talks about the meaning of life like it’s nothing more than a cup of coffee. They just don’t write book like this anymore.

045. SMONK (2006).

SMONK by Tom Franklin (2006).

Forget about the spaghetti Western where cool guys light their cigar with thumb matches and ride to the horizon with a beautiful score written by Morricone.

This is R-rated, DIRTY western at its brutal BEST!!   

OUTLAWS and HOOKER are NEVER been cooler than this!!

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layers. –This is not your typical western. For one thing, there is no such thing as good or bad side. Everyone is equally sick (mentally/physically) and crazy and tries really hard to kill each other. Great ensembles of characters.

(Eugene Oregon) SMONK. The most extreme/bizarre main character I’ve ever seen or read. This is how he is describes: a red hair dwarf with gorilla muscle with low and cocked head. He has a wide and long hand with which he can crush brick and very short and thin legs all wrapped up in nice expensive clothes.

 He has syphilis, gout, blood sugar, neuralgia, ague, Malaria and coughs blood all the time and is missing one eye and arthritis on his knee. All those years of hard work and overtime come back and taxing his body heavily which off course doesn’t affect his brain and brutality at all.

Also, he has what they called “a horse dick” which is a gigantic chick magnets. The girls are just throwing themselves at him all the time!!

There is no single crime that he hasn’t committed. Murder, extortion, rape, blackmail, robbery, arson, torture, kidnapping, the list goes on forever. As a result of hard work, he accumulates a huge fortune and now owns a huge launch and farm land outside the village.

Various law enforcement units, individuals, town folks try to kill him for years but always end up got killed or blown up or tore into pieces by SMONK and his associates.

He is cunning, extremely smart, merciless, unpredictable, disgusting and totally invincible. 

Simply put, SMONK is the man in the wild west!!

Evangeline.  15 years old red hair hooker who has seen/done everything in the old west. After killing couple of guys who try to kill/rape her, she is on the run from the law. Not that she minds.

She is really skinny and doesn’t have any curve for a girl, so quite often, people treats her as a boy. It is her cactus-like figure that cause her to get accused of sodomy!! As a result, bunch of stupid Christian deputies go after her declaring a crime against human race!! Absolutely hilarious!!

She was raised by crazy man named Ned and before that, white gypsy witch, Alice Hanover. What a life.

Phail Walton.  The head of stupid Christian law enforcers who go after Evangeline for her crime (?) against human race and God.

Like all religious fanatics, he is stubborn and righteous and sexually twisted. But, not a bad man. Really.

Will McKissick.  A bailiff. Used to work with Smonk all the time, then got sick of it and cleaned up and went straight.

He used to sell his wife to Smonk for a few gold coins until she runs away from home going after Smonk. Not for revenge but the thing between his leg.

After the hotel ambush goes horribly wrong, he thinks Smonk kidnaps his young son, a horny little bastard, and goes after him with the only other man left in town, blacksmith Gate.

And the rest are all fantastically bizarre characters all across old west.

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lace. –1911. A small town of old Texas, Alabama where Smonk terrorizes everything on his site. After the town, it is vast horizon of sand, heat, wild dogs and vicious criminals. Just a perfect setting for this savage western.

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lot. –As you all know by now, the story is created by its main characters. And since there are not even one NOT-INSANE PERSON in this book, the story naturally is totally crazy. However, the insanity here is created by design and intention and brilliant but twisted mind of another brilliant writer (that nobody knows, which I think should be considered as a crime), the story itself is actually quite captivating and well-structured and totally, madly entertaining.

Everyone shoots, kills, fucks and beats each other up as they pleased just to survive the day.

The story is jumping around four main characters (for whom I mentioned above), but the fundamental storyline is, naturally, based on Smonk. Another word, everything starts and ends with Smonk. At the beginning, Smonk is on trial for all his crimes against the state of old Texas or town or something like that. People in the village however, ignoring all the legends and horror stories about Smonk and how invincible he is, decide to take matters on their own hand and plan the big ambush.  Smonk off course avoids the jail term or ambush or even a trial by blowing away everyone in the vicinity of the building with one big mother of all machine gun. 

Every single man in village is literally torn in pieces except two men: Mckissick the bailiff and Portis Gates, the blacksmith (Well, actually three but it’ll become two in a hurry). With order from Mrs. Tate, a woman who owns the town, they go after Smonk. And maybe something else.

Meanwhile, on the other side of old west, a young but street smart hooker Evangeline is chased by innocent but really twisted, right-wing fanatic, Christian Deputy Walton who has crazy sexual desire toward Evangeline.

Eventually, their path intervenes and reveals all the sick secrets behind the sunny town of Texas, Alabama.(the secret itself is so fantastically bizarre, I have to read it carefully twice to get the entire picture).

The writer uses the style of writing which I first encounter with “No Country For Old Man”: there is no distinction between narration and dialogue and since all of them speak with very thick old Southern accent, it takes me some time to get uses to the book. However, this style of writing is perfect for this book because it adds raw energy and harsh realism to already brutal atmosphere. 

As for a story, I’ll bet that you will not find any story more insane/disturbed than this any time soon. Or never. The setting is absolutely crazy and the deeper we get into the story, the crazier it gets. 

At the end of the story, there is not one innocent soul standing in old west and then there’s a strong indication that another massacre is in order for the next generation.

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erdict. – This book is like watching Tarantino Western directed by a psychopath: full of cool dialogues with dirty, disgusting and quite often, meaningless violence which of course makes it totally cool.

It’s not everyday you find a book where all the characters are filthy-sick murderers yet so incredibly COOL at the same time.  So if you don’t mind a bit of violence (actually, it’s a lot more than “a bit”), please read this book. This gross and violent action thriller (with touch of black humor and tons of outrageous characters) will entertain you until the very last paragraph.

 And believe or not, it actually has quite good ending.