Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976) had enough liberation-chic amid
the pop gyrations to win Robbins a cultish following - and he'll
certainly need a preconditioned audience for this even less
substantial concoction. It's the love-story/ fairy-tale of Princess
Leigh-Cheri Furstenberg-Barcalona, daughter of an exiled royal
South American family living in Seattle - who, on a trip to Hawaii
to attend a "Geo-Therapy Care Fest," meets and is swept off her
feet by Bernard Mickey Wrangle a.k.a. "The Woodpecker," an outlaw
political bomber given to eating Hostess Twinkies, saying "Yum"
constantly, and philosophizing about outlaws, the moon, pyramids,
and the profundity stored in the Camels cigarette package. When
their ecstatic love is interrupted by The Woodpecker's temporary
jailing (dynamite remains his hobby; he wears gunpowder T-shirts),
Leigh-Cheri languishes, finally agreeing to marry an importunate
Arab playboy if he'll promise to build for her a modern pyramid.
But - enter The Woodpecker again; he and Leigh-Cheri are sealed
within the pyramid by the jealous Arab; and, ultimately, it's
dynamite once more to the rescue. Robbins lays all this down in
three basic kinds of writing: plain cute, wise cute, and abstract
cute. Plain: "Their underwear just lay there, gathering dust, like
ghost towns abandoned when the nylon mines petered out." Wise cute:
"Without the essential (inanimate) insanity, humor becomes
inoffensive and therefore pap, poetry becomes exoteric and
therefore prose, eroticism becomes mechanical and therefore
pornography. . . ." Abstract cute: "Surface incident sets up
internal relationships, and internal relationships break down the
external gestalt, the publicness." Several writers do this sort of
Zen shtick much better - e.g., Pierre Delattre's Walking On Air (p.
381) - and Robbins' sermons here (which sound strangely like those
of a buzzed Arthur Godfrey) often are downright embarrassing. For
diehard Robbins fans only, then (a largely paperback-oriented
crowd); others will find it insufferable. (Kirkus Reviews)
Still Life with Woodpecker is sort of a love story that takes place
inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the
moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws,
examines the conflict between social activism and romantic
individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that
includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders.
It also deals with the problem of redheads.
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