Gone, at age 92
Showing posts with label Tom Robbins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Robbins. Show all posts
Monday, February 10, 2025
Thursday, September 1, 2016
ATTICA ~
Pantheon 2016
Long before "9-11" this was an earlier 9-11, the Attica Prison Uprising in upstate New York told with the clear-eyed scope of a storyteller's eye by historian Heather Ann Thompson — and this may be the strong thread of the book, amongst the revealing horrors long hidden — is Thompson's straight-edge sturdy report.
Don't delay.
In Attica they killed black, brown and white all the same, even the guards, officials, anyone in the way. The State Police had issued shotguns and very few had ever used a shotgun in riot formation. Buckshot did the most damage. Plus toxic gas and powder dropped from a helicopter Vietnam style. It was the year of post Cambodia, Laos, Parrot’s Beak, the war coming to a halt and the US losing. They’re still angry. Still losing. Americans have the lousiest teacher in world history next to various other fascists. In all our cities, their governments, now in small towns' corrosive politics and, I know, ingrained in rural routes.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
THE RETRO MAN CAVE ~
(Wisconsin)
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
(Arcade)
(Chicago)
(Ecco)
"We humans have always defined ourselves by narration. What's happening
today is that we're allowing multi-national corporations to tell our
stories for us. The theme of corporate stories (and millions drink them
in every day) seldom varies: to be happy you must consume, to be
special you must conform. Absurd, obviously, yet our identities have
become so fragile, so elusive, that we seem content to let advertisers
provide us with their version of who we are, to let them recreate us in
their image: a cookie-cutter image based on market research, shallow
sociology, and insidious lies. Individualism is bad for business --
though absolutely necessary for freedom, progressive knowledge, and any
possible interface with the transcendent. And yes, it's entirely
possible to function as a free-thinking individual without succumbing to
narcissism."
Tom Robbins
Robbins is a direct descendant of Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Think about that a moment.
recommend all
Saturday, December 31, 2011
SUMMING UP ~
( Bantam 2005 )
( Bantam 2005 )
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT AMERICA?
America is a nation of 270 million people: 100 million of them are gangsters, another 100 million are hustlers, 50 million are complete lunatics, and every single one of us is secretly in show business. Isn't that fabulous? I mean, how could you fail to have a good time in a country like that? I could live literally anywhere in the world and do what I do, so, obviously, I live in America by choice - not for any patriotic or financial reasons necessarily, but because it's so interesting there. American may be the least boring country on earth, and this despite the fact that the dullards on the religious right and the dullards on the academic left (the two faces of yankee puritanism) seemed to be in competition to see who can do the most to promote compulsory homogenization and institutionalized mediocrity. It won't work. In America, the chronically wild, persistently haywire, strongly individualistic, surprisingly good-humored, flamboyant con-man hoopla is simply bigger than all of them. (1997)
NOTE: The preceding was written several years before the military-industrial complex first seized and then cemented total control of the US government, coup d'etat that would have failed without the active assistance of a rapidly growing population of fearful, non-thinking dupes: "true believers" dumbed down and almost comically manipulated by their media, their church, and their state. So be it. Freedom has long proven too heady an elixir for America's masses, weakened and confused as they are by conflicting commitments to puritanical morality and salacious greed. In the wake of the recent takeover, our prevailing national madness has been ratcheting steadily skyward: the pious semi-literates in the conservative camp tremble and crow, the educated martyrs in the progressive sector writhe and fume. It's a grand show, from a cosmic perspective, though enjoyment of the spectacle is blunted by the havoc being wreaked on nature and by the developmental abuse inflicted on children. We must bear in mind, however, that the central dynamic of our race has never been a conflict between good and evil but rather between enlightenment and ignorance. Ignorance makes the headlines, wins the medals, doles out the punishment, jingles the coin, yet in its clandestine cubbyholes (and occasionally on the public stage) enlightenment continues to quietly sparkle, its radiance outshining the entire disco ball of history. Its day may or may not come, but no matter. The world as it is! Life as it is! Enlightenment as its own reward.
watch yr step
you've lost a step
America is a nation of 270 million people: 100 million of them are gangsters, another 100 million are hustlers, 50 million are complete lunatics, and every single one of us is secretly in show business. Isn't that fabulous? I mean, how could you fail to have a good time in a country like that? I could live literally anywhere in the world and do what I do, so, obviously, I live in America by choice - not for any patriotic or financial reasons necessarily, but because it's so interesting there. American may be the least boring country on earth, and this despite the fact that the dullards on the religious right and the dullards on the academic left (the two faces of yankee puritanism) seemed to be in competition to see who can do the most to promote compulsory homogenization and institutionalized mediocrity. It won't work. In America, the chronically wild, persistently haywire, strongly individualistic, surprisingly good-humored, flamboyant con-man hoopla is simply bigger than all of them. (1997)
NOTE: The preceding was written several years before the military-industrial complex first seized and then cemented total control of the US government, coup d'etat that would have failed without the active assistance of a rapidly growing population of fearful, non-thinking dupes: "true believers" dumbed down and almost comically manipulated by their media, their church, and their state. So be it. Freedom has long proven too heady an elixir for America's masses, weakened and confused as they are by conflicting commitments to puritanical morality and salacious greed. In the wake of the recent takeover, our prevailing national madness has been ratcheting steadily skyward: the pious semi-literates in the conservative camp tremble and crow, the educated martyrs in the progressive sector writhe and fume. It's a grand show, from a cosmic perspective, though enjoyment of the spectacle is blunted by the havoc being wreaked on nature and by the developmental abuse inflicted on children. We must bear in mind, however, that the central dynamic of our race has never been a conflict between good and evil but rather between enlightenment and ignorance. Ignorance makes the headlines, wins the medals, doles out the punishment, jingles the coin, yet in its clandestine cubbyholes (and occasionally on the public stage) enlightenment continues to quietly sparkle, its radiance outshining the entire disco ball of history. Its day may or may not come, but no matter. The world as it is! Life as it is! Enlightenment as its own reward.
~ TOM ROBBINS
first published in Anthem, Avon Books, 1997
watch yr step
you've lost a step
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