Tom Robbins (#2): The Green Man.

 

The photo that I took above accompanied my feature interview with Tom Robbins ("The Green Man") in the June 2000 issue of High Times. The same interview was recently reprinted in a scholarly work published by the University Press of Mississippi: Conversations with Tom Robbins. Nice to know that a state-affiliated publisher in Mississippi would concern itself with Mr. Robbins' thoughts concerning pyschedelics.

My favorite exchange:

HT: Why, in your opinion, is fiction still an important art form?

TR: Much more than an entertaining set of exaggerated facts, fiction is a metaphoric method of describing, dramatizing and condensing historical events, personal actions, psychological states and the symbolic knowledge encoded within the collective unconscious; things, events and conditions that are otherwise too diffuse and/or complex to be completely digested or appreciated by the prevailing culture. The human race has always defined itself through narration. That isn't going to change just because we've gone electronic. What is changing is that now we're allowing corporations to tell our stories for us. And as I write in my new novel, the message of the corporate story is always the same: "To be special, you must conform; to be valid, you must consume." Real fiction will prevail, however, because at its best it's an enchantment that refreshes the wasteland of the mind.

 Trip out on that! In Jackson, no less!

Tom Robbins (#1): Fundamentally Robbins.

Tom Robbins -- author of lusty books like Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Jitterbug Perfume, and Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates -- sporting a "Jimmy Swaggart Bible College" sweatshirt.

He can make paragraphs sparkle like a girl's best friend.

Robbins also has a new book out. I recently interviewed him about B Is for Beer -- his "children's book about beer" -- for DRAFT magazine. Due to space limitations in its print edition, the magazine edited out one of the question-and-answers, which I'll kindly reprint here:

Q: I had fun drinking beer with you at the La Conner Brewing Company [La Conner, WA] in 2000, talking about your collection of freak show art. What are some of your fondest memories involving beer?

Robbins: In my bank of hoppy memories, nothing exceeds my recollection of motoring through Germany, stopping in small towns to test the brewing skills of local monks. At times I was tempted to burn my passport and don robe and sandals.

It wasn't my first dialogue with the hallucinogenic writer. Back in 2000, I interviewed Robbins for High Times magazine and wrote a sidebar about the revelatory and amusing experience.