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!