Skinny Legs and All (1990) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

• Ellen Cherry Charles: Female protagonist, artist (or not?)
• Boomer Petway III: Ellen's husband. Makes a giant turkey out of an Airstream trailer.
• Dirty Sock: Purple. Somewhat cantankerous.
• Spoon: Dainty. Timid and compassionate.
• Can of Beans: Androgenous. Intelligent.
• Painted Stick: Somewhat wild and impetuous.
• Conch Shell: Serene and lovely.
• Turn Around Norman: Very slow performance artist.

Quotes edit see section history

• ““Granted, he's a man of God, but ol' Bud has got...ambition.”“Mama, you say it like he's got a disease.”“Well, ambition's not as bad as AIDS, I reckon. But it can be a whole lot worse than the measles.””

• “It was sweet of him, she thought, to be protective; sweet and typically southern. In her experience, southern men tended to be charming that way. Protective as Brink's, polite as tea, respectful as a job applicant during a recession.”

• ““I tell you, that switch from B.C. to A.D. Must have driven people nuts. I bet more than a few Israelites missed their dental appointments.””

• “Babylon was riding tall under its powerful leader, Nebuchadnezzar. My, oh my, they don't make names like that anymore. Ronald, George, Gary, Jimmy, just plain Bill: these modern mediocre monikers aren't fit to shine the shoes of Nebuchadnezzar. John is a label. Nebuchadnezzar is a poem. A monument. A swarm of killer bees let loose in the halls of the alphabet. Anyway, back to the point...”

• “...leaving Raoul on the verge of composing one of those trite romantic lyrics that, lacking the ivory flame of great poetry, nevertheless stay with a person forever, like a scar, a tattoo, or third-grade arithmetic.”

• “I swear, they'd rather have them a mess of revenge than a big juicy steak and a roll in silk sheets with a movie star.”

• ““Now's the time for you to have babies, honey. Directly. And you know why? Having babies meses up your life, bu when you're young your life's already messed up, so it's easy to fit in a baby or two.””

• “"Slang just makes people more stupid, that's all, and stupidity eventually makes them crazy. I'd hate to ever see that kind of craziness rub off onto objects."”

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• religion is a paramount contributor to human misery. It is not merely the opium of the masses, it is the cyanide.

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• Those people who recognize that imagination is reality’s master, we call “sages,” and those who act upon it, we call “artists.”

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• Thus, to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.

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• What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other people’s decisions for them? Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude. If it results from anything, it may be levity.

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• “In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak.”

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• The loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were measured had become more valuable than the things themselves.

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• “The level of structure that people seek always is in direct ratio to the amount of chaos they have inside.”

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• “Anyone who maintains absolute standards of good and evil is dangerous. As dangerous as a maniac with a loaded revolver. In fact, the person who maintains absolute standards of good and evil usually is the maniac with the revolver.”

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• When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.

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• Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished. Those who witness the dropping of the fourth veil might see clearly what Spike Cohen and Roland Abu Hadee dimly suspected: that not only is religion divisive and oppressive, it is also a denial of all that is divine in people; it is a suffocation of the soul.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Jerusalem

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by The New York Trilogy, and followed by Infinite Jest.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Tom Robbins (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.54

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( R ) › Robbins, Tom
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Women's Fiction › Single Women
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary