I first met Tom Robbins within the editorial division of The Village Voice in the summertime of 2006. On the time, I used to be a newly employed reporting intern working for Wayne Barrett, and I used to be thrilled once I found that Tom was additionally working at The Voice. Once I approached him, Tom was sitting behind a desk on the fifth ground of that outdated Manhattan workplace constructing in Cooper Sq., immersed in a dimly lit sea of overstuffed submitting bins and an unfathomable quantity of stacked papers and carrying—along with the considerably stoic-cum-sour face I’ve come to recollect him by—an expression that mentioned, “What the hell do you need?”

I used to be crushed. Not as a result of my favourite creator and literary god had not been blissful to satisfy me however as a result of I had the unsuitable Tom Robbins. This Tom was a hard-nosed veteran information reporter—one of many final remaining old-school rabble-rousers (together with Wayne) nonetheless left at The Voice—whose journalistic prowess had made him one thing of a star himself through the years, and certainly, he had even authored a number of books.  However all the identical, he was not my Tom Robbins, the creator of eight “juicy, daring, and sagacious novels” whom I’ve usually credited because the very purpose I learn and write. 

It was a simple mistake to make; Tom Robbins (the fiction author) additionally started his profession as a information reporter, and he’s the kind of man that one wouldn’t be in the least stunned to search out hanging out at The Voice. At any price, the ersatz Tom and I acquired alongside simply superb, and I’ve nothing however fond (and only a few) reminiscences of him. 

This isn’t his paper. That is concerning the different Tom Robbins—the zany creator who now lives in La Conner, Washington, a small fishing village outdoors Seattle.

“Individuals of Zee World, Loosen up!”

What could be mentioned by means of introduction for this author? I imply, after we’re speaking about Tom Robbins, we’re speaking about somebody who has been accused of writing “the way in which Dolly Parton seems”, whose predilection for wordplay and profound material has earned him a worldwide following verging on rock-star standing, and whose debut novel One other Roadside Attraction (1971) is rumored to have been discovered mendacity on the toilet ground beside the physique of Elvis Presley. 

“His writing model is concurrently mental and immature, high-brow and low-brow, snobby and completely prepared to dabble in all our human flaws,” posted one fan as a dictionary entry for “Tom Robbins” on the City Dictionary web site. It’s little marvel, the response Robbins will get. With phrases like “He had a smile like the primary scratch on a brand new automobile”, or “His voice may have been shoveled from a gravel pit”, his work is rife with offbeat imagery and quirky wordplay harking back to Thomas Pynchon and Richard Brautigan (each amongst Robbins’ favourite writers). Like these writers, an undercurrent of seriousness prevails in Robbins’ comedic expressions, often effervescent to the floor to convey profundities on the character of the universe, the human situation, et al.  

For instance, in Skinny Legs and All (1990), a chapter begins with, “An Arab and a Jew opened a restaurant collectively throughout the road from the United Nations…” The restaurant is named Isaac & Ishmael’s, and listening to it described sounds extra like the start of a bar joke—extra frivolous than profound. However then Tom Robbins continues:

It was to be a gesture of surprising cooperation, a symbolic reconciliation, an exemplary assertion on behalf of peace—within the Center East and past. If it could possibly be demonstrated on a small scale that conventional, “pure” enemies may be part of collectively for a standard function worthwhile to each, then may it not encourage adversaries on a worldwide degree to look into each other’s eyes, to discover avenues of mutually useful friendship? That was the rhetoric, that was the hope.

This juxtaposition of playfulness and seriousness, what Tom Robbins dubs the “comedian and cosmic”, exemplifies Robbins’ modus operandi. His work is grounded within the mindset of lightheartedness, however an knowledgeable lightheartedness, wherein “playfulness and wit rescue the earnest thinker from despair over humanity’s inhumanity”. 

“Cheerfully cynical,” is how Robbins places it. “My view of the world just isn’t that completely different from Kafka’s, actually. The distinction is that Kafka let it make him depressing and I refuse. Life is just too quick. My private motto has all the time been: Pleasure in the end. Not simply [mindless] pleasure, however pleasure in the end.”

On account of his “joyous” mindset, there’s a tendency amongst reviewers of Tom Robbins’ work—detractors and followers alike—to characterize his writing model as “chatty, digressive, and eclectic”. Of Robbins’ second novel, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), one critic mentioned studying it was like “listening to an older stoner-buddy philosophy-major rapping concerning the wonderful insights he skilled throughout his final acid journey. His powers of description are so fertile that he desires to explain the identical factor a number of alternative ways, and this descriptive fecundity, whereas usually pleasant, is simply as prone to annoy or obfuscate with its cloying cuteness and extreme verbiage.”

Tom Robbins’ Loopy Knowledge

To totally perceive the logic behind Tom Robbins’ writing—and even he’ll inform you this—one have to be conversant in an Jap philosophy referred to as Loopy Knowledge. Loopy knowledge is a Vajrayana Buddhist idea that took root in Tibet throughout the Eighth century C.E., when the Indian guru Padmasambhava first got here there and launched Tibetans to the buddhadarma (the Buddhist teachings). It’s a side of the Buddhist ethos that offers with a person’s perspective on the world. It basically urges one to domesticate one’s innate playfulness, to indulge within the primal impulse for goofing off, and to see the world for the mind-boggling enigma that it’s, however regard it much less like a frown-inducing riddle and extra like a grand cosmic joke.  

“Loopy knowledge is, in fact, the alternative of typical knowledge,” Robbins says. “It’s knowledge that intentionally swims towards the present so as to keep away from being swept alongside within the numbing wake of bourgeoisie compromise; knowledge that flouts taboos so as to undermine their energy; knowledge that evolves when one, whereas refusing to avert one’s gaze from the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on pleasure in the end.”

Wes Nisker, a widely known scholar on the topic, provides this definition:

Loopy knowledge is the knowledge of the saint, the Zen grasp, the poet, the mad scientist, and the idiot. [It] sees that we reside in a world of many illusions, that the emperor has no garments, and that a lot of human perception and habits is ritualized nonsense. Loopy knowledge loves paradox and puns and pie fights… [It] laughs at our ridiculous methods and reveals compassion for the struggling that outcomes from them.

In loopy knowledge, there are 4 archetypal figures: the clown, the jester, the trickster, and the idiot. Wherever loopy knowledge emerges, in no matter tradition or context, time or place, its presence is all the time marked by the looks of a number of beings belonging to this archetypal quartet. From the Laughing Buddha to The Three Stooges, from Jesus Christ to Mark Twain, from Coyote, that epic rascal of Native American folklore, to Albert Einstein (and his hair stylist!); these archetypes seem in a large number of varieties to mock our inflexible social conventions and poke enjoyable at our self-seriousness. They problem us, “every in their very own particular manner—with questions, tales, or laughter, or by providing their very own radically completely different model of actuality,” and urge us—usually coercively, by the use of Chinese language tickle torture—to query our function within the universe and the downcast, solemn angle with which we strategy it. 

Every of the 4 archetypes performs a distinct operate—the clown demonstrates our human awkwardness and tries to make us snort about it; the jester criticizes and exposes our missteps; the trickster embodies our primitive, sneaky facet; and the idiot reminds us of our infantile, idealistic beginnings. One trait the archetypes share is their skill to get into bother and get proper again out of bother.  

The clown will get bopped, the trickster is dismembered and blown aside, the jester might have his head minimize off by the king, … and the idiot is about to martyred by offended mob. However simply when it appears that evidently all is misplaced, they rise once more, recovered and entire … (The dismembered Coyote reassembles, Jesus Christ rises into eternal life.) Due to their humor, or their innocence; or as a result of their revelations are so vital, these loopy knowledge characters are immortal. (Nisker)

No matter which loopy knowledge archetype is at the moment prancing on the native scene, they’re all there to ship the world the identical fundamental message: Loosen up!

This similar message presents itself in Tom Robbins’ fourth novel Jitterbug Fragrance (1984). It comes within the type of “Erleichda!”  Erleichda is a made-up phrase that Robbins invented particularly for the novel. Based on the narration, erleichda belongs to the language of an obscure and long-lost tribe in historical Bohemia. “It’s a transitive verb, an exclamation, a command of which a precise English translation is unattainable. The closest equal in all probability can be the phrase:  Lighten Up!” 

In Jitterbug Fragrance, this loopy knowledge message seems twice: first, ploughed by a fingertip on the mantle of a hearth, “the place the mud lay thick as fur” and second, because the final phrase uttered by Albert Einstein on his deathbed, which, satirically, his nurses mistook for unintelligible German.  

We hear this message echoed but once more by the incessant squawking of the speaking parrot in Robbins’ Fierce Invalids Residence from Sizzling Local weathers (2000), saying—in a Portuguese accent—“Individuals of the zee world, chill out!”  

When viewing these phrases (and Robbins’ work basically) by the prism of Loopy Knowledge, the diploma to which this Jap philosophy has influenced the creator turns into a lot clearer. Actions, characters, dialogue, et al., that may have appeared whimsical, frivolous, or simply plain hokey on the outset abruptly appear to make sense.

There are different methods wherein Loopy Knowledge rears its kooky head in Tom Robbins’ writing: language—which is what the creator is greatest recognized for. “His writing is concurrently ironic and heartfelt. It has a type of innocence whereas by no means shying away from the vividly erotic. Straining on the limits of metaphor and simile, pumping up plots to inside a half-breath of exploding, Robbins hurtles himself excessive and outdoors the envelope, scandalizing hidebound traditionalists.”

Tom Robbins performs with phrases in a steadily amusing manner that, like Loopy Knowledge itself, forces a type of revelation on the reader, inflicting typical pictures to abruptly turn out to be extraordinary, unique, and thought-provoking in a fashion they by no means had been earlier than. “Wit and playfulness aren’t solely critical, they’re a type of knowledge and a method of psychic survival,” Robbins says. “A comic book sensibility can open secret doorways which can be closed to the sober and the prudent. I’ll go as far as to say {that a} critically playful angle represents humanity’s simplest transcendence of evil.” 

The next descriptions are just some examples of how Robbins units a scene with “witty” and “playful” phrase combos: 

Louisiana in September was like an obscene cellphone name from nature. The air—moist, sultry, secretive, and much from contemporary—felt as if it had been being exhaled into one’s face. Generally it even sounded like heavy respiratory. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the thriller scent of the river scented the ambiance, amplifying the intrusion of natural sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and oppressive, tender and violent on the similar time. In New Orleans, within the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this high quality of breath, though right here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, as a result of fumes expelled by vacationer buses, vehicles delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Avenue, a mass-transit motor coach named Need. The one method to hold up on the obscene caller was to put in air-con (Jitterbug).

With regards to Egypt, Ellen Cherry was so obscure she thought Ramses II was a Jazz piano participant. From that, we’d conclude that she was equally dumb about Jazz (Skinny Legs).

When one is on a pilgrimage to the Canyon of the Vaginas, one must be cautious about asking instructions (Wild Geese ).

Tom Robbins as soon as revealed in an interview the content material of a fan letter written by a lady who labored in a “scientific area”, and whom he’d by no means met. She wrote: “Your books make me assume, they make me snort, they make me attractive, and so they make me conscious of the marvel of all the things in life.” Robbins adopted that by saying, “And I assumed, hey, that’s fairly nice. That’s excellent, in reality. You possibly can’t ask any extra from a novel than that.”

On condition that Loopy Knowledge beliefs have developed independently of each other in a large number of cultures all through historical past and the world labeling Tom Robbins’ religious affect as a purely Jap one could also be considerably a matter of debate. Definitely, “clowning seems in lots of contexts, particularly amongst primal peoples, as an ingredient of sacrality. In lots of circumstances the sacred is handled as incomplete, if not insufficient, with out due reverence for folly and the clown because the manifestation of folly.” 

Nonetheless, we all know that Tibetan Buddhists cultivated the idea to a excessive diploma and even gave it its present identify. At any price, it’s protected to say that Loopy Knowledge is a religious boxcar not typically hitched to the Western practice of thought. In fact, examples of Loopy Knowledge do abound within the fashionable West.  They vary from “Joris Karl Huysmans stitching his eyelids shut as a result of he believed that at age thirty, he’d already seen a lot it will take him the remainder of his life to course of all of it, to Muhammad Ali dancing in his undershorts on the Houston Induction Heart after committing a felony by refusing to be conscripted into the military. Sadly, nonetheless, Loopy Knowledge within the West is sort of all the time devoid of a religious dimension.”

The explanation for that, says Tom Boyd, a scholar on the phenomenology of sacred folly, is that the time period Western “thought” is principally tantamount to the time period Western “Christendom”. Western Christendom doesn’t acknowledge “the connection between comedy and the sacred” the way in which that Jap cultures do.  He says, “Western Christendom has usually been fairly hostile, and all the time ambivalent, towards the comedian illustration of life.” To wit, farting could also be humorous (even uplifting), however you possibly can’t do it in church; it’s merely inappropriate. 

Herein lies the good irony of Western spirituality, provides Nisker, as a result of Jesus Christ was, in each manner, a great manifestation of the Loopy Knowledge archetype referred to as the idiot. The idiot is taken into account probably the most highly effective of the 4 archetypes and the one with probably the most to show. The Idiot can also be the primary (and solely unnumbered) card within the tarot deck:

He’s outdoors the boundaries of quantity or sequence, outdoors all classes, past good and evil.  Innocence is his trademark… Jesus, a Jew, denounced for his or her corruption and collaboration with the Romans the Jewish institution of Judea.  He chased the cash changers out of the synagogue, gave up all his possessions, and preached to the bottom courses.  There may be little marvel why the authorities known as him mad and put him to dying. (Nisker)

Jesus was a idiot! At the moment, you can no sooner make that assertion in any Western church—and plenty of public arenas, for that matter—than you can go gasoline audibly and giggle from it in these exact same assembly locations. The Jesus-fool idea has largely vanished from Western thought, however, Nisker provides, there’s nonetheless proof of this antiquated notion lurking in plain sight. 

As a testomony to his energy, the Idiot is among the few characters from the tarot deck to make it into our fashionable taking part in playing cards. He turns into the joker—all the time wild, and nearly all the time welcome. Just like the Idiot, the joker is with out quantity or trump… He has no particular worth and so is of the best worth. The joker is mightier than the kings and better than the aces. (Nisker)

So the notion of the holy idiot, and Loopy Knowledge basically, has been suppressed in Western tradition. What does this imply for Tom Robbins, who says his aim as a author has been “to twine pictures and concepts into huge subversive pretzels of life” and create work that’s “a fusion of prankish Asian knowledge, extra-dimensional Latin magic, and two-fisted North American poetic pizzazz?” Properly, principally, Robbins says, it means a number of adverse guide critiques in America and Europe, and a relatively scant quantity of scholarly consideration given to him in relation to different writers. (I can vouch for the latter declare.)

“You see,” Tom Robbins tells one interviewer, “the underpinnings of my literary aesthetic are usually not anchored in Western custom, and that’s the one custom [literary critics] acknowledge and perceive.  They’re hemmed in by the narrowness of their expertise. There’s nothing of their cultural background to arrange them to acknowledge, not to mention embrace, the universe’s predilection for paradox and novelty. As they are saying within the Orient, ‘To the unenlightened, the God-laugh will all the time appear frivolous.’”

In an article printed in Harper’s Journal in 2004, Tom Robbins provides: “It’s good to bear [that] in thoughts when making an attempt to grasp the indignation with which the East Coast institution greets work that dares to be each humorous and lethal critical in the identical breath. The left-handed path runs alongside terrain upon which the bowtie-sattvas discover it troublesome to tread. Their maps are inaccurate and so they have the unsuitable sneakers.”

Now we have been discussing the affect of a Tibetan Buddhist philosophy on a recent American creator and, bang-up job however, I see no manner of continuing in good type that doesn’t contain mentioning the fairly sizeable pink elephant that—bejeweled tusk to tail and swathed in temple paint—has been standing within the room with us your complete time, and which heretofore now we have uncared for to say. That elephant, in fact, is J.D. Salinger.  

It’s nearly unattainable not to consider Salinger when discussing Buddhism and Western literature in the identical dialog. Simply as Robbins’ work is steeped within the tea of Loopy Knowledge, so is Salinger’s work permeated with Buddhist ideas (notably Zen Buddhism), and we invariably see signs of loopy knowledge inside that permeation.  

Salinger’s Seymour Glass, as an illustration, is a traditional instance of one of many 4 main loopy knowledge archetypes: the holy idiot, which is thought to be the “most potent of the archetypes and in addition probably the most succesful trainer.” This places Seymour in the identical religious league as Jesus Christ. Certainly, Seymour is even referred to by his youthful brother Buddy as “the true artist-seer, the heavenly idiot who can and does produce magnificence.” In that very same narration, Buddy continues to explain Seymour: “Absolutely he was all actual issues to us: our blue-striped unicorn, double-lensed burning glass, our advisor genius, our moveable conscience, our one full poet and, inevitably, I believe … our fairly infamous mystic and unbalanced kind.” 

As revealed within the Glass household tales, Seymour is basically a smart misfit whose “mysterious equanimity, which neither Buddy, nor Muriel, nor [any of those around him], nor apparently nearly all of Salinger’s critics can perceive, is sensible from a Taoist perspective” and thus, from a loopy knowledge perspective, as effectively. Regardless of Seymour’s quirky demeanor, or maybe due to it, he can keep mental and religious sway over the Glass household siblings even after dying. On this sense, Seymour is immortal, in line with the notion that he’s a Loopy Knowledge archetype.  

“I can’t even sit right down to a goddamn meal, to today, with out first saying the 4 Nice Vows (of Buddhism) underneath my breath,” says Zooey, talking of Seymour’s affect, “and I’ll lay any odds you need that Franny can’t, both.”

Meditation grasp and scholar Chögyam Trungpa describes the overwhelming power of a holy idiot that’s radiated and projected onto these round him in order that his affect is unavoidable, simply as Seymour’s affect was inevitable and irreversible for the Glass household siblings. He says:

When a loopy knowledge particular person decides to work with you, when he decides to liberate you, you turn out to be his sufferer. You haven’t any method to run away from him. In the event you attempt to run backward, that house has been already coated; for those who attempt to run ahead, that house has additionally been coated. You will have a sense of choicelessness…. So the loopy knowledge trainer is considerably dictatorial. The house he creates is thronged, crammed with a robust cost of heavy enlightenment, heavy primordial sanity. 

In fact, as Buddy Glass places it, “the hallmark mostly figuring out this particular person is that he very steadily behaves like a idiot, even an imbecile.”

In Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, there’s a character, “The Chink”, whose habits and performance as a religious information intently parallels that of Salinger’s Seymour Glass and a loopy knowledge idiot basically. The Chink lives an remoted life in a cave up on Shiwash Ridge overlooking the Rubber Rose Ranch, a spot that, amongst different issues, has “the best outhouse within the Dakotas”. He could be heard singing from a distance, “Ho-Ho, He-He, Hum-Hum”, and could be seen dancing bare at occasions and waving his genitals on the cowgirls. 

Granted, Seymour Glass by no means does this in any of Salinger’s tales, not actually, at any price, however the idiosyncratic nature of the 2 characters is extremely comparable. So, too, is their imparting of knowledge. The Chink topics Sissy Hankshaw to quite a few prolonged discourses on time and the universe, a few of which she comprehends and a few of which she fails to grasp utterly. Robbins describes this as “the hit or miss of the cosmic pumpkin”.

So, by way of Jap affect, there are parallels between Tom Robbins and J.D. Salinger; nonetheless, there are additionally noteworthy dissimilarities. We discover upon nearer examination that the thematic hyperlink between Robbins and Salinger may be very skinny, the place Buddhism is anxious; so skinny, in reality, that one would have bother strolling that line for very lengthy earlier than falling flat on one’s dharma.

To start with, Salinger’s use of faith (each Buddhism and Christianity, for that matter) is far more overt and technical than Robbins’. Working example are the Glass household tales, the place we get a robust dose of what one scholar dubs as Salinger’s “Orientalism” within the type of Taoist parables (or koans), and repeated point out of assorted Buddhist ideas, together with the aforementioned 4 Nice Vows, which Zooey recites verbatim in a dialogue along with his mom: “Nonetheless innumerable beings are, I vow to save lots of them; nonetheless inexhaustible the passions are, I vow to extinguish them; nonetheless immeasurable the Dharmas are, I vow to grasp them; nonetheless incomparable the Buddha-truth is, I vow to attain it.”

This form of literal transcription of Buddhist religious beliefs just isn’t prone to be present in any of Tom Robbins’ novels. With Robbins, we get playful allusions to dharmic ideas woven into the plot, see them acted out by his characters, and listen to the echo of loopy knowledge precepts in phrases like “the Infinite Goof” and “It’s what it’s. You might be what you it. There are not any errors.” 

Nonetheless, Robbins by no means explicitly identifies any of them as belonging to a specific philosophy, Jap or in any other case. The ideas are merely introduced, unnamed and with out wrappers, like candies from a heart-shaped Valentine’s field. It’s as much as the reader to take a look at the legend on the underside of the lid (that’s if the reader can find it) and draw conclusions about their philosophical origins. Certainly, is just by interviews and journal articles that Robbins has ever uttered the phrases “loopy knowledge” in relation to his novels.  

Granted, Salinger’s “A Good Day for Bananafish” follows the identical path of subtlety upon which Robbin’s treads, however Salinger doesn’t cease there; fairly, he begins there with Seymour and proceeds to elucidate Seymour’s nature with the heavy-handed religiosity that we see in later Glass household tales.  Thus, “Bananafish” is considerably anomalous in that respect, and it’s not subtlety (not less than in issues Buddhistic and Seymour) for which Salinger is mostly regarded.

Additionally, together with Salinger’s non secular explicitness, there comes a component of strict adherence to these precepts among the many Glass Household siblings—Buddy doing his share of familial indoctrination because of his proximity to Seymour, Franny reciting the “Jesus Prayer”, Zooey along with his 4 Vows—for whom, “as a substitute of being enlightening, the 4 vows have turn out to be obsessive”—and Seymour, himself, committing suicide.  

Seymour, in his roundabout manner, is basically on a Buddha-esque journey to eradicate all of the ache that comes with being in existence. He’s following what’s known as the Noble Eightfold Path to enlightenment. “Seymour achieves nirvana by dwelling a great life and ending something that causes struggling. He is ready to attain nirvana by committing suicide.” For Seymour, letting go of that remaining little bit of struggling requires letting go of life on this explicit airplane of existence, hitting what Robbins calls “the corporeal delete key”/

This marks the purpose of best divergence between Tom Robbins and J.D. Salinger. None of Robbins’ characters have, or would, ever go about issues fairly so drastically, nor would they adhere so stringently to anybody perception, even Loopy Knowledge. Whereas Salinger kind of performs by the principles of Buddhism in his tales, Robbins treats the principles of Loopy Knowledge extra like a New York Metropolis taxi driver regards lane stripes and site visitors legal guidelines: as free tips that may be veered away from at any second he feels the necessity. 

“Orthodox Buddhism is de facto simply as inflexible as orthodox Christianity,” Robbins says in an interview. “It permits a bit of extra room for progress, however not a terrific deal extra.” In one other interview with Shambhala Solar journal, Robbins gives the next message, which additional illustrates the distinction between his and Salinger’s interpretation of Buddhist doctrines: 

I’m a word-slinger, not a scholar; I’ve a monkey thoughts, not a monk thoughts…  Not like Zen, loopy knowledge just isn’t a observe, it’s an angle. I’m drawn to Zen’s deal with absolute freedom and all-embracing oneness, its reverence for nature, and its respect for humor. When Zen or tantric masters go to North America, they’re usually astonished by how earnest, how overly critical, Westerners are about their religious observe. They’ll go to a zendo in Minnesota, for instance, and marvel aloud why no one there’s laughing. To be uptight about one’s Zen observe, to turn out to be connected to it, is to overlook the entire level of it; one may as effectively hook up with one of many fear-based, authoritarian, guilt-and-redemption religions.

In Jitterbug Fragrance, we see an historical Bohemian king named Alobar turn out to be obsessive about reaching immortality—not dying—by a mix of distinctive mediation and sexual exercise. Alobar seeks enlightenment within the reverse manner from Seymour; he’s on a quest to stave off his demise completely and even “train dying some manners” within the course of.  

Have been Tom Robbins ever to kill off considered one of his central characters by way of self-infliction, I think about he would do it much less within the method of Seymour Glass and extra within the trend of Charlie Parker, who died laughing at a juggler on TV, which was, in any case, a really loopy wisdom-esque manner for “Chicken” to fly the worldly coop.  

To keep away from concluding this essay with the dying of Charlie Parker, a decidedly blue notice to finish on, I’ll depart it with a pair of quotes and, in doing so, furnish one more instance of a Loopy Knowledge archetype. Chögyam Trungpa described Loopy Knowledge as “an harmless way of thinking that has the standard of early morning—contemporary, glowing, and utterly awake”. 

A long time earlier than Trungpa made that assertion, Jack Kerouac wrote in a poem named for the late Jazz musician Charlie Parker: “And the expression on his face was as calm, lovely and profound because the picture of the Buddha represented within the East. The lidded eyes. The expression that claims ‘all is effectively.’ This was what Charlie Parker mentioned when he performed: ‘All is effectively.’ He had the sensation of early within the morning, like a hermit’s pleasure…”

Works Cited

Boyd, Tom W. “Clowns, Harmless Outsiders within the Sanctuary: A Phenomenology of Sacred Folly.” Journal of In style Tradition 22, no. 3. 1988.

Geddes, Dan. “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues – Language Over Story”. The Satirist. November, 1999.

Gerald, Lawrence. “Basking Robbins: An Interview with Tom Robbins”. Excessive Frontiers Journal. November 1985.

Hoyser, Catherine E. “Tom Robbins: A Vital Companion”. Vital Companions to
In style Modern Writers. Lorena Laura Stookey. Greenwood Press. 1997

Jammoe, touch upon “Tom Robbins”, The City Dictionary, remark posted 10 October 2005.

Kerouac, Jack. “Charlie Parker” Poetry for the Beat Technology, Audio recording. Hanover Data. 1959.

Lundquist, James. “A Cloister of Actuality: The Glass Household in J. D. Salinger“. Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1979.

Matuz, Roger. Modern Literary Criticism. 74, Daniel G. Marowski. Gacl. 1993.

Miller, Andrea. “Knowledge of Rebels.” Shambala Solar. July, 2008.

Nisker, Wes. The Important Loopy Knowledge. Ten Velocity Press. 2001.

O’Connor, Dennis L. “J.D. Salinger’s Spiritual Pluralism: The Instance of Elevate Excessive the Roof Beam, Carpenters.” The Southern Assessment. April 1984.

O’Connell, Nicholas. On the Subject’s Finish: Interviews With 22 Pacific Northwest Writers. Seattle: College of Washington Press. 1998.

Reising, Russell. “An Interview with Tom Robbins.” Modern Literature 42, no. 3. 2001.

Richards, Linda. “Tom Robbins.” January Journal. June, 2000.

Robbins, Tom. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Random Home, Inc., 1976, web page 46.

Robbins, Tom. “In Defiance of Gravity: Writing, Knowledge, and the Fabulous Membership Gemini”. Harper’s Journal. September, 2004.

Robbins, Tom. Jitterbug Fragrance. [Printed on inside back-flap.] Random Home, Inc. 1984.

Robbins, Tom. Skinny Legs and All.Random Home, Inc., 1990, web page 126.

Robbins, Tom. Villa Incognito.Random Home, Inc., 2003.

Salinger, J.D. Franny and Zooey. Little, Brown and Firm. 1961.

Salinger, J.D. Elevate Excessive the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction. Little, Brown and Firm. 1959.

Trungpa, Chogyam. Loopy Knowledge. Dharma Ocean Sequence. Sherab Chodzin. Shambhala Publications, Inc. 2001.