half asleep in frog pajamas by tom robbins

Certainly, I'd like to write faster, but whenever I've tried it, the language has suffered.

I've been writing, yes and building a house and traveling and generally following the Charmer's pipes down oblique paths of mysticism and eroticism. Why so long since his last book? 'Hey, it's only been five and a half years. All of us who've managed to survive intense love affairs, political confrontations, or periods of personal debauchery might be said to be fierce invalids home from hot climates.'įierce Invalids, Robbins explains, was inspired 'by an entry from Bruce Chatwin's journal, by a CIA agent I met in Southeast Asia, by the mystery surrounding the lost prophecy of the Virgin of Fatima, by the increasing evidence that the interplay of opposites is the engine that runs the universe, and by embroidered memories of old Terry and the Pirates comic books.' 'While it has quite literal significance within the context of my plot,' he adds, 'it has wider meanings, as well. Robbins says he took the title from his own translation of a line from a Rimbaud poem. In a recent interview, Robbins explained that he changed the first title because he didn't like the misleading connotations of sweetness ('while the book is upbeat and exuberant, it decidedly is not sweet') and because he kept having to explain to Generation X friends that 'wahoo' was a cry of exhilaration that did not require 'a dot and a com' after it. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue however, it's more appealing than the rejected working title, Syrup of Wahoo.

You won't see Robbins calling his books The Firm or The Notebook.īut for sheer mouthful of chewy syllables, you can't beat the title of Robbins's latest novel - Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Still Life with Woodpecker, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, Skinny Legs and All - these are not your usual well-behaved titles of popular novels. His novels lure the adventurous and warn the timid with outrageous titles, which accurately predict outrageousness within. Tom Robbins believes in truth in advertising.

Half asleep in frog pajamas by tom robbins