Book Review: Even Cowgirls get the Blues

This is my first book review. Please insult it if you think it's lacking. I'm starting out with a Tom Robbins book, almost three years since I read the book that was my book for months: Skinny Legs and All.

Before I review this book, let me just make a disclaimer. I read books like I read the Bible growing up in Lutheran school-- I assume that the author knows where he's going and that the words are purposeful. If there seems to be a problem, I tend to blame my small mind rather than the author. And in every scene I read a theme.

Another disclaimer: how much I enjoy books has very much to do with their aesthetic. The prose I like has a very precise amount of thickness- it's enjoyable and can be picked at for a while, but it doesn't give me an aneurysm. So if the writing is yummy, I will generally read more awesomeness into the book that is there in the first place.

Ok, so Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Like I said before, I have only read two of Robbins' books: this one and Skinny Legs and All. And man, these are great plots just for their strangeness.

Although Cowgirls doesn't have the epic quality of Skinny Legs, you do get to visit stuffy New York apartments, secluded Native American cave people, a crazy "wise man," rowdy cowgirls of all sorts, a neurotic, self-absorbed psychiatrist named after the author, the Clockworks, and the backseats of many, many cars.

That's because the main character, Miss Sissy Hankshaw, has enormous, repulsive/beautiful thumbs that have made her stick out like-- I won't say it-- in her small southern tabaccoland town. Those gigantic thumbs of her prevent her from ever having the chance to just be in the background or fit in at all. But instead of despairing, she decides to worship them. And she follows her thumbs where they lead her-- hitchhiking across the nation before finally brushing with normalcy and confronting her nature. There are, of course, many other surprising confrontations, and Robbins' hallmark moments with animated otherwise-inanimate objects.

This book focuses on Sissy and her "preaxial digits." Although many themes flow from the story, the most striking one to me is oddness in society. Whether or not people are born strange or chose to be that way is often a matter of debate-- but it's not in Sissy case. Those thumbs of her ensure that she will have to make big decisions about how she will characterize herself and her relationship to the world. Being different without being apologetic about it comes at a big price, and I think this book is very much about the cost of being different.

Being different and being free are almost the same thing for the purposes of this book, and Robbin's demonstrates in a million ways how civilization interferes with these qualities. This idea is brought to life in the image of the giant whooping cranes, dwindling in numbers, that descend occasionally near the Rubber Rose Ranch that the cowgirls inhabit. No more plot spoilers here.

In the end, there's no satisfying "moral of the story" in Cowgirls. The author explicitly points out the flaws in the logic of all of the characters, so in the end you're not sure who to believe. With so many other themes to digest, and none clearly resolving in the end, there are more than a handful of approaches a reader could take in characterizing Sissy's experience. But to me, the nice thing is that the story is honest to life, in the sense that every choice Sissy makes-- to embrace the individuality-made-flesh that is her thumbs or to find the love and security that she craves-- is made at the expense of something else. And maybe there's a happy ending.

So, this book is fun, fast and smooth to read. It was written in '76 but it feels up-to-the-minute. It can get cheezy at moments and preachy at others, but the tone is tongue in cheek overall. In any case, Sissy is hard to forget. Worth the read.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues receives
4 out of 5 cookies for yummy prose
3 out of 5 moons for symbolism
4 out of 5 owls for intellectual stimulation
5 out of 5 bras for women's themes
3 out of 5 bibles for teaching me lessons

over all: 3.5 out of 4 clover leaves.