In the literature of Tom Robbins recurring themes and processes are nature, solitude, juxtaposition, learning, and change. In interviews he has said: “I never go to sleep without rainwater on my brow. It’s like a benediction. It reaffirms my connection with nature.... Being alone is one of the most difficult things to learn, but you can’t succeed if you can’t spend time by yourself.”

While Robbins’ style often appears freewheeling and stream of consciousness, he maintains that connection is one of the keys to his writing. “I try to weave a tapestry. The adjective bone is connected to the noun bone which is connected to... and on and on,” he says, describing the means by which his prose, heavy with metaphor and hyperbole, is constructed.

Reflecting his sense of simultaneous urgency and ease, Robbins’ writing is also characterized by juxtaposition of the serious with the absurd. “His perspective on life,” Edlin says, “is a mixture of romanticism, eroticism, and mysticism. To me that’s an honest, true and valuable way of looking at the world. You can change the world by how you look at it. It will become primarily what you are looking for.” For Robbins that is a love of distant places, solitude, novelty, mystery, and secrets. “I’m attracted to the poetics of life,” he says.

In Jitterbug Perfume Whitmer sees that Robbins “...celebrates the joy of individual expression and self-reliance.... The big difference between Robbins and many other socially conscious writers is that he brings us alternatives and solutions; constructive plans that build on his optimism. As he sees it, ‘The problem that is most fixable is our personalities, our own brains. Political problems are secondary. Unless each individual works on himself or herself, -- and until we solve the philosophical problems -- we are doomed to solving political problems over and over and over again.... He not only entertains, he educates,...” and his writing is a “...strange union of circus and sermon.”

The purpose of Robbins’ imagery, says Strickland, is “to awaken in the reader his or her own sense of wonder. If you get too predictable and too symmetrical, you lull readers into a -- not a literal sleep -- but you put part of their brain to sleep.... The universe is playful; quantum physics teaches us that the universe is made up of irrevocable laws and random playfulness.... Evolution frequently does things just for the hell of it -- why not writers too?”

Strickland illustrates his ideas about writing when he states: “But you can’t be too concerned, too occupied, with conforming to a style when you write. I think this is the best way to approach writing: first of all, you have to eat your technique. You can’t write technique any more than you can speak grammar. So, you develop some technique, and then you eat it. Digest it. Eliminate it so it’s a part of yourself; it’s in your blood but you’re not concerned with it anymore. And then all you do is, you write a sentence and go where it takes you. You take a trip on the page. You go where sentences lead you. It’s a journey.”

I was thoroughly excited, awakened, and entertained when reading Jitterbug Perfume. Tom Robbins’ style of artistic discipline and process is similar to my own. I too like nature for refreshment and visual reference. I weave tapestry with fibers, not words. I am attracted to the poetics of life and materials -- evident in my use of mixed media and juxtaposition of materials. I definitely prefer the asymmetrical and precarious in design and structure.