Reddit mentions of Still Life with Woodpecker: A Novel

You know what? I'm sure everyone's going to share any of the actual books on awakening or enlightenment or whatever (although I don't see The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts listed yet, and that was instrumental for getting the ball rolling for me before I even knew there was a ball to roll - I still pick it up every now and again and read passages).

But anyway, in my early 20's, I was REALLY into Tom Robbins, and I realize now that those books connected me with a truth I didn't yet know how to find. He's a freakin' genius. His words still, to this day, make me giddy.

So if you're ever interested in wild, hilarious, raucous fiction that gropes the awakened viewpoint like a drunk in a whorehouse, I recommend these books:

Skinny Legs and All

Jitterbug Perfume

Still Life With Woodpecker

He has more, and they're all equally is good in many ways - those three just happen to be my favorite.

I just finished Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins (1980). It's a sort of whimsical narrative, a bit in the style of Kurt Vonnegut, that also addresses big ideas.

From the main characters' dialogs and thoughts, here are a few quotes that jumped out at me. First this one:

>"Don't let yourself be victimized by the age you live in. It's not the times that will bring us down, any more than it's society. When you put blame on society, then you end up turning to society for the solution."

Here's another:

>"There a tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsibilty and treat them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with your soul. It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it."

And finally, this:

>"The [wise person] recognizes that the movement, the organization, the institution, the revolution, if it comes to that, is merely a backdrop for his or her own personal drama and that to pretend otherwise is to surrender freedom and will to the totalitarian impulse."

Surrender to the totalitarian impulse. That was powerful to me.

It got me thinking, so many people have argued for this sort of value of the individual over the group before: John Locke, John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, for example. But they've all proferred different reasons, I think.

Locke's theory of individualism (so to speak), seems to primarily stem from rage at authoritarian oppression. Okay, that makes sense, given all the unenlightened kings and religious leaders of Locke's day.

Mill, on the other hand, raged against the "tyranny of the majority" that Locke's dream of individual freedom had by Mill's era expressed in democracy. Democracy, Mill reasoned, only seemed to work if everyone was well educated, enlightened so to speak (which didn't happen very often). So people had better not follow the crowd, he warned.

Then finally, along comes Dewey who appears to argue in favor of greater inter-connectedness, more supportive connections between people rather than separateness, as a way to maximize individualism, mostly by helping reduce each individual's risk of suffering, poverty, and vulnerability to oppression.

Three different thinkers. Three rather different perspectives on individualism.

In a sense Still Life with Woodpecker personalizes these same critical issues around individualism, it seems to me, with individualism addressed this time not as merely a societal matter, but rather as an issue of great personal importance. Indeed, as the book's characters outrageously claim, your personal history, the movements you belong to, the organizations and institutions supporting or fighting against you, even the revolution you may be caught up in itself are merely backdrops for you own personal drama. In other words, you are important, just for being you.

To pretend otherwise is to surrender.

and you like scifi.

I would suggest this book, Omon Ra then. I read it two years ago and loved it. Almost has a David Lynch feel to it but less heart in a way, more about the psychology of what a corrupt gov't. would do if they had to fake going into space.

I'd also suggest Still Life With Woodpecker. Hysterical book and one of my all time favorites. It's got everything: Love, dynamite, 70's-era pop psychology. Tom Robbins is a treasure and this is his best book IMO.