Besides being among the more common decorations of dorm rooms for a certain brand of college student, the novels of Tom Robbins occupy an odd space in the American fiction landscape. They are big and broad comedic canvases, sweeping up oddball characters in goofball plots stippled with sharp bursts of screwball dialogue. Think of him of as a more clownish Vonnegut with less of a thing for science fiction or moral investigation.

All of which means Robbins does not take himself too seriously, no matter how well he writes. This remains true even when some critics tried to push him one way or the other:

One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy…

Why choose? Sometimes you can have both. Just like life.