Το άρωμα του ονείρου (1984)

Tom Robbins in this book opened my eyes to the wild, wild world of modern satire, absurdity, light-hearted comparative religious blasphemy, and BEETS.

Just ignore the stench that just entered the room... it's only my old pal and buddy, PAN.

Drunken revelries are pushed aside for the enjoyment of tons of sex, hot baths, and more sex as the keys to immortality, but if you think that's just fine for a novel like this, THINK AGAIN. A genius waitress working in a Mexican restaurant in Washington State is working on a 1000-year-old mystery perfume while a 1000-year-old sacrificial king refuses to die, working as a janitor. Add a wild cast of Tibetan monks, a low-caste ancient woman, the coming floral revolution, and more sex than you can shake your stick at, and throw it into one hell of a funny satirical soup full of great lines and beets on your doorsteps.

This book changed my life the first time I read it, but I didn't exactly fall into a quest for the perfect taco... I went on a road trip to find the perfect pizza, tho, and while I only did the homeless wandering bit after college for a month, Alobar got to do it for a millennia! I'm so jealous! Oh, yeah, and he's easily had more sex than ANYONE in the world. And baths. Sigh.

Such a wild, irreverent ride. :) I read this and then I look at what Gaiman did later. I definitely thought of Robbins when I read American Gods. :) It's a bit funnier than American Gods, too. :) ( )

been looking for a christopher mooresque voice and i think i found him ( )

This must be the strangest book I've ever read. It's a hodge podge of some of my favorite motifs, and I still can't believe I found so many of them in one book . Plus a few extra beets. :D
It is a light read, with several intense moments. I connected with it on a strange level, and it felt very personal.
The prose is wonderful, and I found myself highlighting the passages more often than usual. Oddly, the book reminded me of Palimpsest by C.M. Valente, which is comparable to this one only in richness of language, and falls short in narration and character development.
The characters in Jitterbug Perfume are likeable and unforgettable, if not very deep.

“You know what I mean? Real and unreal, beautiful and strange, like a dream. It got me high as a kite, but it didn’t last long enough. It ended too soon and left nothing behind.”

I wanna read more books by Tom Robbins, but I feel that after this one, the others can be nothing but disappointing. ( )

Have read it 4 or 5 times.
Made me eat beets.
Pretty sure pub date wasn't 1905 given below. Best seller in 1985. Robbins was born 1932. ( )

Jitterbug Perfume recounts a 1,000-year quest for immortality, with plenty of stops along the way to discuss beets and bees and scents and sex. At the end of the first millennium A.D., King Alobar of Bohemia rejects his fated demise to search for the answer to eternal life. In his wanderings, he meets Kudra, an Indian girl trying to escape her own death, and the two become soulmates. Their journey leads them to the Bandaloops, an ancient tribe who have mastered immortality, as well as the goat-god Pan, whose own existence is threatened by more fashionable deities. As Alobar and Kudra figure out how to arrest the aging process and “dematerialize,” their paths converge in the present day where a similar desire to cheat death is explored at a Seattle-based foundation led by Wiggs Dannyboy. This effort collides with a battle to recreate a legendary perfume based on beets that involves Priscilla, a local “genius waitress,” Madame Devalier, the scion of a New Orleans perfume shop, and the LeFever Parfumarie of Paris. And, behind the scenes of everything. is Bingo Pajama, a mysterious Jamaican man with a coveted stock of jasmine and swarm of bees that follows him everywhere.

I read Jitterbug Perfume about 35 years after it was written and more than 40 years after I was first introduced to Tom Robbins’ work. All I can say is that what I liked in the 1970-80s is not nearly the same as what captivates me now. What has changed in the past four decades? Me, of course, but then so too has our society and culture and that, I think, is the point. This novel felt hopelessly dated and, unlike the immortality achieved by Alobar and Kudra, it is aging very rapidly and not at all well. So, rather than feeling like I was being let in on the Grand Cosmic Joke as when I read Another Roadside Attraction and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues so many years ago, my experience this time was quite a bit different. While Robbins is a stylish writer whose clever wordplay and myriad puns still hit more than they miss, his frequent pop philosophical musings on the quest for extending life seemed very contrived and decidedly the product of an earlier era. Worse, this storyline quickly became ponderous, often dragging an otherwise breezy tale to a painful halt. Sadly, then, this is not a book that this past fan of the author can recommend without reservation. ( )