Another Roadside Attraction (around 1973) by Tom Robbins. Still available as a trade paperback.
Here’s another gem from one of the craziest hippies even to put pinkies to typewriter…Sometimes I like to dig back into my old shelves and re-read some of these bizarre classics.
For years, I’ve remembered the quote:
Human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another.
I had totally forgotten who to attribute it to until I ran across it in this book.
The interesting thing is that you can take whole sentences and paragraphs on some of his poltical/social rants and they could just as well have been written yesterday instead of 35 years ago. Plus ça change?
Unpopular pygmies gnaw at the foot of the enigma. (p.3)
The day was rumpled and dreary. It looked like Edgar Allan Poe’s pajamas. (p. 306)
As a minor gripe; it would have been nice if it were better proofread. I’ve seen worse though. It’s just a little jarring to be reading along and encounter “public” for “pubic” (you can imagine the risibility of that one), and in another case “psoitive” for “positive”. Minor carping aside, it’s a huge lot of fun. The characters and plot are really only placeholders really for the teeming, roiling caldron of ideas in Robbin’s mind.
I note that in some places on the net, the “water” quote is attributed to someone named Ed Ford.
http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/3267/food_and_drink/water_on_the_brain.html
I’ll research and figure out who was the original writer.
While browsing, I happened on another profound quote about water, this one by Toni Morrison:
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
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