Was “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates” Based on Fact?

First, let me emphasize that I am a big fan of Tom Robbins.  I think he may be the greatest writer of the last half of the 20th century, and there is plenty of competition.  But, I only liked his first 5 novels.

Probably not an alien, no matter what the tabloids say

When I read “Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas” I thought, “Dude was half asleep when he wrote this shit.”  I didn’t like “Fierce Invalids” or “Villa Incognito” either, although a lot of my friends did.  Perhaps I am being harsh, and unfair.  Perhaps I was just so knocked out by the first 5 that my expectations became unreachable.

Still, it seemed to me that the raw energy that had made his writing so powerful was gone.  The swift current of his stream of consciousness had slowed.  I no longer could say “I couldn’t put it down.”  A few pages of reading about that creepy Tanuki character  in Villa Incognito and I had to put it down.  With Fierce Invalids, after I read the description of the rain forest shaman with the triangular head, I put the book down for a couple of days before picking it up again and forcing myself to read it to the end.  I owe the man that much.

I’m not sure why the triangular head threw me off like that.  I accepted Sissy Hankshaw’s enormous thumbs without a second thought.  I was not bothered for even a moment about the physical impossibility of a can of beans, an old spoon and a pair of dirty socks undertaking a voyage across America.  I felt that beets being the secret to immortality was kind of a cool plot device. Somehow, though, once the energy was gone, the lapses into total impossibility didn’t amuse me.  They irritated me.

Then, today, I saw this.  Right about where old Tom said it would be.  Truth may not be, in fact, quite as strange as fiction, but it’s sure giving it a run for its money.