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Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker

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Still Life with Woodpecker

by Robbins, Tom

  • Used
  • Hardcover
  • Signed
  • first
Condition
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About This Item

Robbins, Tom
Still Life with Woodpecker
Bantam Books, New York. Bantam Books. New York. 1980. 277 pages. First edition, first printing in 1st issue DJ with $12.95 price intact. Signed and inscribed by Tom Robbins directly to the half-title page: To Bob, Yum! Tom Robbins. Book is tight, crisp and clean. Some light rubbing to the jacket edge. Pages lay tight and undisturbed, seemingly unread.

Synopsis

Still Life With Woodpecker (1980) is the third novel by Tom Robbins, concerning the love affair between an environmentalist princess and an outlaw. As with most of Robbins' books, it encompasses a broad range of topics, from aliens and redheads to consumerism, the building of bombs, romance, royalty, the moon, and a pack of Camels.

Reviews

On Jan 16 2014, a reader said:
This is a sort of love story, but not exactly. It tells us about a Princess whose father has been kicked out of his kingdom and adopted by the US. The girl starts out very socially conscious. Then she meets her true love at a conference in Maui, and everything else goes by the wayside. This true love is not a criminal, as he explains to her, but an outlaw. Due to the efforts of a CIA spy, he is thrown in prison for a couple of years. The princess decides to put herself in solitary confinement, just like her lover, and retires to the attic with a cot, a chamber pot, and a pack of camel cigarettes, which she doesn’t smoke. As the word gets out that she is doing this, there are a lot of copy cats, and her lover, in irritation, writes her a nasty letter about it. This has the effect of making her decide she is no longer in love with him, and she makes the choice to marry an Arab King instead. Meanwhile, her study of the Camel pack has convinced her that she must know more about the effects of pyramids, so she has the King build her one as a wedding present. The King, no dummy, alerts all other Arab countries that her lover is a bad guy, to be shot on sight. For a while it appears that the Woodpecker (her lover) has been caught and killed. Then, on the night before her wedding, while she is checking out the newly finished pyramid, the Woodpecker appears alive. She is overjoyed, and her fiancé sees her hugging her former lover in the pyramid; so he locks them in and explains to the world that she has been kidnapped by a terrorist gang. Luckily, the cake and champagne for her wedding the next day was already in place, and they subsist on this for about a month. Then the Princess decides to use her lover’s dynamite (which he is never without) to blow open the door, assuming this will kill them both.



This book enlightens us on a number of fronts: we learn the difference between a criminal and an outlaw; we examine the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism; and we learn a lot about the problem of redheads and the pyramids. Meanwhile, we flirt briefly with feminism, ecology, racism, and a lot of other “isms”. Robbins is always unique in his combination of philosophy and comedy.

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Details

Bookseller
CS Miller Books US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
20231107005
Title
Still Life with Woodpecker
Author
Robbins, Tom
Book Condition
Used
Quantity Available
1
Edition
First
Binding
Hardcover
Publisher
Bantam
Place of Publication
New York
Date Published
1980
Pages
277
Weight
0.00 lbs
Keywords
robbins, metafiction, woodpecker, postmodern

Terms of Sale

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About the Seller

CS Miller Books

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2023
Norwich, New York

About CS Miller Books

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Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Rubbing
Abrasion or wear to the surface. Usually used in reference to a book's boards or dust-jacket.
First Edition
In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
New
A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
Jacket
Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
Tight
Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
Inscribed
When a book is described as being inscribed, it indicates that a short note written by the author or a previous owner has been...
Crisp
A term often used to indicate a book's new-like condition. Indicates that the hinges are not loosened. A book described as crisp...

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