Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is a successful 1976 novel by Tom Robbins made into a less-successful 1993 movie by Gus Van Sant. Cowgirls tells the story of Sissy Hankshaw, a woman born with a mutation (she would not call it a defect) giving her enormously large thumbs. The novel is a transgressive romp, covering topics from homosexuality and free love to drug use and political rebellion to animal rights and body odor and religions. Sissy makes the most of her thumbs by becoming a hitchhiker. Her travels take her to New York, where she becomes a model for a transvestite feminine hygiene products mogul who introduces her to the man who she will marry, a staid Mohawk named Julian Gitche. In her later travels she encounters, among many others, a sexually open cowgirl named Bonanza Jellybean and an itinerant escapee from the Japanese internment camps happily mislabeled "the Chink". Robbins finally inserts himself into the novel as a character as well.

Related Topics:
1976 - Tom Robbins - 1993 - Gus Van Sant - Mutation - Defect - Thumb - Homosexuality - Free love - Drug use - Rebellion - Animal rights - Body odor - Religions - Hitchhiker - Transvestite - Mohawk - Cowgirl - Bonanza - Jellybean - Japanese internment camp - Chink

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"Cowgirls" was a favorite of the late 1970s anarchist hippie counterculture. Robbins writes short chapters filled with philosophical asides and quips (such as noting that because amoebas reproduce by binary fission, the first amoeba is still alive) and often speaking to the reader (chapter 88 begins with the narrator noting that the book now has as many chapters as a piano has keys.) Informal but intricate, it's the model of a cult book. Fans will know how to complete the sentence, "ha ha ho ho and ...."

Related Topics:
1970s - Anarchist - Hippie - Counterculture - Binary fission - Amoeba - Piano - Key - Cult book

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