Finito!

Here you have it, a curious amalgam of things I was at once obligated and inspired to write. It's a strange paper, though I think it does what it was intended.
Hopefully I'm not too far from the truth on that bit.

The original may be found here;
Still Life with Woodpecker, The Final Draft

What lies below is the text as a whole complete with my inner dialogue inserted as I saw fit.

Enjoy,
M

Introduction to paper/first topic

While many symbols, signs, and patterns both connote and denote any number of things that may link this text to structurally similar bodies of work, those that will be most deeply discussed in this criticism are those that appear in reference to four elements; the style of writing with which Tom Robbins delivers the story, the Camel Pack, the relationship of Leigh-Cheri and Wrangle, and Bernard Mickey Wrangle as an outlaw (1). Literal definition, the mythoi of Northrop Frye, and the original foundations of structuralism laid by Peirce and Saussure for analyzing the sign system will be employed to establish Still Life with Woodpecker as a many faceted work which relates to a few specific writing styles and plot genres, among other things. These elements are meant to characterize the work as fitting into the “modern fiction” genre of the authors to be discussed, the age-old structure of fairy tale romance, and the archetypal (2) nature of characters and objects which are present in said bodies of work. As well, the presence of food and its symbolism will be discussed to further demonstrate the ways in which Still Life might be called similar to other bodies of work. It should be noted that this work was intended to hold very little, if any symbolism, and rather to detail objects for the sake of the object. In light of this, any interpretations I draw are from my own feelings as to what that object or occurrence symbolizes, and from those critics who have drawn parallels which are relevant to this criticism, which I will interpret as I see fit (3).
To begin, the delivery of this work will be our focus. Tom Robbins displays writing style in Still Life characterized by an ever-present optimism for the future of his characters voiced by the storyteller, character professions of near faultless optimism about their own futures, and a somewhat magical reality which, frankly, has every power to give all but the least involved characters near faultless optimism (4). This style could be called “new,” as such, but if more deeply considered is found to be a curious amalgam of patterns, some of which mimic bodies of work to which we might call this one similar, including the works of Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, and Roald Dahl (5).

1 I didn't think it would end well, but I was aiming for viable points
2 Yes, Diana, it's a real word :) Though I have no idea how it gained that title
3 Translation? No amount of symoblism I'm about to cover was intended, me and those other guys are literally making all of it up. We ask your forgiveness. Maybe they don't, they're published and theoretically respected after all. I'm just a college student aiming for a pleasant grade.
4 Because they have nothing better to believe in
5 Three of the craziest people I could think of, and completely fitting

Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, though of more tragic beginnings, wrote black comedies, of which Still Life clearly is not one; in Cat's Cradle, in which Vonnegut exhibits one of many references to his fear of technology (1), we find ice-nine, a material which allows water to freeze at room temperature and eventually freezes the world into oblivion. Taken as it is, ice-nine can be said to portray Vonnegut's fear of technology and the propensity of even simple advances to perpetrate horrors upon the world, much in the same way we find Robbins courting the idea of simple advances in human pattern. As the omnipotent narrator, and not the intermittent typist, we often find Robbins going far in depth about the Outlaw College; Outlaw C. holds a strong belief that even the most seemingly insignificant “advances” in human pattern can escalate into global disintegration of love, prosperity, and, of course, human pattern (2). The advances he speaks of are things such as the movement toward peaceful and honestly democratic governing. This movement, much like ice-nine, is something there is a strong belief should be birthed, and also, a thing which the reality of human pattern dictates will likely never exist. More literally like ice-nine, we find Robbins discussing the Hawaiian mongoose syndrome again and again, an advanced-human method the Hawaiian island people used to rid the island of so many rats, but, as advances in human pattern are wont to do, this advance over natural ecology ended poorly; the mongooses did get rid of the rats, along with “chickens, pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and small children,” (Robbins, Still Life, 29) (3). Some would argue that human pattern is, and has ever-been, to take control of its surroundings, and they would be right. However, ice-nine and the mongooses share another similarity here, the immediate surroundings of neither human group warranted the solution of either ice-nine or mongooses.

1 I say "fear," I mean "phobia"
2 The last of which, unfortunately, seems to hold the greatest measure
3 You read that right, mongooses eat kids, too

Thompson/Cake (1)

To continue, we find similarities with Robbins in the writing of Hunter S. Thompson, who often portrayed his characters as literally or figuratively intoxicated, and only in this state do they seem to truly find their clearest ideas and feelings. It is the method of both writers to take the typical sanity away from their characters as a means of granting them complete rationality (2); in Fear, Thompson creates a world of intoxication and narcotic influence which, while sometimes a bit terrifying, gives the go-ahead to Raoul Duke to live as he feels he should, and must. The narcotics Raoul consumes are illegal, taboo substances which the greater part of humans believe to be harmful, destructive, vicious things (3). His actions and rationalizations are nearly entirely brought about by these drugs streaming through his system, and yet these intoxicants, unlike socially-imprinted human reason, grant him the freedom to make decisions which are not greatly influenced by other human beings and their beliefs or actions, but rather, strongly by his reactions to those human beings and his surroundings. It is in much this way that we find Robbins granting both Princess Leigh-Cheri and Wrangle the ability to rationalize all that they do and the myriad ways in which they do it (4). In many scenes, we find the princess and Wrangle consuming alcohol and reaching decisions which they might never have made sober, and yet once they sober up, they are not only quite happy with their decisions, but also feel quite fulfilled by the things such intoxicated decisions have introduced to them. Wrangle, as he stands, rarely makes a decision while literally intoxicated, but is rather in a constant state of intoxication by way of his own “outlaw” ways, he has essentially doped himself into his beliefs, much in the way a heroin addict never really beats the need, and instead might accomplish the lesser addiction of methadone, but rarely ever reached total bodily normalcy. As well, we find Leigh-Cheri reaching her great plan for the monarchy of Mu whilst in Hawaii, sitting on the beach, intoxicated with thoughts of eco-friendly legislation and a small, globally governing body, not narcotics to be sure, but certainly things which for the most part, the whole of the human race was not taking quite seriously during the time in which the book was taking place (5). By using alcohol to intoxicate his characters, I posit that Robbins was creating a link between the things we literally and figuratively choose to intoxicate ourselves with. Beginning with a dunk in drunkenness, and continuing by stirring them in a pool of their own personal passions, Robbins graduated his characters from their necessary baptism in alcohol to the self-fulfilling intoxication of one's own passion and motivations. I feel it should be noted that the majority of these alcoholic libations are not had straight, but rather blended with a number of fruits, and it is these that first stir the passions of our princess Leigh-Cheri (6). It stands to reason that we find Leigh-Cheri erupting from her shell upon swilling these fruits mingled with alcohol, the gifts of fertile land, to find herself mad about Wrangle. As well, it becomes more evident that she has given herself to the life of an outlaw when we find her practically chugging tequila, the favored drink of outlaws the world round, among them her Wrangle. To put it as Shakespeare did, it was “as if increase in appetite had grown by what it fed on,” but the focus of what these two feed on is love and passion for life and being outlaws, not on their love for one another, as Gertrude's (7).
Alcohol and passion are the primary foods of this novel, Wrangle and Leigh-Cheri feed on them always as if constantly starved for both (8). Their presence is enough reason to have them, and this reckless desire is evident throughout the text. But, do not misunderstand fervent desire for alcohol as alcoholism in Still Life, as that would be awfully close to calling the expression of passion in the text the equivalent of stalking. These two feed on alcohol, passion, and wedding cake throughout the work; it cannot be said that their infinite buffet is gluttonous as they do not overindulge, it cannot be said that it is unhealthy as they have neither gin blossoms or restraining orders, and it cannot be said that it causes harm to others (9) because their feast is meant to serve others as well, their actions are invitations to dine on passion for life and join the festivities. In the end, this buffet is meant to be the greatest party in human history, the one that will finally entice love to stay (10).

1 The food, not the rock band :(
2 Read that over once or twice, it starts to sink in shortly after the Riesling does
3 I can't believe I typed that in reference to drugs... it looks exactly like what I'd said about Miley Cyrus
4 Through tequila, like every other good idea
5 Sorry guys, flower power will not save the world. Not unless you find flowers that generate electricity, or a flower than can grow in an industrial turbine and run an entire power grid
6 One of them had avocado in it. Find me a tasty drink saturated with avocado and tequila and I'll find you several million dollars worth of thanks
7 Considering how much I love that particular soliloquy, I have a hard time rationalizing why I used it to reference this book. Especially anything in this book having to do with Wrangle.
8 Sex is all well and good, Robbins, but the way you put it makes me never, ever, ever want to contemplate it. I spent a god lot of hours after reading passages in this text having been reverted back to my grade-school "everyone has cooties!" mentality.
9 That's mostly true, besides that one guy Wrangle mangled, thus ruining his life.
10 Unless it gets a sober eye on Wrangle, at which point you'd have to drug and restrain it in order to harness it so that it couldn't not stay

Dahl

Looking at the surface of Still Life, we do not immediately see what link might exist between the writings of Roald Dahl and Tom Robbins (1); but take into account the presence of such pairs as the mother of Matilda and Nina Jablonski, both totally unaware of what their young, starry-eyed charges truly needed or wanted in life. We find both deposed from their roles, and perfectly fine with it, neither woman is offended or heartbroken because her heart was never truly in the mix. Both Dahl and Robbins have taken great measures to create worlds in which non-heroic heros are the saviors of some wonderful ideal world (2), and in fact, are often the creators of said world as opposed to having read of it somewhere and imagining it into existence by way of delusion. In much the same way Dahl's characters wade through tribulations and ignore the paths of least resistance (3), we find Leigh-Cheri and Wrangle ignoring the simpler ways to live that life might offer them, and instead move on to live in a world where life is certainly not perfect, but meets every want and desire they might have with a strange, yet deeply satisfying answer. Where Charlie Bucket meets his future as the owner of a chocolate factory, which certainly is a job that asks much of its applicant, Leigh-Cheri and Wrangle meet a world where Gulietta the housemaid is queen and they are mostly deaf, but can still “hear the chipmunk at the center of the earth” (Robbins, Still Life, 270) running smoothly on its wheel; in both of these worlds, the inhabitants are happy and satisfied, yet no one lives a life typically perfect.

1 and despite my very next words, I still mostly don't
2 I guess my point here was to explain how great the world would be if smothered in blackberry brambles? Albeit in an awfully clipped way...
3 Be wise, listen to the little orange men

The Whole Kit and Caboodle, as Pertaining to the Authors

Not only for its similarities to other works of the same years from 1950-1980 and that spans' heroic redefining of the only somewhat defined word, “literature (1),” I argue that this text should be looked at as a product of its time. It should be considered an indicator, as it were, of the period from whence it came. While the book's contents come from a somewhat predictable time, the text not only takes place in a different time than the late seventies, but the time period within the contents happened... and didn't (2).
Let's look at our similar authors again, shall we? Robbins, Vonnegut, Thompson, and Dahl all wrote a great bulk of their combined works from 1950-1980, a time when literature was having yet another one of its seizing rebirths. Take into account though the seizing culture of that time, and we have an obvious link from the world each of those authors lived in to the world their stories took place in. Each of the authors listed either participated in war or saw it from the sidelines with incredibly pronounced opinions, these men were not only the children of the first World War and its lasting effects, but also found themselves participating in World War II, one of the many other wars of that period, or, as the insubordinate Thompson chose, commenting on war at every available opportunity in the face of being smothered with it.
Beyond war, though we find these authors including from time to time in their writing, the world that they lived in was tumultuous and constantly changing. The United States experienced many profound changes during this thirty year period (3), and I assert that the changing nature of the beast is awfully responsible for the boundaries these men felt they could bend to their will, or simply break. This time of change and redefining of their world and many of its broad words allowed for personal interpretation on a level which no generation before had ever quite experienced, sure there had been times before them during which new schools of thought had been born and new genres accepted, but this time, this was the time of radios and airwaves, of television (4). The blossoming ideas that American culture now formed around were war and peace, and all the muck-luck in between (5). This nonsensical, no holds barred, every man for himself but don't forget your neighbor mentality yielded such notions as world peace and harmony with nature, superior races and saviors purely genetic.
I maintain that coming from such a time may not only have made these authors feel they had been granted the right to go forth and publish their works, but also it created in them a need to create worlds uplifting, and allegorical, too. Vonnegut chose to show the world through morbid yet strangely comedic fables that it was basically digging itself deeper into a hole, and this one would not pleasantly end with a surprise trip to the Forbidden Gardens or that rather large wall (6). Instead, it would be tragically consumed with ice or partially destroyed by those who tried to save it, fortunately or unfortunately, because it was necessary to save the world.
Thompson chose to introduce to the world the concept that reality was much too much to bear, so it may just be best to take reality off its hinges and perhaps drag it down a terribly sandy road, inhabited by violent bats, to a place which only mimicked reality by exaggerating its least awful features (7). These stories, often largely non-fictitious, weren't the fables Vonnegut speared popular culture with, they were more the informative stories of someone who, in the face of great horror, chose to look reality in the eye and not sugar-coat it with propaganda and shiny new kitchen appliances (8). Having looked into the eye of the beast, he promptly chose to heavily medicate himself and go full hog, no rousing posters or gleaming toasters for Raoul Duke, for the horse that would save him did not run as fast as quicksilver, but instead it shown with the same liquid gleam.
Dahl took a slightly less offensive approach, though not truly a far cry from Vonnegut or Thompson (9). In writing the many children's books he published, Dahl created slightly magical realities, much as Robbins would, to land the characters in positions that didn't quite spare them from their own reality so much as take a miserable life and make it kind of average, but in a kind of fantastical way. Matilda, for instance, loses her magical powers but is somehow legally left in the care of the lovely Miss Honey who stands for everything the child yearns for in life, while Charlie Bucket gains the adult task of maintaining a chocolate factory as no child should be left to do, gains freedom from poverty, and mystically is allowed to own and operate his own monumental candy shop (10).
I reason that the culture in which these authors were raised sparked in them more than a desire to see what else their fellows, swarmed with new ideas, could tolerate, and their like-minded publishers would dole out to the world, but also that it brought out in them prophets and story-tellers who honestly sought to bring the world back to its senses (11). As I said before, the time that the most of these stories take place in happened, and didn't. Yes, Vonnegut was held in slaughterhouse number five, but there was no Pilgrim who traveled through time introduced to us in his memoirs. Sure, Thompson based Raoul Duke largely on himself. Of course, Dahl wrote of occurrences that might very well have happened in his time. All of these stories still share an element of fiction while coming from people who, in some sense, were trying to deliver some sort of message instead of just a tale of characters exiting one plot point to enter another. I would argue that this book, Still Life, fits firmly into the odd structure that was the culture it came from; it is indicative of this culture for its unorthodox reason for being, its internal need to share feelings about the present times, and the strange necessity it feels to graduate its characters from coddled notions of reality to the full brunt of truth through intoxication and passionate manipulations of their own state of being (12).

1 Really, look it up sometime. It's so vague they'd be better off defining what it isn't
2 Mysterious and insightful, no? Okay, no. Not really, but I tried
3 Not the least of which being the introduction of Astronaut Ice Cream. Which, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, only went up in space once in 1968 and will never be put into orbit again.
4 Or, "devil box" as many came to call it
5 Wonderboy, won't you take me far away from the mucky muck?
6 I'm sure that was during a moment when I thought, "this will later become an annotation," and then I liked it so much it stayed
7 Viva Las Vegas!
8 Instead, it got powdered with coke and iced with meth. Drug references make baking references so much easier. Thanks thugs!
9 In one book, "snozberry" is a male genital reference, in another, it's a candy. WTF Dahl?
10 Not only would these things never happen in real life, they'd be somewhat illegal if they ever did
11 By explaining things like the Hawaiian mongoose problem, of course
12 Read; lots of drugs and alcohol. Oh, and passion

The Camel Pack (1)

To take the strange reason for being and expound upon it, I will focus on the pack of Camel cigarettes as it surely holds the position of the most glorified object of the novel (2). It should be noted again that this text was intended to display each object for the sake of the object, so the importance of the Camels must certainly be dissected (3). With this novel, Robbins set out to write a story about objects in a profound new way. He wanted to tell the story of the objects themselves, the story of something with its own proper function and meaning to society. This story, of the cigarette pack, is the only story involved in the book which isn't characterized as a love story (4). Unless, of course, you consider that Leigh-Cheri used said Camel pack to foster her connection with Wrangle, used it as the seed to her recreation of Wrangle's room in prison, used it to meditate on and find a meaning in it that might “make love stay,” as the star-crossed pair longs to do. In that case, it's no surprise that we find another love story (5). However, the point of this dissection is not to establish life with the Camel pack as= another love story, although that does certainly fit it neatly into the structure of the novel as a whole, the point here is to establish it as part of the very structure of our princess, Leigh-Cheri.
The Camel pack initially stands alone as its own object, described as it is, a small box wrapped in cellophane which contains cancerous agents. It is introduced to the princess as the sort of box which Wrangle carries with him to keep him company in prison, and more importantly, to explain his constant stash of matches. Once Leigh-Cheri begins to contemplate its face though, the pack face becomes a part of her, a world in and of itself which fits into her universe. As stated, she uses the box to meditate upon to become closer to her imprisoned love by sharing his surroundings, but in meditating, Leigh-Cheri finds a world in the Camel pack face comprised of the elements presented to her, and those she finds there through metaphysical travels (6). Having been found and colonized by her, this land fits into her universe and thus the structure of her very being, and because of their mutual isolation, Leigh-Cheri and this Camel pack, she visits its face often not to escape her room, but to become even more acquainted with herself.
The Camel pack face yields a very interesting move on the part of Leigh-Cheri, a dive into the index system as laid down by Charles Sanders Peirce; where there's smoke, there's fire (7). Our princess took quite the plummet into indexes, though, when she decided the very image of the pyramids indicated the presence of a world she could visit. So she did, and this world was not Egypt, as such, but rather a logical world of indexes which much resembles that Saharan land (8). After hypothesizing at great length about the true nature and origin of the pyramids, for she decided they must all share one common nature and origin, our princess took indexes to their furthest point and entered a world based on the elements present on a pack of Camel cigarettes. From the pyramids, sand, dromedary, and palms, our princess decided that because there was no end to the horizon, there must be no end to the land. She “found” that land. From the pyramids, on land which must be there, for there was no end to the horizon, Leigh-Cheri decides there must be some population here, for otherwise, where would the pyramids have come from? Then, upon meeting these people, they and their animals, friends, slaves, she had conversations with them. How could she have decided they could be communicated with? Because the fact that these people travel together indicated they must have some kind of communicative method or else how and why would they have banded together? One might even go so far as to say the herders would surely be the most apt communicators, for they share not only a kind of language with one another, but they can also communicate, on a certain level, with animals. To me, it seems quite obvious that in a work where the face of a pack of Camel cigarettes indicates the existence of a world one might step into from their own abode, the existence of herders indicates a presence of some sort of communication, but also that inter-species communication is certainly an indicator of communicative prowess (9).
Where Leigh-Cheri is presented to us as royalty, a princess, the Camel pack is presented to us as something somewhat regal in its global presence, its grand face, its very traceable heritage like the lineage of a knight. The both of them, though, are very, well, usual. They are extraordinary in the honest breakdown of the word, they are extra, that is to say, particularly, ordinary. Leigh-Cheri, deposed by a royal mishap along with the rest of her family, doesn't function in society in a way much different than most other twenty-somethings. She is passionate, but about nothing specific until it catches her interest, has her little obsessions, views love in a strange and constantly changing way. Much like the princess, Camel was deposed by what could be called a royal mishap. Surely it wouldn't be a stretch to call the turn of the mighty, fashionable, cool and smooth cigarette dynasty into the lord tyrants of the cigarettes and cancer throne. Though, after, Camel still functions in society much like any other cigarette company. It is prolific, but only so much as we allow ourselves to let it be, has its little quirks that make people choose it over others, and continues to sell its products, lethal as they are. In their characteristics, we find surface similarities between Leigh-Cheri and the pack face world, but internally, they are not just similar, they are the same (10).
In the face of the Camel pack, Leigh-Cheri finds a Saharan land. She wanders this land by way of her mind, discovering the weathered faces of the pyramids and the hidden oasises where she meets the people of the pack face, the sort of people you might expect to find wandering the desert. She becomes quite protective of the pack of Camels, which she carries with her in this land, telling those travelers that, no, she cannot give them a smoke because “a successful external reality depends on an internal vision that is left intact,” (Robbins, Still Life, 167). As Leigh-Cheri develops this well-rounded and quite realistic understanding of the pack face, she becomes all the more aware of herself, of her mind, and what she believes. This pack face world is an analogous mirror world of our princess' inner self, where she becomes comfortable and sure; this pack face world becomes not simply a being structurally similar to Leigh-Cheri, but a structural element necessary to her self, and her personal development (11).
The “external reality” that Leigh-Cheri must maintain here can arguably be herself or the room, which she seeks to live in by her penitentiary rules, without losing her mind. The young woman as a human, seen and heard by other humans, who we find asking for her suitor after a letter breaks her heart, this woman is not a frail individual. I would argue that, while she crushes the Camel pack in her bitter reaction, it is only because of the world within the face that Leigh-Cheri now possesses the sense of self to be capable of crushing it. As it is smashed, the world is crumpled with it, she “[topples] the pyramids and [busts] the dromedary's hump,” yet she does not lose her mind because she is in totally control of that pack face world, and has made herself as real and as hearty as that world (12). That being said, as it is literally her, the chamber pot, cot, and pack of cigarettes within that room, losing the wholeness of that cigarette pack would effectively rip into the fabric of her mind, and likely destroy her sense of self and all that she had developed that self into. She does not open the pack when she crushes is, she is destroying the outward appearance of the pack and its innards, yes, but she is not crumpling that world as she had found it. Leigh-Cheri creates on the surface of the pack a visible infliction of the internal pain she feels, further bridging her self and the pack face world; when she recovers, the pack, as well as her self, will surely bear the hallmarks of agony, but they both continue to flourish in spite of their scars.
The pack face world ceases to be the carefully preserved mirror of Leigh-Cheri after the incident, to be the very core of her world. But, the world still holds a significance to her, in that the pyramids it houses have proven to her the phenomenal power (13) which the human race has prescribed to them for millennia, among few other things that have proven to have such a monumental bearing on our species. Like, for example, love.

1 Were it not for Gulietta, you would be the star of the show
2 If you ignore how many time Leigh-Cheri's breasts were glorified, of course. Don't even get me started on the "peachf..." I give, Robbins, you make my stomach turn.
3 Because what else am I going to talk about? Robbins' penis envy?
4 Before you tell me I'm wrong, the book says the love story takes place inside the pack of Camels, I'm talking about the story of the world the crazy girl makes up
5 I'd like to say "unfortunately..." here, but it was awfully pertinent to my paper, so I guess I should be thankful.
6 Keep in mind, she's presented as the "normal" one in the couple
7 Where there's crazy, there's meds. Oh Leigh-Cheri, please do take some.
8 The girl should have picked up a book with merit at the library, like a book about structuralism instead of one on advertising
9 I'm not sure what scares me more about everything written after annotation 8, that I wrote it in a hazy stupor of sleeplessness and starvation, or that it's actually entirely valid based on Peirce's outline of indexes.
10 Hey world, meet the first person to get better after finding cigarettes.
11 Which is why I contend somebody needs to put her on meds, I don't typically condone that, but here, anything to get her away from Wrangle seems like a marvelous plan
12 Which I've just noticed I inadvertently likened to a can of Campbell's Chunky
13 PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWA!!! Like the genie. In the lamp, in Aladdin? Get it? Well, I did. Because I'm 21 and still love Disney.