Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

Cowboys were fond of saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Switters thought, It’s always broke, and we can never fix it. On the other hand, there’s nothing to break, so what is it we imagine we’re fixing?

The baht was weak against the dollar. A back-alley tailor made him a new linen suit. He walked in it. Danced in it. Acknowledged the Tao. The seam in the Tao. At moments he felt as if he were at least an inch and a half off the ground.

He kept bumping into old acquaintances, and one midnight they took him to a meeting of the C.R.A.F.T. Club—where, legend has it, he got up and squawked like a parrot.

about the author

TOM ROBBINS has been called “a vital natural resource” by The Portland Oregonian, “one of the wildest and most entertaining novelists in the world” by the Financial Times of London, and “the most dangerous writer in the world today” by Fernanda Pivano of Italy’s Corriere della Sera. A Southerner by birth, Robbins has lived in and around Seattle since 1962.

acknowledgments

The author wishes to lift a goblet of vintage ink to his agent, Phoebe Larmore; his editor, Christine Brooks; and his five-book line editor, Danelle McCafferty (who taught him south from north—or was it the other way around?). He also salutes his assistant, Barbara Barker; his former assistant, Jacqueline Trevillion (twelve years before the mast); his longtime typist, Wendy Chevalier; and the numerous other women (lucky dog!) who dominate his life, including, but definitely not limited to, his attorney, Margaret Christopher; his yoga teacher, Dunja Lingwood; his Patpong social directors, Little Opium Annie and Miss Pretty Woman; his anatomical researcher and mayonnaise scout, Koryn Rolstad; his French connection, Enid Smith-Becker; and, most emphatically, his eternal love dumpling, Alexa.