Even 'Incognito,' Robbins' wit unmistakable

Mark Graham, Special To The News

Published May 16, 2003 at midnight

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Trying to review a book by Tom Robbins is akin to telling an alien from another star system what a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream, chopped nuts and a maraschino cherry tastes like. You can spend hours talking and get nowhere, but hand him said delectable dessert and a spoon and, assuming that Zorg from Tau Ceti 3 has taste buds and an opposable thumb, you'll get the job done tout de suite (Robbinsesque pun intended).

That said, I'll try anyway.

Villa Incognito starts with a fable with roots in Japanese folklore. From the World of Animal Ancestors (some kind of Zen version of animal heaven, I think), the badgerlike creature Tanuki parachutes to Earth, using an inordinately large part of his anatomy that probably shouldn't be mentioned in a family newspaper.

After seducing a farmer's daughter and drinking a lot of sake, the randy Tanuki beds any number of country ladies before trying to make it in the city. Obviously, cosmopolitan women have lost their respect for the old ways, because the disappointed Tanuki returns to his original country wench, marries her and settles down to raise a family.

Eventually, Tanuki sadly must leave his wife and daughter but bequeaths the little girl a chrysanthemum seed and gives her these cryptic words of Zen advice:

"It is what it is."

"You are what you it."

"There are no mistakes."

The seed and the phrases reappear throughout the novel, but like the maraschino cherry on the sundae, you'll have to taste them to even begin to understand.

Shift ahead a few generations to the modern day and a few thousand miles to Fan Nan Nan, Laos, a village where members of the national circus winter just below the opium-poppy fields, and meet Mars Stubblefield, Dern Foley and Dickie Goldwire - the crew of a downed B-52 that's been missing in action since the Vietnam War.

After escaping from the Viet Cong, the trio made their way to the village and liked it so well they decided to stay. Eventually, Stubblefield sets up housekeeping in an abandoned manse that's to become the expatriates' haven, the Villa Incognito.

Meanwhile, Dickie has fallen in love with Lisa Ko, the descendant of Tanuki and the farmer's daughter. But Madame Ko has left with a traveling circus for the western United States.

Everything seems to be falling apart when Dern, dressed as a priest, is apprehended in Guam, apparently with a fortune in opium paste taped to his body under clerical garb. If the authorities are able to piece together the clues, the boys may not be able to remain incognito in the Villa Incognito.

Enter the military; the bumbling CIA and DEA; Dern's Seattle sisters, Bootsie, who delights in everything, including the weather, and Pru, who has a sexual attraction to circus clowns; a Bangkok prostitute named Miss Ginger Sweetie, who's working her way through college with sexual favors; and Elvisuit, a Bangkok Elvis impersonator who doesn't understand English.

Eventually, this disparate cast of characters will come together, more or less, in more or less satisfying ways.

Villa Incognito is replete with literary allusions as diverse as haiku master Basho, James Michener and Franz Kafka, as in: "(After Dern's capture) the Foley sisters were questioned for nearly an hour in one of those windowless rooms that used to give Franz Kafka the willies."

It also is stuffed with metaphors: "Last-minute shoppers crowded the pollen parlors, and every other flower-head drooped from bee-weight." And similes: "Dikie's heart felt suddenly like an iron piano with barbwire strings and scorpions for keys." All of which give Robbins' prose a poetic quality, unique in contemporary literature. In the novel, the Villa Incognito is a place, a state of mind and a song, whose verses are sprinkled throughout:

"If you won't meet me in Cognito,

Baby, I'm apt to go out of my head.

But if you really can't handle incognito

Meet me in Absentia, instead."

And now back to that hot fudge sundae. It's time to stop reading about Villa Incognito and start sampling the real thing. I think you'll find it indescribably delicious. I won't even begin to try to tell you how the story ends up in Boulder.

Mark Graham is an English teacher at Ralston Valley High School, Arvada. His Unreal Worlds reviews run weekly in Weekend@Home.

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