Bestselling novelist Tom Robbins dies at 92 [View all]

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Source: NPR

OBITUARIES
Bestselling novelist Tom Robbins dies at 92

FEBRUARY 9, 20256:48 PM ET
By Tom Vitale


Tom Robbins, at a 2014 reading of his memoir Tibetan Peach Pie at Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing in Beaverton, Ore.
Alex Milan Tracy/AP

Tom Robbins dazzled millions of readers with the whimsy and imagination in his bestselling novels, such as 1984's Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs and All, from 1990, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, a 1976 book adapted by director Gus Van Sant into a 1993 film…. Robbins died at his home in La Conner, Washington, according to a statement from friend Craig Popelars. He was 92.

Tom Robbins lived in Washington state for most of his adult life, but he was born in Blowing Rock, N.C. His family moved around the South, settling in Warsaw, Va., where he picked up a knack for storytelling. As a boy, he would tell stories aloud to himself, outside, with a stick in his hand.

"I would beat the ground as I told the story," he told NPR in 2014. "And we moved fairly frequently. We would leave houses behind where one section of the yard was completely bare from where I destroyed the grass. But I realized much later in life that what I was doing was drumming. I was building a rhythm."

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Longtime University of St. Joseph professor Catherine E. Hoyser, now a professor emeritus, authored a guide to Robbins' novels for students. She agrees that the scope and ambitions of his work far exceed his college-dorm-room reputation. "People who believed that he was a drug-taking bon-vivant that wasn't particularly serious in his work actually don't pay attention to the profound nature underneath that humor," she says.

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Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/09/1167079326/tom-robbins-obituary-novelist

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