Everything about Even Cowgirls Get The Blues totally explained
» This article is about the book. For the film, see Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (film).
For the album by Lynn Anderson, see Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (album).
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is a
1976 novel by
Tom Robbins.
Plot summary
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues tells the story of Sissy Hankshaw, a woman born with a
mutation (she wouldn't 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 the Countess, a homosexual tycoon of feminine hygiene products, who introduces her to the man whom she'll 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.
Literary significance & criticism
"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.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
The novel was made into a
1993 film directed by
Gus Van Sant and starring
Uma Thurman,
Lorraine Bracco,
Pat Morita,
Angie Dickinson,
Keanu Reeves,
John Hurt,
Rain Phoenix,
Ed Begley Jr.,
Carol Kane,
Sean Young,
Crispin Glover,
Roseanne Arnold,
Buck Henry,
Grace Zabriskie, and
Treva Jeffryes. Tom Robbins himself was the narrator.
Influencees
- John Cale, formerly of the Velvet Underground, named a song and album after the novel.
- The band Nightmare of You based the song "Thumbelina" on the book.
Partial publication history
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was first published in 1976 by Houghton Mifflin. It was released as both a
hardcover and
paperback novel concurrently.
First hardcover edition: ISBN 0-395-24305-X, Houghton Mifflin, 1976.
First paperback edition: ISBN 0-395-24510-9, Houghton Mifflin, 1976.Further Information
Get more info on 'Even Cowgirls Get The Blues'.
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