“Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances?Yeah, I guess I'm ready, but listen:Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality.Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils' sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature.I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes.I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets.Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace.I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve.I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein's brain.I want a city's gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods.And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.”

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About Tom Robbins

American novelist

Tom Robbins was an American novelist. He is known for his playful, comic fiction, especially his “seriocomedies.” Among his best-known books is Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, published in 1976 and later adapted into a 1993 film by Gus Van Sant. His final work, Tibetan Peach Pie, appeared in 2014 and he described it as an “un-memoir.” From 1970, he lived in La Conner, Washington, where he wrote nine of his books.

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Books by Tom Robbins

Another roadside attraction

1977

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Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

1981

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Still Life with Woodpecker

1990

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Villa Incognito

2004

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Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

2003

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