Still Life with Woodpecker

“There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?”

Although Robbins explores a number of themes in this novel, it is also the love story of Leigh-Cheri and Bernard. This question is raised repeatedly throughout the novel. His assertion that it is the only serious question, however, belies the other issues that Robbins explores throughout the novel.

“Since Hostess Twinkies always traveled in pairs—because like the coyote, the killer whale, the gorilla, and the whooping crane, Hostess Twinkies mate for life—there would have been a Twinkie each for you to share.”

Bernard eats a Twinkie while sitting behind Leigh-Cheri on the plane. This is an early example of the way Robbins treats objects throughout the novel. As he draws a parallel between the Twinkies and several examples of animals, he blurs the line between object and animal, even giving the Twinkies the agency to “mate for life.” This quote is also characteristic of Robbins’s humor, in which wordplay and a sense of the absurd feature heavily.

“The Hawaii sun, in contrast to, say, the Nebraska sun, had obviously fallen under the influence of the moon and was given to deporting itself in a fairly feminine fashion. Not that the Hawaii sun wouldn’t fry your hide off should you show it disrespect, but it had a romantic aura, a decidedly lunar attitude toward amore that the sun of Mexico would consider soft and weak.”

The moon is a strong motif throughout the novel, and Robbins equates it with some of its traditional cultural meanings of femininity and romance. He juxtaposes the moon with the sun, and in this case, draws distinctions between the suns of Nebraska, Mexico, and Hawaii as having different qualities, according to the quality of the light. He pulls the romance of the moon into the sun of Hawaii in order to create a romantic backdrop for Leigh-Cheri and Bernard’s meeting.

“Tequila, scorpion honey, harsh dew of the doglands, essence of Aztec, crema de cacti; tequila, oily and thermal like the sun in solution; tequila, liquid geometry of passion; Tequila, the buzzard god who copulates in midair with the ascending souls of dying virgins; tequila, firebug in the house of good taste; O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate!”

The concept of the outlaw is important to Bernard’s identity and is as iconic as Leigh-Cheri’s status as princess. In other areas of the novel, Bernard refers to tequila as an outlaw drink. Many of the associations in this quote support this contention, and the words Robbins uses exude movement, passion, sex, magic, and rebellion. This short passage can be seen as an ode to tequila—an ode is a short poem of praise—written in Robbins’s characteristic playful style.

“Leigh-Cheri had heard of the Woodpecker, of course, but in the days when he was making headlines by blowing up draft boards and induction centers, the last days of the Vietnam War, she’d been a schoolgirl, picking blackberries, cuddling teddy bears, listening to a certain bedtime story, yellowing her nose with buttercups.”

Although Bernard is famous, Leigh-Cheri is from a younger generation and is only peripherally aware of his crimes. Bernard is a holdover from the generation of 1960s activists, like the Weather Underground, who protested the Vietnam War through acts of domestic terrorism. His belief system clashes, at several points, with Leigh Cheri’s more naïve and optimistic perspective, forcing her to examine her beliefs.

“Yes, and I love the trite mythos of the outlaw. I love the self-conscious romanticism of the outlaw. I love the black wardrobe of the outlaw. I love the fey smile of the outlaw. I love the tequila of the outlaw and the beans of the outlaw. I love the way respectable men sneer and say ‘outlaw.’ I love the way young women palpitate and say ‘outlaw.’ The outlaw boat sails against the slow, and I love it.”

Bernard tries to explain his idea of what an outlaw is and what he loves about it. He is careful, throughout, to define “outlaw” as different from criminal, and here, instead of trying to define it, he approaches the mythos of the outlaw from every outward angle, from the clothing and smile to the way that others perceive an outlaw. Bernard’s understanding of this persona, and his determination to live within its constraints, define him as a character.

“At some moment it occurred to her that there was a fair amount of unemployed royalty in the world, royals whose thrones had gone the way of war or political upheaval, just as her family’s had, and that these persons, although they’d been bred to lead, to preside, or at least to symbolize, were living for the most part the lives of the idle rich.”

This is the moment when Leigh-Cheri comes up with the idea for the monarchy of Mu, in which royalty like herself can use their privilege, power, and money to help the world and provide themselves with purpose. Leigh-Cheri consistently pushes back against her designated position as a princess without a kingdom, and this is one of the ways that she does it. However, her ideas still show naivete and entitlement with the notion that royalty like herself, with neither the training nor experience to lead, should take over.

“The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea but with the people who are attracted by it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, and, most importantly, sense of humor, to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road.”

While the story is going on, Robbins does take time to explore larger, serious issues, and in this case, he probes the problem of big ideas. As he states, the person who comes up with the idea isn’t a problem; the problem is the people who adopt the idea, abstract it, and turn it into dogma. His reference to killing Budda is a reference to a common adage, which in one interpretation means that one must question anyone who claims to have all the answers, because one’s understanding of their truths will most likely be incomplete.

“Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death.”

Leigh-Cheri bemoans her status as princess and questions whether she could ever be taken seriously. When she tells Bernard that she is ashamed of the whimsy of her title, he gives her a different perspective. His reference to rigor mortis before death references a stiffness to one’s life that is possible if one doesn’t open oneself up to the humor and lightness of life—a perspective that informs Robbins’s own approach to writing.

“Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won’t allow it. And I goddamn refuse to be dragon bait. I’m as capable of rescuing you as you are of rescuing me.”

Leigh-Cheri pushes back against Bernard’s romantic perception of their respective roles as outlaw and princess. While he is enamored with the tropes around each of their roles, she wants to move beyond the passivity expected of her as princess and rewrite her role. Through Leigh-Cheri’s insistence on pushing back against the princess stereotype, Robbins explores the theme of A Modern Fairy Tale Princess.

“I no longer know what love is. A week ago I had a lot of ideas. What love is and how to make it stay. Now that I’m in love, I haven’t a clue. I’m completely stupid on the subject.”

Bernard, who has a lot of ideas and philosophies, bumps up against the reality of his life. While he might have thought he understood love, now that he is experiencing it, his theories are all falling apart. Robbins delves into the gap between theory and practice here, as well as the difference between philosophical understanding and real-life experience.

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words ‘make’ and ‘stay’ become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”

After Bernard has been in prison, separated from Leigh-Cheri and with time to think, his perspective on love—which was shattered when he actually fell in love—begins to develop in a new way. He realizes that his theory of the outlaw actually fits love perfectly. In it, love isn’t bound to the participants, but rather they follow it, abandoning the safety of their previous lives. Love is not bound by rules or expectations, but operates under its own system, just as an outlaw does.

“In truth, the story had never made a lot of sense to Leigh-Cheri, and she resented the Brothers Grimm for portraying a princess in such an unflattering light. It was bad enough being dragon bait. For all her reservations about the tale, however, it had never occurred to her to puzzle over the fate of the golden ball.”

Leigh-Cheri shares the fairy tale that she grew up hearing from Gulietta, and Bernard approaches it from a completely different angle, wondering what happened to the golden ball. This concern for objects, and an understanding of them as being important in their own right, is threaded throughout the novel. This perspective recenters the concerns of the story as revolving around neither the princess nor the prince, but around those objects that are easily dismissed by humans.

“A romantic, however, recognizes that the movement, the organization, the institution, the revolution, if it comes to that, is merely a backdrop for his or her own personal drama and that to pretend otherwise is to surrender freedom and will to the totalitarian impulse, is to replace psychological reality with sociological illusion, but such truth never penetrates the Glo-Coat of righteous conviction that surrounds the social idealist when he or she is identifying with the poor or the exploited.”

Bernard’s experience as an outlaw means that while he is involved in the antiwar movement of the 1960s, he also maintains a sense of himself as an individual. He sees it as crucial to resisting the impulse to just fall in line with a movement that—in its demand for total agreement and participation—can easily come to resemble the powers it is fighting against. In this passage, he also identifies it as a determination to maintain a sense of reality, rather than falling in line with “illusion,” another way in which Robbins plays with the line between philosophy or idealism and reality.

“At that moment, something caught her eye. Something snagged the hem of her vision and yanked it like a child. A moon ray had penetrated the one clear pane and was illuminating an object. She walked over and picked the object up. For the first time, she took account of the pack of Camels.”

The moon is an important symbol and motif in the book, and its literal illumination of the pack of Camels emphasizes its significance. However, the cigarette pack quickly assumes its own significance and fuels Leigh-Cheri’s new understanding of the world and her purpose in it. The cigarette pack is one of several objects that assume an outsized position in the narrative, another way in which Robbins personifies objects in the novel.

“Leigh-Cheri was exerting force on the Camel pack. And it on her. Surely, such force had to do with the physical nature of the pack […] and, above all, proximity—and not with the pictorial content that adorned it. Ah, but pictorial symbols have their own weight and gravity, as the history of religion vividly demonstrates, and while Leigh-Cheri found herself in a relationship with the Camel pack as an object, just as she was in relation to the moon as an object (just as you, reader, have a relationship with this book as an object, no matter if you can tolerate another line of its content), she deciphered from the symbology of the Camel pack design what appeared to be the long-lost message from the redheads of Argon.”

The significance of the object, in this passage, goes beyond the object itself to the significance and symbolism of the graphic illustrations on the object. Leigh-Cheri finds, in the cigarette pack, a new way to understand the world and her position in it. Robbins also directly addresses the reader in a parenthetical aside, drawing attention to the book itself as an object, thereby highlighting the way in which objects can retain deep significance and meaning beyond their superficial dimensions.

“It wasn’t strictly kosher, a book in the attic, but in the last quarter of the twentieth century what was? The Woodpecker himself had taught her that laws were like buttons—meant to be undone when the moment was ripe—and if you can’t break your own rules, whose can you break?”

When Leigh-Cheri imprisoned herself in the attic, her rule was that only the objects in Bernard’s cell would be allowed in hers. However, she decides to investigate the meaning and history of the illustrations on the Camel pack through a library book on graphic design. Her adoption of Bernard’s own rule—that rules were made to be broken when appropriate—shows her own evolution as an outlaw. The reference to the era also harkens back to the beginning of the book, locating Leigh-Cheri’s small attic world in the larger context of the novel’s setting again.

“Those days were gone. Now, the world’s decisions were made by smaller men; by gray, faceless bureaucrats without vision or wit; committeemen who spoke committeespeak and thought committeethought, men who knew more of dogma than destiny, men who understood production but were ignorant of pleasure, men more comfortable with a file full of papers than a fistful of gems, unsmiling men, unmannered men, undreaming men, men who believed they could guide humanity when they could not seduce a countess nor ride a horse.”

King Max reflects on the shift of power between the old world, in which monarchs like himself made the decisions, and the modern world, in which bureaucracy and capitalism rule. Although this shift is often seen as a positive one, he recognizes that some things were also lost. His references to gems, countesses, and horses raise a romantic image, much like Leigh-Cheri’s title as princess, that juxtaposes with the gray, dull imagery of the bureaucrat.

“After three days of such carrying on, Leigh-Cheri grew calm. She was, after all, in close harmony with lunar rhythms, and that which wanes must wax. Three days of darkness is as much as the moon will tolerate before it yelps, ‘Enough already,’ and begins slowly to reopen the antique refrigerator from whose icy innards will shine the transformative light of the world.”

Leigh-Cheri has received a letter from Bernard in which he berates her for the way in which people are beginning to follow her act of exiling herself. Robbins references the new moon phase—in which the moon isn’t visible from the Earth—and its reappearance as a rebirth that coincides with the end of Leigh-Cheri’s grieving. Three is also a traditionally symbolically significant number, and its connection to the moon deepens the thematic meaning of both.

“Now the Princess lived at the edge of a vast desert, under the seal of the sun. The change in interior geography was just the opposite. Indoors, she had traded the barren attic for a lavish flat. Her outside world and her inside world had swapped places. Had there been a corresponding psychological shift? And had its effects edited her moral code?”

Leigh-Cheri has moved from the attic, in which she lived by the light of the moon, to her fiancé’s flat, located in a desert under the sun. Robbins’s development of the moon as a romantic, feminine object, contrasted with the traditionally symbolic meaning of the sun as masculine, deepens the meaning of her move beyond a shift in location. The “seal” of the sun highlights her entrapment: Leigh-Cheri is under the control of, and dependent on, her fiancé, a control that she will eventually break away from.

“How can one thing be more real than any other? Especially when it is inscrutable and mysterious? Maybe when a thing is perceived as being absolutely direct yet absolutely unnecessary it becomes absolutely genuine. It is real unto itself and does not depend on outside attachments or associations for its reality. The more emotional values attributed to a thing, the more uses to which it can be put, the more effects it produces, then the more illusions it creates.”

Here, Robbins addresses the attribution of meaning to objects from a new perspective. Leigh-Cheri senses that the pyramid’s greater reality is due in some part to the lack of understanding surrounding it, which divorces it from the emotional attachments that give objects their meaning. By being “inscrutable and mysterious,” the pyramid’s symbolic meaning decreases, and therefore its status as an authentic object increases.

“A pyramid is primary. It is form, not function. It is presence, not effect. We can see it in an instant, yet we continue to read it. It nourishes us over and over. A pyramid is inscrutable and mysterious not in spite of being elemental but because it is elemental.”

This passage considers the pyramid from another perspective—as an elemental object. Its lack of function refuses the attribution of meaning, therefore creating an experience that a person can return to again and again. Paradoxically, its lack of easily understood meaning offers a meaningful experience and an opportunity to be approached multiple times.

“Some folks hide, and some folks seek, and seeking, when it’s mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren’t afraid to look and won’t turn tail should they find it—and if they never do, they’ll have a good time anyway because nothing, neither the terrible truth nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of earth’s sweet gas.”

Leigh-Cheri reflects on what she has learned about life from Bernard, who has given her a new way to approach life. He confronts the truths of the world, and she has learned to do the same. She now understands this approach as the only way to get the most out of life, no matter how difficult or frightening facing the reality of human existence is.