There has got to be a way to have both of them, he thought. Domino and Suzy, too. He spent the entire night devising one delectable and improbable scheme after another, refusing to accept that the fates might force him to choose one or the other. He loved them both. He wanted them both. It was only natural. He was Switters.
Early the next morning, he checked himself out of the hospital, and he and Mr. Plastic flew to Bangkok. To clear the coconut. To mull matters over.
There was a temple by the river, where he meditated every day. Nights, there were the girls of Patpong. Bless them. Bless every slink and wisp of them. There were refreshing, if timid, beers. Food so spicy it’d run a motor. A little stick now and then.
Cowboys were fond of saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Switters thought, It’s always broke, and we can never fix it. On the other hand, there’s nothing to break, so what is it we imagine we’re fixing?
The baht was weak against the dollar. A back-alley tailor made him a new linen suit. He walked in it. Danced in it. Acknowledged the Tao. The seam in the Tao. At moments he felt as if he were at least an inch and a half off the ground.
He kept bumping into old acquaintances, and one midnight they took him to a meeting of the C.R.A.F.T. Club—where, legend has it, he got up and squawked like a parrot.
acknowledgments
The author wishes to lift a goblet of vintage ink to his agent, Phoebe Larmore; his editor, Christine Brooks; and his five-book line editor, Danelle McCafferty (who taught him south from north—or was it the other way around?). He also salutes his assistant, Barbara Barker; his former assistant, Jacqueline Trevillion (twelve years before the mast); his longtime typist, Wendy Chevalier; and the numerous other women (lucky dog!) who dominate his life, including, but definitely not limited to, his attorney, Margaret Christopher; his yoga teacher, Dunja Lingwood; his Patpong social directors, Little Opium Annie and Miss Pretty Woman; his anatomical researcher and mayonnaise scout, Koryn Rolstad; his French connection, Enid Smith-Becker; and, most emphatically, his eternal love dumpling, Alexa.
about the author
TOM ROBBINS has been called “a vital natural resource” by The Portland Oregonian, “one of the wildest and most entertaining novelists in the world” by the Financial Times of London, and “the most dangerous writer in the world today” by Fernanda Pivano of Italy’s Corriere della Sera. A Southerner by birth, Robbins has lived in and around Seattle since 1962.
BOOKS BY TOM ROBBINS
Another Roadside Attraction
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Still Life with Woodpecker
Jitterbug Perfume
Skinny Legs and All
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates
Villa Incognito
Praise for Tom Robbins and
FIERCE INVALIDS HOME FROM HOT CLIMATES
“Robbins proves again that he can tell a wicked tale . . . [He] has created a spokesman for a world order where the enlightened individual once again reigns. At least individuals who can handle it.” —Kansas City Star
“Like any Robbins tale, it’s deceptively funny yet dead serious in its confrontation with Big Issues: the nature of God and Satan; the hypocrisy of organized religions; the insidious evils of government, big business, and advertising; liberalism vs. conservatism; the condition of humanity in an inhumane world.” —The Sacramento Bee
“For fans of Robbins’s nonlinear playfulness, this story of a CIA agent hooked on sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll offers plenty of abandon and unexpected rewards.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“[Robbins] takes us on his typical rowdy and irreverent ride, surprising us both with the story he tells and with the way he tells it . . . may be Robbins’s best work to date.” —The Richmond Times Dispatch
“Robbins is still the Houdini of unchained similes and metaphors.” —Detroit Free Press
“Ingenious . . . Tom Robbins writes operas chock full of mind-altering images and calls them novels . . . Fans like him for going all-out cosmic, for twisting what seem like unlikely words into brilliant Mobius strips of humor and beauty.” —The Seattle Times
“[Robbins] has written a new novel that pops like a dogwood in springtime . . . it will do everything to delight those who realize they need a jolt from his cosmic jumper cables every so often.”—Philadelphia News
“The father (in this century) of all nose-thumbers . . . [Robbins] is also the inspiration for disreputable treaders of the line between thriller and literature.” —Los Angeles Times
“Robbins balances the comic and the cosmic much as a juggler might balance a kitchen chair on a spoon. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal
“[Robbins] brews another deranged and delightful concoction about a man who does it all for God, country, and the love of women.” —Fortune
“Philosophical screwball comedy.” —People
“Full of little wisdoms, Invalids is the literary equivalent of whitewater-rafting the rapids of Africa’s Zambezi River with the Marx Brothers in tow.” —Entertainment Weekly
“One of the most inventive writers on the planet.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“An incredibly humorous and completely outlandish romp . . . The high jinks couldn’t be any wilder.” —Booklist
“No one writes like Robbins . . . When you look closely at his work, there are virtually no throwaway lines—they seem crafted.” —Tracy Johnson, Salon.com
“Everything [Robbins’s fans have] come to expect—humor, sex, adventure, ferocious rants about society and religion, characters who swear on the Bible and Finnegans Wake, asides on everything from etymology to violence, and a disregard to anybody else’s definition of good taste . . . His novels lure the adventurous and warn the timid.” —BookPage
“A picaresque masterpiece. These ‘fierce invalids’ have synthesized in a page-turner way so many of the grand and burning questions of this time, the reader will have her energizing orgasms without surcease.”
—Andrei Codrescu
“Robbins leads the reader on a dizzying charge.”
—Playboy
“Lush and sexy, containing a great deal of witty social and political commentary.” —Publishers Weekly
“A lot of fun.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Startlingly evocative . . . has more dramatic reversals than Othello . . . Robbins has made a viable art form out of over-the-topness, to say nothing of cosmic muffinry.”
—San Francisco Examiner Book Review
“Mystical, bizarre, and just plain funny.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“In his seventh and perhaps most complex novel to date, Robbins shines as brilliantly as he has in the past . . . Robbins, who satirized hippie communes a quarter century ago, hasn’t lost a step, offering superb, current social commentary.” —New York Post
FIERCE INVALIDS HOME FROM HOT CLIMATES
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published May 2000
Bantam trade paperback edition / June 2001
Bantam trade paperback reissue / May 2003
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2000 by Tom Robbins
Book design by Glen Edelstein
Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-051683
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
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eISBN: 978-0-553-89790-6
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