cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/448597
Amoebae leave no fossils. They haven’t any bones. (No teeth, no belt buckles, no wedding rings.) It is impossible, therefore, to determine how long amoebae have been on Earth.
Quite possibly they have been here since the curtain opened. Amoebae may even have dominated the stage, early in the first act. On the other hand, they may have come into existence only three years—or three days or three minutes—before they were discovered by Anton van Leeuwenhoek in 1674. It can’t be proven either way.
One thing is certain, however: because amoebae reproduce by division, endlessly, passing everything on yet giving up nothing, the first amoebae that ever lived is still alive. Whether four billion years old or merely three hundred, he/she is with us today.
Where?
Well, the first amoeba may be floating on his/her back in a luxurious pool in Hollywood, California. The first amoeba may be hiding among the cattail roots and peepers in the muddy shallows of Siwash Lake. The first amoeba may recently have dripped down your leg. It is pointless to speculate.
The first amoeba, like the last and the one after that, ishere, there and everywhere, for its vehicle, its medium, its essence is water.
Water—the ace of elements. Water dives from the clouds without parachute, wings or safety net. Water runs over the steepest precipice and blinks not a lash. Water is buried and rises again; water walks on fire and fire gets the blisters. Stylishly composed in any situation—solid, gas or liquid—speaking in penetrating dialects understood by all things—animal, vegetable or mineral—water travels intrepidly through four dimensions, sustaining (Kick a lettuce in the field and it will yell “Water!”), destroying (The Dutch boy’s finger remembered the view from Ararat) and creating (It has even been said that human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another, but that’s another story). Always in motion, ever-flowing (whether at steam rate or glacier speed), rhythmic, dynamic, ubiquitous, changing and working its changes, a mathematics turned wrong side out, a philosophy in reverse, the ongoing odyssey of water is virtually irresistible. And wherever water goes, amoebae go along for the ride.
Sissy Hankshaw once taught a parakeet to hitchhike. There is not much in that line she could teach an amoeba.
Link to the stinker of a movie adaptation of 1993 - a prime example of when a novel absolutely flops as a film. Read the book before seeing it, because you won’t want to afterwards.
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To be fair, the movie was pretty much doomed to fail. Robbins is one of those authors for whom the plot isn’t really the point - it’s just a sort of framework on which he then hangs… pretty much anything and everything.
You don’t read a Robbins novel just for the story - you read it for the experience of him telling a story, and for all of the digressions and diversions along the way.
Similar with Douglas Adams, there’s not really a way to keep all his narrative asides in a film without an omniscient narrator who simply won’t shut up. At that point, it may as well be an audiobook.
I was always a bigger fan of Still Life With Woodpecker, not sure why.
That’s a good one; first one I read by him. I think Jitterbug Perfume is my favorite. Totally changed the way I think about the sense of smell haha
Another great one - here’s a link to get a free .pdf copy if you’re looking to add to your library:
https://annas-archive.org/md5/ae962cb11c50e00ecdc2b50d2d813b54
I agree, Still Life is the stronger novel. I usually choose Cowgirls as the work of his to to introduce new readers to, as it’s more accessible and lighthearted, but Still Life is where Robbins really shows his chops.
Here’s a link to a free copy (.pdf download) from Anna’s if you’re looking for one: https://annas-archive.org/md5/85333852ce8e0b37dc4918f59cfb5bb1
I (36m) read this recently and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would have liked this a lot more if I had read it fifteen or twenty years ago. It was very clever at times, language-wise it was buzzing, but it felt very hollow and adolescent at times too.
