Bestselling novelist Tom Robbins dies at 92

Tom Robbins dazzled millions of readers with the whimsy and imagination in his bestselling novels, such as 1984’s Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs and All, from 1990, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, a 1976 book adapted by director Gus Van Sant into a 1993 film.

Robbins died at his home in La Conner, Washington, according to a statement from friend Craig Popelars. He was 92.

Tom Robbins lived in Washington state for most of his adult life, but he was born in Blowing Rock, N.C. His family moved around the South, settling in Warsaw, Va., where he picked up a knack for storytelling. As a boy, he would tell stories aloud to himself, outside, with a stick in his hand.

“I would beat the ground as I told the story,” he told NPR in 2014. “And we moved fairly frequently. We would leave houses behind where one section of the yard was completely bare from where I destroyed the grass. But I realized much later in life that what I was doing was drumming. I was building a rhythm.”

Along with the rhythm and humor in his novels, Robbins authored essays on subjects ranging from the life of an amoeba to Eastern philosophy. He said he often got ideas from periodicals.

“I do a lot of useless reading and read a lot of science magazines,” he explained to NPR in 1994. “I subscribe to about 30 magazines, and every Thursday night, I put on a satin smoking jacket that I bought in a second-hand store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, and light up a big Cuban cigar and read magazines. And it is as if your mind is a Geiger counter. Every now and then, something makes a loud ping.”