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Tom Robbins' Chink: a Posthumous Zarathustra

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Tom Robbins' Chink: a Posthumous Zarathustra Wright State University CORE Scholar Philosophy Faculty Publications Religion, Philosophy, and Classics 1979 Tom Robbins' Chink: A Posthumous Zarathustra Charles Taylor Wright State University - Main Campus, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/philosophy Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons Repository Citation Taylor, C. (1979). Tom Robbins' Chink: A Posthumous Zarathustra. https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/philosophy/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Religion, Philosophy, and Classics at CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. by Charles Senn Taylor TOM ROBBINS’ CHINK A POSTHUMOUS ZARATHUSTRA Copyright © 1979 The Enigma Press For KIM Among the graffiti found in Boston in the early 1970’s was the suggestion, "Martin Heidegger is a Zen Buddhist”; I expect that today one would find it accom­ panied by, "The Chink is a Nietzschean”. The "Chink” referred to here is of course the anti-guru of Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (hereafter referred to as Cowgirls). The thought about the Chink pre­ sented here originates in studying Robbins’ protagonist, Sissy Hankshaw. Sissy is a unique heroine in a number of ways but most importantly because she goes on a quest. In ppntrast to most female quests in contem­ porary fiction Sissy’s quest is quite like that described for the male-only hero of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Sissy quests for those ultimate truths that Campbell’s heroes seek rather than for the love that her literary sisters traditionally have sought. The philosophical model of such a quest can be seen as far back as Plato’s "Allegory of the Cave”. The development of these thoughts I would like to present is that Sissy is also unique in that the truth she dis­ covers on her quest is philosophically radically different from the truths male questors have been discovering since Plato’s Philosopher-Kings. Several introductory points need to be made about the "philosophy” found in Cowgirls. The major source of the wisdom learned by Sissy is the Chink; he is, however, not the only source of philosophical ideas - others include the narrator’s reflections-the theories of Sissy’s psychiatrist, Dr. Robbins,-and the visions of Delores del Ruby. The most accurate picture of Sissy’s "philosophy” is a combination of all these sources- for she certainly understands them all whether she articulates them or not. This composite is far from a philosophical "system” as encountered in Plato or Hegel, but it is nevertheless a coherent perspective on existence. Here already we find a point of contact with Nietzsche. Understanding Nietzsche demands seeing the connections of his deepest thoughts to one another; yet his philosophy is hardly a "system”. Nietzsche believed that the "will to system” is a lack of integrity. Our primary concern is to disclose the similarities between Nietzsche’s thinking and that presented in Cowgirls-we shall use the Chink as the primary source simply because we hear more from him than from any­ one else. We can begin our inquiry by looking at how Nietzsche and the Chink evaluate the spiritual health of western civilization. Nietzsche was the first philos- opher of modern times to place the death of God at the center of his thought. It is quite important to be clear about the meaning of the death of God in Nietz- sche. First of all the death of God is seen by Nietzsche as a metaphysical event, it is a fact, a part of our his- torical heritage. The death of God is not a matter of belief, Nietzsche does not say, "I no longer believe,”; rather, he says, "I notice that...” The fact noticed is that the values that have dominated western culture have lost their compelling nature, we have placed our values olut of reach, and with the realization that they are not attainable, a feeling of absurdity prevails. What Nietzsche sees is the occurrence of Nihilism; he is per­ haps best understood as the prophet of Nihilism for when he wrote of the death of God in the 1880’s few people understood him-today his ideas are seen in many places, including novels about cowgirls. We need to take another step here. The death of God is presented by Nietzsche as a fact, but it is clearly not an accidental fact, he does not talk of the disap­ pearance of God but rather says that God has been murdered, that we have murdered him ourselves. This nihilism, this devaluation of life began argues Nietzsche 2400 years ago in the metaphysical beliefs of Plato. Prior to Plato philosophers concerned themselves with understanding nature; from Plato onward human be­ ings have been the special focus of attention. What distinguishes human beings is reason, that mental abil­ ity which has discovered algebra, geometry and hope­ fully much more, similarly absolute, knowledge. This privilege to reason, however, poses a problem for Plato, because he was well aware of the irrational, the para­ doxical in life. In fact the small bit of reason found in the human mind seemed so special because it is sur­ rounded by the irrational. At this point Plato makes a decisive moral judgement and says that the rational is the most important, that true Being must be fully rational, fully good. Thus the philosophical quest is defined, one must overcome the irrational and find a world without contraditions. Plato found that world and called it the world of ideas-it is a world of abso­ lute justice, absolute beauty, absolute truth. In the famous "Allegory of the Cave” this world of ideas is the world outside the cave, the place where the philos­ ophers must go to discover the truth before they return to the cave to be philosopher-kings and create a just society. For Nietzsche there are some fundamental prob- lems with this pidture of existence. Plato’s world of ideas, the world outside the cave is really a creation of Plato’s mind. The adtual difficulty, however, is that concealed in this dualistic perspective is an unconscious nihilism. Life says Nietzsche is fundamentally ambig­ uous; Plato’s world of ideas is built upon a denial of ambiguity, and thus of life itself. For Nietzsche, the goal of ascending out of the cave to the realm of pure Being where everything is rational and good is unattain­ able. Because western culture has maintained this same Platonic dualistic metaphysics we have continued to accept values that are out of reach. Understanding Nietzsche’s idea of the death of God means the re­ alization that nihilism is the internal logic of our civilization. When we turn to the Chink we find that he too sees that the mainstream of our society believes in values that are out of our reach. He expresses this quite clearly in telling Sissy of the Clock People and their waiting for the "Eternity of Joy”. "I loved those loony redskins”, the Chink said to Sissy. "But I couldn’t be a party to their utopian dreaming. After a while it occurred to me that the Clock People waiting for the Eternity of Joy was virtually identical to the Christians waiting for the Second Coming. Or the Communists waiting for the worldwide revolution. Or the Debbies waiting for the flying saucers. All the same. Just more suckers betting their share of the present on the future, banking every misery on a happy ending to history. Well, history isn’t going to end, happily or unhappily. And history is ending every sec­ ond-happily for some of us, unhappily for others, happily one second, unhappily the next. History is always ending and not ending, and both ways there is nothing to wait for. Ha ha ho ho and hee hee.” (This and all subsequent refer­ ences to Even Cowgirls Get the Blues are from the Bantam edition of 1977. Page references will be included parenthet­ ically in the text.) (Cowgirls, p. 230) For the Chink there is, thus, the same unconscious nihilism in the Clock People, the Marxists and the Christians that Nietzsche saw in Plato’s world of ideas and, like the Chink, in Christianity. We can take a step further here. The Chink could not accept the Clock People’s utopian dreaming so he left, but to build his own Clockworks-while being critical of the Clock People the Chink remains friends with them. Sometime in the course of things, the Chink had made it clear to Sissy that, while he might not buy the Clock People’s dreaming, he did respect the quality of their dream. The vision of an era, however lasting, during which all ritual would be personal and idiosyncratic, made the Chink's heart want to stand up and dance. (Cowgirls, p. 230) We find this same respect in Nietzsche for the idealism of Plato and those who follow Plato, including Chris­ tianity. In the "Prologue” to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra Zarathustra, the teacher of the Ubermensch, the Will to Power and Eternal Return, chooses to re­ turn to society after the death of God; he has a gift, a new perspective on existence that is only possible after the death of God. The first person Zarathustra encoun­ ters is a saint who lives alone in the forest, talking only witty God, no longer to humans. Zarathustra and the saint meet as friends, they laugh with each other, under­ stand each other.
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