Fools, Frog Pajamas, and Tom Robbins
by MF Beta

MF Beta, manager of The Fool's Errand in Follywood (keywords FOLLY or FILMBALL will take you there) recently spoke with Tom Robbins, one of America's most popular novelists, about Fools, finance, film, and tomato sandwiches, as well as his latest book, HALF ASLEEP IN FROG PAJAMAS (a Bantam trade paperback), which deals with all of these remarkable subjects.

We think it makes a fine Fribble, so here's a special preview of the forthcoming Fool's Errand article, "23 Questions For Tom Robbins"!

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FOOL: In your recent novel HALF ASLEEP IN FROG PAJAMAS. . . Gwendolyn's obsession with the stock market elicited a bit of scorn from the protagonist, Larry Diamond (a reformed player in financial games of chance). Are you invested? Have any good tips?

TOM ROBBINS : As part of my research for HALF ASLEEP IN FROG PAJAMAS, I made friends with stock brokers, read the Wall Street Journal daily, and, yes, even dabbled in the market. (Hit the jackpot with Microsoft, was sacked and sacked hard by ADM and Pyxis.) It was fascinating for a while, but high finance for it's own sake is a shallow business and can be deadening to the soul. You're correct in referring to the stock market as a game, and games of that magnitude have a compelling and giddy appeal, but to justify large expenditures of one's time and energy, there has to be something more important at risk than mere money.

FOOL: What is the significance of 'the Fool' in HALF ASLEEP. . .?

TOM ROBBINS : We are all, each of us, the Fool; and the Fool's Journey is our own journey through life. However, we should make a distinction between Fools -- capital "F" -- and fools -- lower case "f". A Fool is a person who's searching, growing, changing and actively participating in the human whoopjamboreehoo. A fool is a person who has shut down, who has reached a nice comfortable plateau and stopped there, not thinking very deeply, not feeling very much; just consuming, procreating and watching television; clinging desperately to the old values and cliches he or she was once spoon-fed early in life.

The Fool, on the other hand, is a piece of working evolution, complete with trials, errors and ridiculous pratfalls. The lower case fool isn't necessarily a moron, but rather a robot, a zombie, a drone.

FOOL: If you had to eat one kind of food exclusively for a week, what would you wish that food to be?

TOM ROBBINS : Tomato sandwiches. Ruby-red, field-ripened, sun-warmed Virginia tomatoes on fresh Wonder bread heavily impastoed with Best Foods or Hellman's mayonnaise.

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Check out the other 20 questions in the Fool's Errand for Saturday, the 23rd!

Thanks to Tom!

Fool on!