JITTERBUG PERFUME BY: TOM ROBBINS

FEATURES:  JITTERBUG PERFUME  BY: TOM ROBBINS

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A) CONDITION BOOK: NEAR FINE - HARD BOUND

B) CONDITION DUST JACKET: GOOD - NOT PRICE CLIPPED [$15.95] BRODART

C) FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING - BANTAM PUBLISHERS 1984

D) NOTE: AS IS TYPICAL OF ROBBINS NOVELS, THE PLOT IS CONVOLUTED AND ALWAYS SURPRISING.  THE CELEBRATED AMERICAN AUTHORS 4TH NOVEL. MINOR CHIPS TO HEAD AND TAIL OF SPINE ON DUST JACKET.  342 PAGES.

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BOOK GRADING CATEGORIES:

FINE

VERY GOOD

GOOD

FAIR

POOR
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JITTERBUG PERFUME  BY: TOM ROBBINS

Jitterbug Perfume is Tom Robbins' fourth novel and was listed on the New York Times Best Seller list in 1985.^[1] The book follows two interweaving storylines, one in Ancient Eurasia and one in the present day. The story connects dueling perfumers in Seattle, Paris and New Orleans to a bottle of incomparable perfume created by two unlikely but defiant lovers of the past who seek immortality. Orchestrated by a mysterious Irish philosopher, the past and the present collide when the characters come together and discover the unexpected path to life-everlasting. The book was first published in 1984 by Bantam Books and later published by Random House.

Plot summary[edit]

A powerful and chiseled 8th-century king named Alobar narrowly escapes regicide at the hands of his own subjects, from a custom of killing the leader at the first sign of aging. After fleeing, no longer a king but only a man, he travels through Eurasia, on a newfound quest for the secret to longevity. Eventually he stumbles upon the stamping grounds of the pungent goat-god Pan, who is slowly losing his godly powers as the world turns toward Christianity. Pan encourages Alobar to continue East in search of the masters of immortality.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Priscilla, a part-time waitress and amateur perfumer, is stalled in re-creating the fragrance from the last remaining drops of a three-hundred-year-old perfume bottle in her possession. She rejects the sexual advances of her co-worker Ricki. She begins an affair with an eccentric Irish philosopher, Wiggs Dannyboy, who runs a clinic for immortality research called the Last Laugh Foundation. She attempts to ignore the mysterious deliveries of beets she keeps receiving at her apartment.

In New Orleans, Priscilla's stepmother, Madame Devalier, a once successful perfumer, is also working to recreate the same fragrance as Priscilla. Madame D’s protégé V'lu urges her to attempt to formulate a scent that will compete with their historic competition in Paris. The two have their hands on premium Jamaican jasmine supplied by a mysterious man with the helmet of swarming bees, Bingo Pajama, a symbolic figure in the story.

In Paris, Claude and Marcel LeFever of the LeFever Parfumarie are not concerned with the small perfume house in New Orleans, but rather their new scent and its synthetic base. Claude has been charged with keeping an eye on Marcel’s stability. Though the "creative nose" of the company, his latest ideas on evolution of a new consciousness have got his uncle, the owner, Luc Lefever, more than a bit unsettled. It is revealed that Luc has placed Marcel’s lover V’lu as a secret agent to send them information about Perfumerie Devalier.

In Ancient India, a heinous widow commits suttee, a ritual of self-immolation. Alobar consoles a young girl, Kudra, who was horrified at the sight of the woman attempting to escape the flames of the funeral pyre. Years later, the girl, now a young woman, arrives at a lamasery where Alobar has taken residence for two decades. The two fall in love, and as with most of Robbins' couples, their mutual libido is enormous, and their love quite like something out of a comedic fairy tale. Kudra reveals that she recently escaped suttee herself, and the two find a common bond in their defiance of death.