An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the
United Nations.... It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it's
the axis around which spins this gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly
provocative novel, in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon
mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy
redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine--while the illusions
that obscure humanity's view of the true universe fall away, one by one,
like Salome's veils. Skinny Legs and All deals with today's most sensitive
issues: race, politics, marriage, art, religion, money, and lust. It weaves
lyrically through what some call the end days of our planet. Refusing to
avert its gaze from the horrors of the apocalypse, it also refuses to let
the alleged end of the world spoil its mood. And its mood is defiantly
upbeat. In the gloriously inventive Tom Robbins style, here are characters,
phrases, stories, and ideas that dance together on the page, wild and sexy,
like Salome herself. Or was it Jezebel?