thesis.

I've been in love with Tom Robbins since day one, and when I applied to the Honors program at Vanderbilt, he was at the top of the list for my thesis topics. Until recently, I have engaged in a sort of sporadic exploration of different representations of sex as communion in late 20th century American literature. The problem with this thesis was that I was starting below zero. I had never read Lady Chatterley's Lover (DH Lawrence was tirelessly overt in his sexual/communion language) and I had never read half of the texts suggested by my professors. I attempted Portnoy's Complaint, a novel by Phillip Roth, which is crassly devoted to the psychology and spirituality of "wacking off."And I could never even sum up the courage to buy a John Retchie novel (you can look up why on your own)...

lets just say, I didn't get very far and all of it was a bit too much.

Finally though, I finished reading Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (a novel about a giant-thumbed hitchhiker who joins up the not-so-traditional feminist cowgirls who preach freedom and feminine sexual hygiene at the Rubber Rose Ranch, and ends up proving to be the freest woman of them all), I had a new idea that allowed me to just write about Robbins (an author whose supporting literature is lacking in proportion to his brilliance) and do so without thinking about orgasm for too many hours a day.

all thats to say, my thesis will go something like this:

Tom Robbins: The Feminine Hero and Her New Frontier

sounds pretty right?