In recent years we have seen wild enthusiasm, much discussion, and some handwringing for the likes of Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, and Thomas Pynchon. The latest discovery is Tom Robbins.

Several qualities distinguish the novels by these contemporary cult figures from those of authors such as [Henry] James. The most obvious characteristic is their enormous popularity, which entails equally large financial rewards….

A second characteristic of these recent novels is a fascination with travel, but the sort of travel that precludes round-trip fares and forty-five-day limits. Concerns of time and cost do not matter, because neither the destination nor the purpose is always very clear. In Robbins's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, the heroine, Sissy Hankshaw, "the world's greatest hitchhiker," freely admits that "it was the act of hitchhiking that formed the substance of her vision," and that she was never really going anywhere. Movement itself, rather than...