Perspective: The view from an altitude of 2 inches

The dust jacket of this novel says that author Tom Robbins is opposed to story summations. The futility of trying to sum up the plot of a Robbins novel was suggested on the dust jacket of one of his earlier books.

So clearly there is no percentage in such an enterprise.

But then again, giving it a shot anyway would be just the sort of quixotic adventure that would appeal to a Robbins protagonist like Switters.

Here is a man who is a study in contradictions. He wears well-cut suits over T-shirts. His "fierce, hypnotic green eyes" are framed by a face filled with multiple scars, implying a hard history. He has a "festive manner of speech" and is inclined go off on tangents about any number of esoteric subjects. He notes that sometimes an unnecessary risk can open the door to enchantment and says that "Only the obtuse are unappreciative of paradox."

He is also a CIA agent with an extreme prejudice against his employer. Cloak-and-dagger duties aside, he believes his real mission is to subvert the arrogant and reckless "company" cowboys, those trigger-happy patriots who create the international incidents and get innocent people killed.

But right now there is another mission: Switters' grandmother, who prefers to be called Maestra, wants her aging parrot, who is called Sailor Boy whether he prefers it or not, to be released in a South American jungle, where he can spend his last days living free, beyond the confines of his cage. But the pyramid-shaped cage and the bird turn out to be of special interest to an Amazonian shaman. It is Switters' fateful encounter with the shaman that turns him into one of those "fierce invalids home from hot climates."

Being an invalid -- and one with an attitude -- he soon finds himself released from government service. But no matter. Being in a wheelchair, Switters sees himself as orbiting the Earth at an altitude of two inches, forced to survey the world from a new perspective. So he proceeds to pilot his star ship across new geographies, physical, intellectual and emotional.

After spending a few months as a fixture in a Seattle marketplace, he takes an assignment with a group of anti-CIA "angels" in the Middle East. It is not long before we see him impulsively wheeling up to the walls of a convent in the remote Syrian desert.

Within Switters' orbit, we find all sorts of delicious digressions. There's a taste or two of Finnegan's Wake, a rant on why young males love films in which many things are blown up, the odd etymology, a Matisse painting, the plight of the Kurds and numerous foreign words for the female sexual apparatus (something of a Switters specialty).

Matters of cosmic concern always have a central role in a Tom Robbins novel, and this time they revolve around the mysterious third prophecy of Our Lady of Fatima, as well as some notions cooked up by that shaman back in the South American jungle. The link, Switters believes, is laughter. If people could combine "Western man's comedic sense" with the primitive man's "organic wisdom" and ability to embrace many levels of reality, the result would be "something truly wondrous and supremely real, the finally consummated marriage of darkness and light."

Given the hazards of story summaries, not to mention the risks of too briefly debriefing the reader on matters this esoteric, matters that many might well dismiss as flapdoodle, we should probably wind things up at a more basic level. Here's some sound advice from Sailor Boy, the only words the old bird ever uttered:

"Peeple of ze wurl, relax!"

Eric Lacker is on the Times staff.

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Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

By Tom Robbins

Bantam Books, $27.50

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