Jitterbug Perfume

“She continued weeping until the heat of her tear water, the sheer velocity of its flow, finally obscured the already vague circumstances of its origin.” 

Priscilla Pardito is often presented as a happy-go-lucky character. Yet in this first introduction, she is also presented as a person with longings that are difficult to fulfill. She is in search of something that cannot be satisfied materially.

“Among fashionable folk in the French Quarter, Madame D. was known as the Queen of the Good Smells. There was a time when certain people in the Quarter pronounced it ‘Spells.’” 

This introduction to Lily Devalier intimately connects her to the social life of New Orleans. The confusion of “smells” and “spells” intimately associates her work with a sort of witchcraft and perfume with magic.

“Marcel, who had grown up in the perfume labs, learning to think with his nose, was in charge of ‘creativity,’ a term that Claude did not completely comprehend, but which, to his credit, he recognized to be essential.” 

In introducing Marcel and Claude, we are encouraged to think of them as a collective representative of their company. While they own a giant skyscraper and vast capital, they also long for something different. This is true of capitalists in general, for whom market growth is an existential question.

“Heretofore, the ritual of putting the king to death had seemed to Alobar natural, inevitable and just.” 

This is the first of Alobar’s many heresies. If he can easily break this one arbitrary rule of his people, what others might he convince himself to get away with?

“If the notion of an individual resisting death was foreign to her (as indeed, it would have been to anyone in that milieu), the concept of the uniqueness of a single human life was alien to the point of babble.” 

These words, spoken by Wren to Alobar as they both decide how he should meet his fate, represents the counterpoint to Pan’s later lessons on individuality.

“He had been a mighty warrior, he had been an exalted king. Now it amused him to see what kind of a serf he would make.” 

Literature written in democratic countries abounds with stories of ruling-class individuals switching places with lower-class individuals and erasing the differences between them. To the contrary, Robbins is only interested in Alobar’s flexibility in this regard. In Robbins’s view, most people of whatever class are hidebound and tradition-focused, and it is the job of individuals to leave such conformists behind and forge their own path.

“Sooner or later, men will come along whose belief in the supremacy of the exceptional, extraordinary, isolated individual will cause themselves to declare themselves exempt from controls. In their uniqueness, they will not hesitate to defy accepted standards.” 

This prophecy, given by the shaman after Alobar forcefully enters his house, essentially lays out the governing principles of the contemporary Western world’s free-market liberalism. Yet considering Alobar’s fate at the end, one might assume that this fate was not so much progressive as eternal, as much a fact in the year 1000 as a millennium later.

“In the old days, the whole world was religious, and full of interest.”

In this interpretation of the world, mythology serves to focus one’s senses, making one alive to the world. Robbins might argue that this is the purpose of his book as well. He invents untruths so that we can better distinguish truth.

“How can you respect that sort of weakness, how can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointments can bring?” 

Alobar, impatient after 20 years of Buddhist contemplation, rails against the Buddhist principle of self-denial. In general, Robbins views organized religion as antithetical to his philosophy while accepting that the search for metaphysical and spiritual growth is worthwhile.

“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.” 

Love is useful in as much as it upholds the individuality of the object of love, but love is not a virtue by itself. The characters often prove this to be true, clinging to one another not out of comfort or companionship but an enervated desire to be seen (and sometimes lectured to) by one another.

“What little remained of Pan’s ancient power was destined to evaporate in the Age of Reason, that’s what the experts said.” 

In Part 3, the sexless and unhappy Descartes, who is sometimes credited as the founder of enlightened reason, appears briefly as an explicit antithesis to Pan’s formerly supreme exuberance. Robbins (and Pan) do not credit intellect that is not geared toward self-pleasure and the pleasure and captivation of others.

“We are forced to hide our supreme accomplishment as if it were a shameful crime. Where is the glory in that?” 

Alobar points out the unforeseen difficulties of an immortal life—the jealousy and superstition of others. This is a common refrain in American literature, particularly that of the very successful. In enriching themselves, they must leave the poor and unenlightened behind.

“Pan continued to visit men, according to Lalo, perhaps he always would, but in the modern world he came to them not in person, in sunlight, direct and immediate, but in dreams—erotic nightmares—or in flashes of terror, the kind that cause crowds to stampede for no reason, that they could neither explain nor understand.” 

In Part 4, this terror comes to fruition in the ransacking of the Last Laugh Foundation, the killing of Wiggs’s associates, and the severe beating of his daughter. It is strongly implied that Pan, all but silent and invisible and leaving only his scent, instigated this riot. It is unclear whether Robbins is saying that Pan’s libido was always intimately linked to violence, or if this is an uncharacteristic act of terrorism against a world that no longer reveres him.

“Persons, says Wiggs, who lack curiosity about life, who find minimal joy in existence, are all too willing, subconsciously, to cooperate with—and attract—disease, accident, and violence.” 

The immortality that sustains Alobar and Kudra is maintained through sheer willpower and belief. The reverse of this is also true, as Wiggs points out in this passage. If a person becomes sick or meets bodily misfortune, it is because their urge to live was not strong enough. While wholly fantastic, this is nonetheless a foundational ethical principle of the free market.

“Life is too small a container for some individuals. Some of them, such as Alobar, huff and puff and try to expand the container. Others, such as Kudra, seek to pry the lid off and hop out.” 

The principle of “life” here is not defined. Perhaps Robbins is comparing the sort of person who wants to extend life with the sort of person who seeks suicide or death, such as Kudra has expressed.

“Lighten up!” 

In Zen Buddhist writing, a koan is a paradoxical riddle used to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment in the reader. The quoted phrase, sometimes expressed in Alobar’s ancient language as “Erleichda,” repeatedly appears in Jitterbug Perfume but is never explained, giving it the free-floating mystery of a koan.

“Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for their security, those who repress it for their for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life’s bittersweet route.” 

In some philosophies, duty toward the betterment and fellowship of others is a defining trait of human life and the underlying foundation of its resilience. Alobar, quoted above, believes the opposite. Such dutiful people are merely suppressing a deeper first principle of human life, one that favors novelty, greater-than-average beauty and intelligence, and a lack of attachment to others.

“‘Interesting,’ thought Priscilla, ‘these people wanting out so badly and all those others on the street wanting in.’” 

This is Priscilla’s first impression of the ultra-exclusive meeting of the Last Laugh Foundation. She notes how uncomfortable the rich are around one another, but also how badly poorer people want to be a part of the rich’s milieu. In this comparison, neither the rich nor the poor are any closer to enlightenment than the other.

“[I]t is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, conservative, repressed, fearful and aggressive, like the thunder lizards.” 

This concludes Marcel LeFever’s influential speech to an exclusive group that includes Wiggs Dannyboy, one that hypothesizes that the dinosaurs were killed off by the evolutionary rise of flowers. It also personifies plants and extinct animals, and ascribes qualities of morality to biologically determined traits.

“‘Someday,’ Lalo had said, ‘there will be men who seek to defeat death by intelligence alone.’” 

Alobar sabotages several research centers with this message in mind, yet he willingly gives the formula for the immortality-linked K23 to Wiggs Dannyboy. The message here seems to be that immortality is OK for business purposes but not as a matter of intellectual study.

“In certain key points in history, one or another of these elitist minorities has become sufficiently large and resonant to affect the culture as a whole, thereby laying a significant patch of brick in the evolutionary road.” 

This is one of many passages attributed to Wiggs but not spoken by him, thus blurring the line between author and character. Later in this chapter, Wiggs mentions his love for the rich, because “an asshole with money can at least pay for his own drinks” (299). In Robbins’s world, neither enlightenment nor happiness is for everyone.

“The Universe does not have laws. It has habits. And habits can be broken.” 

In Wiggs Dannyboy’s cosmology, everything has an intention, and all fortune and misfortune is willed into being. Unhappiness at work, crime, and injustice are all problems deriving from those who experience them, and universal physical laws such as time are equally a matter of one’s good or a bad attitude.

“No, my friends, what bothers me today is the lack of, well, I guess you’d call it authentic experience. So much is a sham.” 

These are among Alobar’s final words to his friends in the 20th century and to us as readers. Like Pan, Alobar has become a shadow of his former self, mired in depression and rapidly aging. Consequently, he stops being a strong presence in the narrator’s estimation as well. Once, Alobar was capable of a “light” approach to life. No longer.