Jitterbug Perfume

The beet crops up throughout the narrative as a vegetable of mystery, endowed with incredible powers while maintaining a humble exterior. The beet’s virtues are extolled by exactly three voices in the narrative: Alobar, Wiggs Dannyboy, and the narrator (whom we might assume to be Tom Robbins himself). To everyone else in the novel, the beet is misused or ignored, its mysteries locked away. For instance, Alobar ascribes a warrior aspect to the vegetable and is dismayed at seeing it used as a mere dye ingredient. Meanwhile, the narrator keys it to creative practice. Whatever its qualities, they are easily overlooked; most of the other characters, and especially the women, have beets delivered to them night and day and show barely any curiosity about them. They all have inchoate desires to temper the feminine and overpowering jasmine in their perfumes, desires that could be fulfilled if only they looked to the humble beets surrounding them. The unenlightened might take a beet for granted, or view it as too common to be special.