A strange love affair of liberal and anarchistic lead protagonists, reflecting everything out of the Punch and Judy show called politics and it´s strange and illogical ideological foundations.
The woodpecker is such a badass antihero, and his pairing with the redhead hippie girl leads to loads of great plot options Robbins uses to make fun of everything and adds an extra load of filth, sex, and wordplays to the mix to make it even grittier. His language, comparable with some rare ingenious novelists such as Simmons, Irving, etc., makes it difficult to choose if one wants to enjoy the flow of letters or the underlying themes Robbins throws at the reader all the time, because altogether characterization, introspections, and weird world views of the protagonist and the universe around them are astonishing.
I know that I know nothing and so many of the political and some economic innuendos won´t find their target in my mind, because I´ve stopped dealing with the lunacy and stupidity of both fringe sciences a while ago, but readers who are big in history will maybe find many real life inspirations. Although that´s just an assumption, it´s also possible that most of it is purely fictional, but I deem Robbins too clever to not use the option of owning this dysfunctional system. Not to forget the symbolism, individualism, how society deals with progressive tendencies, and how stupid people become by following a mixture of primate and wolf pack instincts.