The heroes are Thoreauvian idealists preaching sexual enlightenment. There are homilies about balance and fullness and cautionary tales about succumbing to reason. The cast is always the same - the lumpy, stolid authorities the wavering skeptic (usually played by the author) the seekers after truth, who, if pure of heart, are soon initiated into the higher mysteries the outlaws, one male and one female (the goat god and the mother goddess), stamped with shining individuality and a salty holiness. Pan will attend Descartes's funeral, if only to get off the line ''I stink, therefore I am.'' Here and there, like SMILE buttons pinned to the narrative, are wry digressions on plant life and arcane lore.
Robbins's style is unmistakable - oblique, florid, willing to sacrifice everything for an old joke or corny pun. It is a place where people brake for unicorns and where Frodo lives on forever amid a harem of nubile hobbits.
Robbins's first novel, ''Another Roadside Attraction,'' his odd corner of it has remained intact, caught in the amber of 1960's romanticism. Its message is a simple one - ''it is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, conservative, repressed, fearful, and aggressive, like the thunder lizards.'' While the world has changed substantially since 1971, the year of Mr. Like his earlier books, ''Jitterbug Perfume'' is not so much a novel as an inspirational fable, full of Hallmark sweetness, good examples and hope springing eternal. Tom Robbins is Carlos Castaneda in motley, Leo Buscaglia in love beads. John House is an associate editor of Vanity Fair.
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