IF ANYBODY HAS CORNERED THE MARKET ON REVEALING THE SECRET LIVES OF objects, it is novelist Tom Robbins, although I'm not aware of any museum curator ever consulting Robbins for philosophical or logistical advice regarding an exhibition. To be sure, Robbins's novels frequently address matters central to the power of rock and roll-sex, philosophy, drugs, freedom, and outlawry-and often themselves possess the power simultaneously to arouse, outrage, inspire, and excite. But might those qualities not also inform exhibitry? Still Life with Woodpecker (1980) and Skinny Legs and All (1990) dramatize alternative models for communing with the inanimate particularly well. In Still Life, Princess Leigh Cherry sequesters herself for months and focuses all of her attention on a pack of Camel cigarettes, confident that hidden meanings