The celebrated comic novelist wrote best-sellers like Another Roadside Attraction and Jitterbug Perfume while maintaining a devoted underground following

His first novel, “Another Roadside Attraction,” was published in 1971 when Robbins was 39 -- more than three decades after declaring to his parents, at age 5, that he’d be a writer.

Robbins, known for his absurdist novels, studied at a forerunner of Virginia Commonwealth University and briefly worked at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.