Edward Abbey visits the Gulch

A few weeks ago a commenter on an earlier post facetiously asked if I was (or maybe if I was styling myself as) Edward Abbey's long-lost brother. Not hardly - I am aware of the man, but until recently knew and cared almost nothing about him. In the sixties and seventies, ecology scolds were ever-present and generally quite annoying in a self-righteous way: I ignored them and hoped they'd ignore me. To me, he was just one more.

But last week I got an email from a friend, who told me he was sending me a box of books through our mutual friends S&L. This was welcome news, of course: Any box full of random books is bound to contain something worth reading.

Saturday morning I went over to S&L's worksite, and after greetings and coffee exchanged the box for some Jeep parts my friend had asked me to see sent back with them. Back at the property I unloaded the box on a workbench: Some Stephen Hunter, F. Paul Wilson, T. H. White, and other paperbacks of an apparently more random nature. Some I'd read before but not in quite a while. Days and days of evening reading; a treasure chest of books.

And what should I find among them but Edward Abbey's two most famous books (IOW the only two I'd actually heard of) - The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire. Nice! Funny the way synergy, or maybe just coincidence, can work sometimes.

What with the visit from my landlady, I've only carved my way about halfway through the novel. First impressions: Seventies-era individualism, now that I'm forced to relive it through this book, demanded no less and possibly a good deal more conformity than the 21^st-century variety does. The first few chapters read exactly like every other '70's "counterculture" book I remember - heavy on the ironic, scornful similes, heavy on the oh-so-cool sentence constructions. I believe these chapters may have actually been designed to make complete sense only in the presence of a fat doobie. Afterward Abbey seems to get that out of his system and the narrative style settles down quite a bit to an entertaining, if childishly nihilistic, story. Seventies-style eco-terrorism: yeah, what a (yawn) rush. Them evil bulldozers.

Which reminds me, I've gotta call S the road guy: I promised another friend a quote on installing some culverts here in the pristine desert. I don't know if Abbey and I would have gotten along or not. At least I don't agitate for streetlights.