It came as a surprise to me, as I looked more into the story of this author's life and career, that Edward Abbey had a problematic ambition to compete with the likes of Saul Bellow and John Updike, writing post-Hemingway Big American Novels. This ambition of his cannot be taken all that lightly. After all, Abbey did not merely write to live, he lived to write; and novelistic ambition must have gone a long way toward his discipline as a writer of anything, including the non-fiction for which he is most renowned.

It just is kind of painful to think of this Jeremiah, this prophet of the American West, measuring himself against the East Coast intelligentsia.