BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927-1989), author

Subject: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Jul 16 - 04:35 PM

Edward Abbey has no music/lyrical relevance, honestly, that I know of. Does anyone know why an Edward Abbey thread might belong in the music threads on this forum? You know more than I, if you do.

This thread is being posted in the non-music area of the forum. All are welcome to post. A Mudcat search on his name will turn up posts by members to whom he is important, it would be interesting to observe how many there are.

As for this Mudcat member, interest in another thread, on the two "Leibowitz" novels, led to recalling Abbey whose writings I have held in awe for years. The second of the two novels, the one whose title begins with "Saint Leibowitz...", devotes a lot of time and space to the plains, mesas, and desert country in the part of the US nearest to the Gulf and to Mexico, as well as to the pre-Columbian cultures that perpetuate human society in a form close to nature and defensive against Western European civilization. In places within Miller's book, I could imagine Miller and Abbey shaking hands.

Abbey has been dead for some time, and yet his literary/philosophical legacy seems to be alive and kicking, to judge from discussions about him.

Finding Abbey, and two more

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Jul 16 - 08:23 PM

There's a lot about Abbey in the world of literary criticism. Check out the MLA Index.

I don't remember music being a feature of his work. Did you ask this question because you found an Edward Abbey thread in the music section? Posting a link to it might help recreate the thinking that went into it.

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 31 Jul 16 - 07:36 PM

pardon me, but what's MLA?

Negative to your question: posts mentioning Abbey usually have to do with reading books, at least that is true of the results of my search.

a Marxist considers Edward Abbey

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Aug 16 - 11:50 AM

I never met Abbey nor heard him in public. He was and is controversial on numerous subjects. One such subject was the migration, into the United States, of illegal aliens to supplement the domestic workforce, particularly from south of the border. Abbey wrote, published, and commented at some length, with some heat, and in blunt language, on the subject. You would think his position was fixed in stone.

And yet I wonder.
Although Abbey has passed away, I think about what I can learn of him, not just as a voice/writer, but as a person; there is an impressive amount of reminiscence about the kind of man he was, published and available. This is the impression I receive. I observe a soft-spoken, deep-voiced man, who listens as much, if not more than, he speaks, when out among people; not gregarious or extroverted, but somewhat wary and cautious. I speculate about how he would carry himself face to face with someone whose first language is Spanish and who comes from south of the border, or with any individual with personal ties to same. With the person, I reckon he would be considerate, would look them in the eye, and be civil; is this wishful thinking?

Because, I believe that way of carrying himself, his deportment with people out in the world, would speak for him as a man with respect, even sympathy, for his fellow person. Yes, it is easy to find pronouncements from Edward Abbey that are racist and hostile regarding illegal aliens from Mexico, direct statements in blunt language to that effect. This adds up to a person with strong, polarized beliefs and opinions about issues, who would make no secret of same, and who would not deny his racist stance if someone started a conversation about the immigration issue. So if, hypothetically, Edward Abbey had a person, or a bar booth sized group of persons, approach him and confront him about his published statements, he would stand right up, look them straight in the eye, and in a low steady voice confirm that he wrote those things and that he believed what he wrote.

I really question if this puts him in Donald Trump's company. I sincerely doubt if Edward Abbey would support Trump's proposal to build a wall protecting the U.S. from Mexico. And I believe that Abbey, were he here, would reject Trump's proposal and his candidacy in the plainest, most blunt language possible.

Now, here is a question that I cannot answer, and perhaps someone else can.

How do the vilified illegal aliens, along with those who defend them and their rights, view a person like Edward Abbey with his biased statements and his complex humanity? Do they accept Abbey, and individuals like him, the more readily because there is no pretense and no illusion about him, and because "what they see is what they get"?

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Aug 16 - 01:17 PM

Edward Abbey is someone I never met, but many of my US Forest Service and National Park Service friends knew him. A couple of them are featured to some extent in some of his novels. There was a lot of agency knowledge about Abbey, like how he wanted a fire lookout job so he could write without interruption and consequently missed being the early warning of wildfires in Arizona. Kerouac on Crater and Snyder on Desolation, both in the Washington North Cascades, had set the bar high. Abbey was hard on women rangers and more than a bit pompous (for example, in one relationship-gone-south, when he demanded the next year that they had to choose: hire his ex-girlfriend or him, they chose her. This job and relationship led to his novel Black Sun.)

He hiked vast stretches of desert landscape to see what the story was for those who walked it earlier. The Camino del Diablo in Southern Arizona comes to mind. And you've read some of his novels that involved escape through harsh territory - a modern writer who compares favorably in style and familiarity with the ground he is writing about is Cormac McCarthy. Read Blood Meridian and you'll see the Abbey influence. By all accounts he was an excellent naturalist.

MLA is the Modern Language Association - a database of literary writing, criticism, and scholarship. They also put out a style manual, one I've used for years (in contrast to APA, Chicago, AP, etc.) But I think you'll also find Abbey in other databases - he crossed disciplines with the types of things he wrote about.

He wrote like few others, his style and sentences so well constructed that the page is invisible, you're seeing the story unfold in front of you as he tells it. Again, Cormac McCarthy comes to mind, though I haven't actually passed books by the two authors over each other for a scholarly comparison, it feels right as I remember the impressions from reading both.

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Aug 16 - 01:30 PM

As for the rest of your question, you should look to see what Doug Peacock has written about Abbey (Peacock was Hayduke in The Monkeywrench Gang.) They were close friends for a very long time.

Regarding a similarity to Trump vis-à-vis anti-immigrant postures, I have to think that Abbey would be appalled by "reality television" (if he watched television at all) and its ilk. It's as fake as WWE/F wrestling - Abbey was a critical thinker, Trump is not. Whatever opinions they held in common, the contrast in their mental acuity would instantly be apparent. And I think some of Abbey's political stances were to get up people's noses, but if it comes down to the two of them standing in the same room speaking, the difference would be clear. I won't speak for his politics, but in life he didn't suffer fools gladly. So why would he tolerate Trump now?

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Aug 16 - 01:57 PM

Acme's thoughts much appreciated!

The novels that I mentioned are by Walter M. Miller Jr, by the way: no doubt Acme is clear on that, but my post was not so clear actually.

Yes, I have read "Walking it Off" and "In the Shadow of the Sabertooth" by Doug Peacock; Abbey is important in both books, and central to the former, which is a remarkable non-fiction work.

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Aug 16 - 03:48 PM

"Immigration and Liberal Taboos" was a piece which made it into Abbey's collection, "One Life At A Time, Please", in 1988 I think. I pause to wonder about the claim that the New York Times requested that Abbey write an op-ed piece for them, and then rejected what he wrote, and that this is the outcome....it may be a fact, but it has fed into the Edward Abbey mythology as it were. The opinion of one reader, that Abbey was calling the bluff of the NYT in writing such a piece, also gives me pause.

Anyway, here is at least one on-line version of said op-ed composition.

Immigration and Liberal Taboos

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Aug 16 - 03:56 PM

And here is a notorious bit of writing which I enjoy for its irreverence and posturing, its archness.

The Cowboy And His Cow

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Aug 16 - 04:52 PM

There appears to be a Tom Russell song called "Ballad of Edward Abbey" about which I have no information.

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: Jeri
Date: 01 Aug 16 - 05:03 PM

Easy to find with Google: The Ballad of Edward Abbey

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Aug 16 - 10:32 PM

You've mulled a lot today - I'll have to read these tomorrow when I have a little time.

Despite having been a female park ranger and suffering the indignities of people trying to call me a "rangerette," as Abbey did in his novels (I always corrected them), I really loved his writing. It was a huge loss when he died after surgery in the late 80s.

Have you read Lonely Are the Brave or seen the film with Kirk Douglas? Classic Abbey.

As an NPS park ranger, I can tell you I had many conversations about his book Desert Solitaire, including with people who are mentioned in it (fictionalized). He wrote what many of us felt but could not say in public. And I remember a balmy evening in the summer of 1982, sitting on the steps of the staff housing building at Suglarlands Visitor Center in the Great Smoky Mtns Natl Park, taking turns reading out loud the chapter on Industrial Tourism. It was the summer of the Knoxville Worlds Fair (remember when they used to hold those every few years?) and the tourists were eating us alive. Abbey was a godsend - he understood. We were part of the resources that the public was devouring.

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Aug 16 - 01:13 PM

Lonely Are The Brave, what I have done is not to view the film, but to read the story behind it, and it is inspiring -- a cast that looks even more impressive now than it did then, and Douglas largely financing the undertaking. Beating the system!

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Aug 16 - 02:56 PM

Another Mudcat connection is Katie Lee, whose career has earned many comments on Mudcat threads. She and Edward Abbey were friends, they both remembered Glen Canyon before the dam. He encouraged her to write and publish.

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 05 Aug 16 - 05:17 PM

I have not read The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975). Has anyone here read it?

R Crumb connection

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Aug 16 - 10:23 PM

Yes - it's wonderful. I had a copy when I was working at a National Park on the east coast. I loaned it to a friend there, and when I finally got the softcover book back the spine was destroyed and the pages all flared out - I asked what happened and it seems several of his other NPS friends wanted to read it when they heard about it. So we may be somewhat biased - he wrote about things that touch on park ranger hearts and sensibilities, that attract and repulse us simultaneously.

Desert Solitare is probably the more grown up of his books, Monkeywrench is a rip-snorting good time.

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Sep 16 - 04:43 PM

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.

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927 - 1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Nov 16 - 12:17 PM

While the interview in the following link concerns someone else, it pleases me to think of this subject, and the causes he serves, as being in the spirit of Edward Abbey:
hope you agree.

Voice of the Wild

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927-1989), author
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Nov 16 - 10:28 AM

Doug Peacock was one of Abbey's oldest friends. "Hayduke" in The Monkey Wrench Gang. Peacock alludes to Abbey being buried in the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge - it's a rough Sonoran Desert location that probably only has drug smuggling and human trafficking cross over it now. Even in the early 1980s there were sensors all along the border so Wildlife Refuge staff were regularly met by the Border Patrol.

Abbey walked the route of the Camino del Diablo, the Road of the Devil, at least once. It went from Quitobaquito oasis in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on the east right at the border over to Yuma, and was a route followed by California gold Forty-niners. He walked into the visitor center at Organ Pipe and just announced that he'd walked it and was looking to make a call for someone to come get him.

There used to be an old mining town in there, complete with an opera house. I toured the refuge one day with another ORPI park ranger and with a wildlife refuge officer friend. He zigged and zagged across the refuge to show us those places and there wasn't another human to be seen. You get into the refuge from a few dirt roads across adjoining lands, and the refuge does nothing to maintain the routes that people follow once you're in there, though decades ago there were roads constructed (as such - a bulldozer cleared a path).

Anyone looking for his grave will have to have a couple of conspicuous landmarks - there are mountains, there are gulleys, there are ruins along the way. Old mining sites. It can be done, but not without a lot of difficulty.

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927-1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 03:48 PM

"Walking It Off," the book of memoirs by Doug Peacock,
describes in detail walking through the Cabeza Prieta.
This is the conclusion of Peacock's book.
I don't know, but I have my suspicions
that the narrative at that point,
which chronicles a single journey,
in real life is the conflation of repeated visits over time --
that not everything that transpires on that walk
happened on one and the same walk actually.

That's as close to Mr. Abbey's grave
as I will ever knowingly get.
I'd rather read his books.
To misquote an old cowboy remark,
"you can do it in the shade."

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927-1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 Jun 18 - 12:00 PM

Pre-eminent US novelist Philip Roth died recently,
reminding me of Edward Abbey's stubborn "impossible dream"
of one day becoming, God help us, a pre-eminent US novelist.

Abbey's published output includes a number of novels,
some of which have been adapted for film or broadcast,
as pointed out in earlier posts on this thread.

Abbey initially wrote non-fictions essays for publication, I believe,
in periodicals. He wrote them in order to make enough money to indulge in writing fiction, or so it seems.
When a reader came to an Abbey lecture/appearance, and approached him saying rather emotionally (read: gushing) that "Desert Solitaire" was her favorite book, it is said that Abbey, with his deep speaking voice, rumbled back: "well, it's not MY favorite book."

Such is fate. In the public eye, Abbey is remembered as a non-fiction writer, a naturalist, a 'voice crying in the wilderness', who by the way published a list of novels collecting dust on the library shelves.

Subject: RE: BS: info: Edward Abbey (1927-1989), author
From: keberoxu
Date: 05 Jun 18 - 03:03 PM

I may regret bringing up Black Sun.
It was one of the books that Abbey remained fond of,
by his own admission, to the end.

My first reading of Black Sun
came after I had thoroughly read and re-read
Lady Chatterley's Lover [Lawrence, as most are aware].
The Lawrence novel was emotionally shaking-up for me
(geez, sometimes my writing is so clumsy)
so Black Sun, an obvious attempt to improve on Lady Chatterley's Lover,

-- you say British Lady, I say American Princess --
was also bound to stir the emotions.

Black Sun, in retrospect, is SO adolescent!
All the hormones, all the angst,
all the heightened self-awareness and reflection,
and that rebellious attitude.

In the end, for me,
the whole is less than the sum of its parts;
and this is sad to me, as some of those parts
are unforgettably eloquent and touching.