In the West, few
names elicit as much veneration or revilement as that of Edward
Abbey. But those of us who weren’t around during Abbey’s heyday, or
never got to meet him, can only turn to
books.
Thirteen years after Abbey’s death, two
new books add depth to the story of Cactus Ed. James Cahalan’s new
biography, Edward Abbey: A Life, gives us the
larger-than-life Abbey, the cantankerous sagebrush patriot who
rolled old tires into the Grand Canyon, made the famous
pistol-waving speech against public-lands ranching, and was
introduced at his last public appearance (a 1989 Earth First!
rally), “by a woman who later turned out to be an FBI
plant.”
But Cahalan also works hard to separate
the threads of Abbey’s life as a serious writer from those of his
more politicized public persona. Cahalan tells us how Abbey cobbled
together book advances and seasonal fire-lookout jobs to keep his
writing afloat, and delves into the constant conflict Abbey felt
between writing his fictional “fat masterpiece” (which would later
become the not particularly widely read The Fool’s
Progress) and the essays that won him wider acclaim.
“Despite his self-cultivated, Hemingway-esque image as a
rough-and-ready type who lived his adventures and then simply typed
them up,” writes Cahalan, Abbey labored to polish his
work.
For Cahalan, the relevant comparison is
Hemingway, or Mark Twain. But for Abbey’s longtime friend, Santa Fe
ethnomusicologist and radio producer Jack Loeffler, the relevant
comparison is 19th century anarchist philosopher Mikhail Bakunin.
Loeffler’s recently released memoir, Adventures with Ed: A
Portrait of Abbey, is a more personal recollection of
Abbey’s life. It presents an intimate – if at times stilted –
picture of Abbey, including numerous reconstructed conversations.
But when Loeffler writes that Abbey was “unconsciously carving his
own niche in the distinguished heritage of anarchist thinkers,” the
assertion rings a little hollow. The Monkey Wrench
Gang may be, in the right hands, an anarchist field
manual of sorts, but it’s not a hardcore political treatise – nor
is anything Abbey wrote.
Abbey’s strengths lay
elsewhere: His elegant reflections on the desert Southwest did as
much to rouse a new era of environmental activism as his
storm-the-ramparts fulmination against the
system.
Cahalan reminds us to look for that other
Abbey. “When all the shouting is done about the man himself and his
various causes,” he writes, “readers will return more quietly to
Abbey’s writings, discovering artistry and
delight.”
After spending six years in a cardboard
box in my parents’ garage, Abbey’s books are back on the shelf by
my bed.
Edward Abbey: A Life,
by James M. Cahalan. University of Arizona Press, 2001. Hardcover:
$27.95. 357 pages, 30 black-and-white
photographs.
Adventures with Ed: A
Portrait of Abbey, by Jack Loeffler. University of New
Mexico Press, 2002. Hardcover: $24.95. 308 pages, 44
black-and-white photographs.
Matt Jenkins is assistant
editor for High Country
News.
Listen to a Radio High
County News interview with James Cahalan online at
www.hcn.org/radio/
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Cactus Ed revisited.
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