Customer Reviews

Abbey's Road

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This wistful collection of essays captures the spirit, the essence of the great deserts of Australia and Mexico. There is a yearning for all that is wild in the great Australian outback which captures the reader's inner core. Abbey makes clear that though Australia is his kind of place he is obliged to return to his mother country. He captures the spirit of place by describing the weird smells emanating from gedgi trees, the bitter taste of Aussie Black Swan lager, the distant and near views of Ayers Rock, his longing for an Aussie barmaid who almost accepts his invitation to travel with him in a rented 2-wheel drive vehicle across the impenetrable western desert. He captures the Australian or Strine vernacular and the desperation of the modern aborigine. This yearning of Abbey carries over onto a desert isle off the coast of Mexico where there's not much but isolation, scarce water, no women, and beans for dinner. That's pure Abbey

Do not let this book be your introduction to Edward Abbey. There is plenty of brilliance here, but an established fan will be able to appreciate that brilliance best.

All of the material in this cassette is available elsewhere, but nowhere else can you hear the intonation, humor, and on occasions rants of Cactus Ed in his own voice. I have played this for friends who have never heard of Abbey and universally comment that they have never heard anything quite like it. Whether he's drinking with pigs in the desert, musing on planting a tree under the nuclear umbrella, or playing cat and hiker with a puma, there is wisdom and absurdity in every spoken sentence. If they ever get another copy and you beat me to it - mine has worn out - you have won a real prize.

This is an entertaining firsthand account of Abbey's adventures as he travels through some of the most remote and beautiful locales in the world. The first chapter, in which he travels through Australia, is by far the most entertaining, and Abbey's wit really shines here. He also makes strong arguments throughout the book about why preserving beautiful natural areas is so important. Some of the subsequent stories come off as so much fluff, in which Abbey is trying to find events of significance and/or peril in the face of a mundane trip. The events seem to me to be interesting enough without having to be dolled up.

This collection of previously published magazine articles is vintage Abbey, alternatively moving and funny, sacred and profane, flip and dead serious (well almost) and at all times entertaining. Divided into three categories - Travel, Polemics and Sermons, and Personal History - the subjects range from the Great Barrier Reef to technology to women to Winnebagos to hallucinogenic drugs - with many stops in between. The introduction, wherein Abbey comments on nature writing - and various nature writers - is itself worth the price of admission.

Abbey's Road is a collection of vignettes from Ed Abbey's travels, including Australia, Italy, Mexico, and his beloved Southwest. In it, he continues to be a curmudgeon, a caustic observer of nature and people, less than polite and more than poetic. He irritates, entertains, and educates, all at the same time.

While Abbey was in Australia, "Penny introduced them [three Aboriginal women] to me as she squinted through her viewfinder: 'This is Jean, the blind one; this is Sheila, missing a nose; this is Lily Billy.' Sprawled in the dust and ashes, the witch-ladies gaped at me, including the one without eyes, and jabbered away. They were the most physically hideous human creatures I had ever seen - shrunken, mutilated, gray with filth, pot-bellied, spindle-limbed, crawling with flies to which they appeared supremely indifferent - all of them obviously syphilitic and mad as kookaburras... I watched their lively hands, their active searching faces, and saw something like gaiety in those irrepressible gestures. Why quit, they were saying. Why quit?" (p. 28-29).

Expect more of the same.

Of famous Ayers Rock, "The rock rises 1,200 feet above the desert. It is a mile long, half a mile wide. One single monolithic bulge of ancient, arcane, arkose, and rugose Cambrian sandstone, 500 million years old..., it resembles a pink - or in different light - a rust red worm or grub, hairless and wrinkled, that has succumbed, through petrifaction, to the prevailing inertia of Being" (p. 53). Ayers Rock (Uluru) is a hairless grub? That's an Abbeyesque description, for sure!

And here's another of his caustic and "insensitive" observations: "I always get scared when I enter Mexico. Something about those short, heavy mestizo police with their primitive stonefish eyes - the way they look at you - and the bandits loafing along the highways with stolen assault rifles, picking their teeth with lizard bones. I don't know which I fear most, the cops or the bandits. In fact except for the uniform, I can't tell one from the other" (p. 70).

He continues his condemnation of exploiting nature for economic gain: "Turismo is always and everywhere a dubious, fraudulent, distasteful, and in the long run, degrading business, enriching a few, doing the rest more harm than good" (p. 86), or for recreation: "There is no lower form of life known to zoological science than the motorboat fisherman, the speedboat sightseer" (p. 118).

Abbey has a unique way of describing the world. Here are a few samples:

"The taste of fear on my tongue - a green and sour flavor. The blue green corrosion of an old battery terminal" (p. 80).

"I am fascinated by his feet. The old man owns the most beaten-up, stone-battered, cactus-cured, fire-hardened pair of feet I have ever seen on a human-being - so cracked, played, and toughened they almost suggest hooves" (p. 84).

"... [O]ne word is worth a thousand pictures. If it's the right word" (p. 113).

"What the conscience of our race - environmentalism - is trying to tell us is that we must offer to all forms of life and to the planet itself the same generosity and tolerance we require from our fellow humans" (p. 135).

"If I were good and hungry, would I eat a javelina? Yes, I'd roast its head in a pit of mesquite coals and scramble my eggs with its brains. I have no quarrel with any man who kills one of God's creature's in order to feed his women and children and the old folks. Nothing could be more right and honorable, when the need is really there" (p. 141).

The chapters in this volume "improve" as you delve deeper into the book. That is, he gets much, much more philosophical and introspective. His chapters titled "My Life as a P.I.G., or the True Adventures of Smokey the Cop," and "Fire Lookout" are particularly recommended.

And you will, eventually, get to the writing that brings you back to Desert Solitaire:

"I stumble over a rock in the trail. Sun down and gone, not a star in the clouded sky. The woods are deep, and very dark, and not lovely. I stop and stare at the dim silhouettes of the trees against the fainter dark of the sky. Sound of crickets down below; it must be August one more time. An autumnal month here in the mountains. And I'm alone again. Once more I ask myself the simple, obvious question: Why not die? Why keep hanging around, stumbling over rocks, bending beer cans, hurting people with your stupidity, losing your children here and there? What are you waiting for, you drunken clown?

"But I'm grinning in the dark, not about to give up yet. I find it comfortable here in the cool damp womb of the forest, alone in the velvet night. I think I could stand here all night long and if it doesn't rain too hard, be content. Even happy. Me and the crickets and the oafish bears (they'll never make it as gentlemen), snuffling about through the brush, grubbing for something good to eat. At this moment I think: If he'd let me I'd get down on all-fours and shuffle along side by side with Cousin Bear, rooting for slugs, smearing my hairy face with crushed blackberries, tearing at roots" (p. 189).

Enjoy.

Entertaining and enlightening rantings of master story-teller and grumpy old man of the west! If only he were still around to kick them greedy bastids in their fat ...! We need people like Abbey, who, although being inconsequent themselves, spread the word to do some active thinking and acting. To save this one and only planet and all that is struggeling and thriving on it.

This was my first introduction to the well known author, Edward Abbey. My impression was that Abbey wrote with a strong environmental voice and was an advocate of wildlands. Instead, I read about a man who kicks animals that don't get out of his way, who drags trashed cars through the Australian outback, who tosses his empty wine bottles into remote canyons,and who expresses a superior attitude to just about everybody. His writing style is highly variable, ranging from sophomoric (usually) to pure Americana (very occasionally). When he hits the latter, he can rival Mark Twain, which is probably why he enjoys the reputation he does. However, this reputation obviously wasn't made with the essays contained in this anthology. Folks looking for an introduction to Abbey are advised to try another book.

He's flip, he's serious, at times at the top of his entertainment (always second to the polemics) game. When Abbey's "on", as he is in parts of this book of essays, he's untouchable. His Snideness is at his most philosophical, his most opinionated, his most, uh . . . truculent, in this stimulating book. Along with Desert Solitaire (see my review), this book will not be leaving my bookshelf anytime soon.

There are 3 sections: Travel (the most entertaining), Polemics & Sermons (actually more like Rants & Raves), and Personal History. The one disturbing/detracting aspect to the book is this: With all the leg-pulling, hyperbole, and outrageous pronouncements dished out, Abbey's glaring racist side can't be disguised. His calloused remarks about the Mexicans and Hispanics are passed off as snide humor, but the insensitivity is pretty unsettling. It reveals a deeper prejudice, something that a guy like Cactus Ed should have been well aware of but I suppose it was his perogative to sound like a redneck anyway.

So, there you have it, a pretty decent offering from a real iconoclast. If you haven't read Abbey before, I would read Desert Solitaire first and try this one on after.

Parataxis

The Cloud Reckoner

Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts

Not one of the best of Abbey, but this one is a bit different, as it has 4 essays about his travels in Australia, which is quite rare as mostly Abbey wrote about North America (especially the deserts in Southwest US and northern Mexico).

Abbey was a self-proclaimed "agrarian anarchist" and hated when people call him a "nature writer" or a "naturalist". Well, he was not and in this book you will see why. He tossed his beer cans and wine bottles in the Outbank of Australia as if it were a big trash yard (which reminds you that in Desert Solitaire he threw an old tire into the Grand Canyon); when he was annoyed by some birds he wished he had a shotgun and a carload of twelve-gauge shells. He drove a passenger car (as he calls it a "lesbian car") which is not suited for the sandy and rocky desert through the Outback, probably seldom sober, thanks to the beer and "magic tea" (a mixture of tea and Bourbon he drank all the time, and eventually wrecked it, leaked oil all over the place and had to have it towed (on its side most of the time). And he acted like a jerk -- though he was married at the time, he tried to pick up women all the time. No doubt some of these are a bit exaggerated somewhat, but his attitude is undeniable -- he came across like a self-centered, arrogant chauvinist. Abbey lived an intense life -- may he rest in peace -- and I don't doubt he really loved the desert, but what he really cared was that others got out of his way so he could have it all to himself. He said "rocks have rights too", but seldom did he exhibit any respect or compassion to the animals, plants, not to mention "rocks" in the desert. They were good only when they were convenient.

The book also has the chronicle problem with Abbey's non-fiction books -- they are collections of previously published magazine articles and such, the quality of which varies greatly. So by design they are already a mixed bag. The essays in the first section "Travel" are the best and are on par with his other essays. The other sections are pretty forgettable: "Polemics and Sermons" are just repetition of his naive (and quite extremely conservative) political views, "Personal History" is of little interest to me either. So what I got from this book is really the first 9 essays. I've given pretty generous reviews of Abbey's other works, so I am giving it 3 stars here to balance things out (I would have given it 3.5 stars if I could).