Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside [Paperback]

Edward Abbey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1984

In this wise and lyrical book about landscapes of the desert and the mind, Edward Abbey guides us beyond the wall of the city and asphalt belting of superhighways to special pockets of wilderness that stretch from the interior of Alaska to the dry lands of Mexico.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Thoreau of the American West. "-Larry McMurtry

About the Author

The author of Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang is unchallenged among radicals of all ages. Edward Abbey, an American icon, called "the original fly in the ointment" by Tom McGuane, today has roads and a town named after him.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (April 15, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805008209
• ISBN-13: 978-0805008203
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edward Abbey was born in Home, Pennsylvania, in 1927. He was educated at the University of New Mexico and the University of Edinburgh. He died at his home in Oracle, Arizona, in 1989.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why walk in a desert? Why get off the sofa at all?, June 27, 2001

By 

George G. Kiefer (Sevierville, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (Paperback)

This is a fine collect of 10 early hikes and float trips Abbey made mostly in the high deserts of the American Southwest. The last takes place in Alaska. In "A Walk in the Desert Hills" Abbey tells of a solo hike across more than 100 miles with only his backpack and the hope that water will be found in natural tanks. What, the reader may ask, compels a man to undertake such a trek with only a belief that salvation lies ahead in a bowl shaped stone (tanks) filled with rain water, and then further on, perhaps another, and hopefully another still? Throughout the book he answers this question by showing us the hidden beauty of slot canyons, how the Colorado looked beneath the flooded Glen Canyon before the dam and shares with us his discovery of petroglyphs and pictographs whose meanings still remains unknown. This is Abbey when his desert world was still new, before the roads and bridges and dams he hated changed it all. This is the world beyond the wall, his world. "Beyond the wall of the unreal city, beyond the security fences topped with barbed wire and razor wire, beyond the asphalt belting of superhighways, beyond the cemented banksides of our temporarily stopped and mutilated rivers, beyond the rage of lies that poison the air, there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains, Go there ...into the ancient blood-thrilling primeval freedom of those vast and democratic vistas. You will never understand the secret essence of the word freedom until you do."

Abbey was as about as free as a man can get.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Simplicity, May 22, 2002

By 

mrgrieves08 (tucson) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (Paperback)

Although Desert Solitaire is Abbey's most popular work of non-fiction and is an undeniable American masterpiece, Beyond the Wall in many ways surpasses it in its praise of the beauty and granduer of nature and as a meditation on humanity's place in it. As a work primarily concerned with Abbey's experiences on several hiking/camping trips alone in the Desert, from Southern Colorado, and West Texas, through theNew Mexico and Arizona wilds to the Sea of Cortez, the reader is allowed an glimpse into his psyche that is unsurpassed in these quiet revelations, documented in many a lonely, but not lonesome walk. In Beyond the Wall, Abbey is closest to his comparison with Thoreau, in the way that the simple description of Nature itself is the focus of this work. In many ways this book is both a eulogy and a celebration of Glen Canyon and raw unspoiled Nature.
Whether narrating "a Walk Through Desert Hills" or a "float trip down the doomed Glen Canyon, Abbey's awareness of the subtle force of nature is everpresent, and is expressed in the metaphoric image of Freedom and Wilderness versus industrial insanity and slavery. In many ways, what is beyond the wall is the possibility of our unmeditated communion with nature. And although this wall seems forminable, it can be overcome simply by venturing off the beaten path into a wilderness unknown to many. His solution lies in the simple concept of reestablishing an intimate relationship with Nature, which is deprived of so many today. Thus, in becoming acquainted with our environments and surroundings we will be much more involved in saving what is there. The case of Glen Canyon is a sad illustration of this, for despite its stunning beauty and granduer, which Abbey claimed surpassed even that of the Grand Canyon, it was destroyed simply because not enough people had experienced it and too few cared enough to save it.
In reading the essays in Beyond the wall, Ed introduces us to one way that we can all get beyond the walls that alienate us from nature and ultimately ourselves. And since this book can only guide us so far, it is we that must take the next step and decide on what side of the wall we want to live our lives.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars abbey's finest hike, October 31, 1999

By 

philip farmer ([e-mail]) (slam diego,ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (Paperback)

ed abbey's tromp through the american wilderness in search of a definitive ideology and a few tankfuls of water allow the reader to believe in the underdog's points of view......whether you agree with them or not. Awesome book!!!!