Customer Reviews

Monkey Wrench Gang (Penguin Modern Classics)

5 star:		(75)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Edward Abbey (1927-1989) is a touchstone for anyone involved in the radical environmental movement. Abbey, who looks like the product of a union between William James and John Muir, churned out numerous books and essays concerning the American Southwest and its wondrous natural beauty. His best known work is this novel, "The Monkey Wrench Gang," a fictional tale about four nature lovers who decide to wage relentless war against America's manic desire to spread the industrial system into every corner of the country. Abbey apparently based some of the characters in the book on real people he knew during his life in the boonies. It is important to remember this while you read the book because it will scare the heck out of you that people like this actually exist.

Abbey does not waste much time introducing the reader to his main characters. There is Seldom Seen Smith, a jack Mormon and river rafter who rambles around the countryside when he's not visiting his three wives. Seldom Seen quickly hooks up with Bonnie Abbzug, a Brooklyn born beauty with a predilection for older men and geodesic domes. Abbzug's flame of the moment is Doc Sarvis, an aging surgeon with a propensity for spouting off about nature and history when he's not operating on a patient. Finally, there is the hero of the story, George Washington Hayduke, a Vietnam vet who returns to his home only to discover bulldozers raping his beloved country. When the four meet up on a river-rafting excursion, Doc throws his checkbook into the ring so the four can go on an environmental rampage of astonishing proportions. No bulldozer, bridge, or member of the area's Search and Rescue team (run by the nefarious Bishop Love) is safe from the monkeywrenching activities of these four ecoterrorists.

Abbey describes the destruction of industrial equipment in loving detail. The first excursion is at a construction site, in which the gang cuts wires, pours karo syrup in gas tanks, and pours sand in the engines. Subsequent missions involve driving equipment into lakes, pulling up survey stakes, destroying an oil drilling station, and rolling boulders over pick-up trucks. Whenever trouble shows up, the four melt into the rugged terrain of the Southwest, a land of desolate wastes interspersed with stunning plateaus, mountains, and rivers. Abbey's eye for beauty rarely fails in his descriptions of these haunting images. Even the most hardened soul will feel a real kinship with our vanishing wilderness after reading this novel.

This novel is a masterwork of complexity, as Abbey juggles several themes simultaneously without missing a beat. One of these themes is, of course, the ferocity of nature. I interpreted Hayduke to be nature personified. His gruff and grungy appearance, his ability to become one with his environment, and his unbridled fury at the evil unfolding around him seem to represent the forces of nature itself. Hayduke is unrelenting in his quest to stop the destruction, even willing to resort to violence against the perpetrators whenever he sees fit. The other three characters act as a restraint on Hayduke, at least to some extent, but they also represent the various stages of humanity removed from nature. Seldom Seen Smith takes part in some of George's wilder escapades because he is closer to the environment. Bonnie and Sarvis, since they live in the city, tend to oppose many of George's plans and methods. Abbey is saying, and I may be wrong, that the farther some of us get away from the wilderness the less we are willing to do whatever is necessary to prevent the rampant destruction of the environment.

There is no doubt that Abbey was an extremely intelligent man. His writing ability is amazingly brilliant, with numerous jokes, word plays, and multi-layered dialogue thrown in at breakneck speed. For those familiar with Ambrose Bierce or Mark Twain, Abbey will seem like an old friend. Like those two august figures of American letters, Abbey is an iconoclast, always willing to take painful swipes at any institution, accepted belief, or know-it-all jerks with absolutist values. Even environmentalists take a few shots on the chin in this book (For example, George never misses a chance to throw his beer cans out the window). Abbey's tendency to make politically incorrect comments and jokes is sure to anger many people who, in their quest to lecture us about their idea of a perfect world, accidentally left their sense of humor in the trunk of their brand new SUV. In short, when Abbey comes out swinging, be sure to duck.

"The Monkey Wrench Gang" is truly an American classic, embodying just the right amount of rugged individualism, distrust of authority figures, and old-fashioned violence Americans love so well. About the only problem with the book is some of the environmentalists go nuts and try to pull a Hayduke in their own backyards. Abbey was careful to make the violence a bit cartoonish at times, perhaps to cover his own back in case someone gets a little carried away. Still, this is an entertaining that also gives an inside view of the environmentalist mindset. If you like great scenery and great writing, you will enjoy this novel.

...which many can't do. Abbey is a fiercely skillful writer who can punch you right in the mouth with words when he wants to. This is a very unconventional novel, with writing and characterization that border on the surreal, but Abbey knows his craft. The Dream Garden Press edition has a chapter he was forced to leave out of the trade edition, and it borders on the nightmarish. He is unflinching in his criticisms and unyielding in his devotions, and The Monkey Wrench Gang is a wonderful novel. I reread it every couple of years and enjoy it every time. It's quite possible that you will hate this book and what it stands for, as well as the rest of Abbey's writings. It's also quite possible that that was Abbey's intention from the very start. Ed Abbey doesn't pander or beg. He lays it on the line and dares you to come along for the ride. And Monkey Wrench is one great ride. No, it isn't Proust. Yes, Mormons and Indians and most women may be offended. That's tough. It isn't for everyone, and thank God for that.

This is the first fiction by Abbey that I've read. That it almost reads like a true story largely stems from the keen sense and accurate knowledge of Colorado Plateau geography that Abbey had. His description of the gnarled and surreal landscape---and the interplay of light, sky, and rock---especially of the Canyonlands area of Utah, is so vivid that it harks back to his compulsively readable nonfiction work in "Abbey's Road", "Down the River", "One Life at a Time, Please", and the like. Readers who fancy this setting will benefit from the author's expert familiarity with the Southwest.

I couldn't help but notice that there is a little (or maybe much) of Abbey in every male character of the book: Doc Sarvis' intellectual ruminations and academic bent, Seldom Smith's knowledge of almost every nook and cranny of the canyonlands and the Four Corners area, and George Hayduke's unfettered and no-holds-barred love for the desert and penchant for irreverence, the ultimate desert rat and indestructible desert Rambo. Bonnie Abzzug personifies people, myself included, who love the desert yet do not seem to be sure exactly what to do to stop its corruption, exploitation, and destruction.

A lot of non-PC thoughts, ideas, and convictions nothwithstanding, the book leaves me wondering how much more of the desert can be paved, accessed, bridged, and defaced before we realize it's too late. The characters represent the extreme end of those who feel that "enough is enough".

The name Edward Abbey is a foul couple of words for some, and is followed by foul language off the tongue of the same people. But, it shouldn't...both for his great body writings and for his fierce appreciation for everything that makes the American West great. "The Monkey Wrench Gang" and its sequel "Hayduke Lives" are classic American Literature as well as important social commentary on who we are and what should matter to us as a society and a country. (This review is for both books so might be a bit longer than usual.)

Yes, Abbey was an environmentalist; but, a he was also flawed just as we all are in this area - when he was younger on his first visit to the Grand Canyon, he rolled a tire over the edge because he could. He already appreciated the American West, but the human side of him did it anyway. Yes, Abbey was a curmudgeon; but, it worked - he got the attention of everyone, on both sides of any issue.

With "The Monkey Wrench Gang", Abbey spun a fantastic tale of a hodgepodge band of characters that were bound by a love for the west, and distaste for anything that they saw as ruining it. Bonnie Abbzug, the exile from the east who couldn't stand cheap talk and always wanted action; she found a place in the canyons of the Southwest where one could hear her own thoughts - unlike the canyons of New York that she fled. Doc Sarvis, M.D., a doctor with a passion for his hobby - the burning of any billboard that ruined everyone's view of the landscape (which were pretty much all of them). Seldom Seen Smith, a few wives, a Colorado River Boatman, and a few steps ahead of the Bishop...'nuff said.

And then there is George Washington Hayduke III...this former Green Beret will not stop until he gets to the bottom of who is messing with his desert; and he intends to put a stop to it. I had a college professor like Hayduke.

At its heart, "The Monkey Wrench Gang" is a buddy movie written in words' a buddy movie about the American West. An American West that is being overrun by those fleeing the east and looking for more space and a better life, but cannot but help but bring everything wrong with where they are coming from with them; at the same time, this is a book about those entrenched in the west for generations that can't control themselves when it comes to growth, progress, and the American Way: GREED. This is a book about those who care enough about the human race to actually do something to keep it from destroying itself. This is a book about the self-determined people of the west; a group that sometimes loses its way - a fear of the decadence of East (and California), but who can't help but let a little greed get in they way of their way of live as they build and build and build to accommodate the every expanding needs of the new exiles from more crowded locales.

"The Monkey Wrench Gang" is a book about a system gone wrong and a band of idealists looking for a way to head it off at the pass before it plummets over the edge into the abyss.

As much as "The Monkey Wrench Gang" is a book about idealists, "Hayduke Lives" is a pessimistic book about idealism gone a little wrong. "Hayduke Lives" was Abbey's last book, and it was his last will and testament in a way as well. For all that "The Monkey Wrench Gang" inspired a generation of environmentalists, "Hayduke Lives" is Abbey's critique of the fourteen years that come in between. He is critiquing what he sees is a movement that has lost its way; not just his views of where the Sierra Club went wrong, but also how Earth First! stumbled and fumbled their way off the right path. But, at the same time, Abbey is screaming for us to find our way and find a balance before it is too late.

I think that while "The Monkey Wrench Gang" is universal in its message and unambiguous - a message that everyone, environmentalist and developer alike, can learn from - "Hayduke Lives" is more philosophical and introspective...introspective for the reader as well as Abbey. In "Hayduke Lives", Abbey's message is more subtle and more undefined. What I came away with was his disgust and disappointment with a movement wandering the wilderness lost; but at the same time, I found a message of hope between the lines, a message that we better find a way to get along and work together or destroy each other and ourselves.

In the end, these two books must be judged by each individual reader; the reader must find their own path to meaning and purpose in Abbey's words. Glen Canyon Dam, at the focus of both books, is a monstrosity to some and a godsend to others; to some, it has destroyed a magnificent canyon, and to others it has made unchecked progress in the west possible. The real answer, I think, is somewhere in between.

If you advocate for the dismantling of the dam, then be honest about what that actually means: that overgrown metropolises in the dry desert such a Phoenix and Las Vegas will have to cease to exist; that people in Ohio won't get good, fresh lettuce in the winter; that first people must understand what John Wesley Powell tried to tell everyone well over 100 years ago...the American West cannot support a limitless supply of humanity, that the American West has a FINITE amount of water to go around. Until everyone affected understands what is truly at stake, then the message of tearing down the dam is empty and hollow...and maybe a bit self-centered.

If you fight to defend the dam, fine, but check your own greed (five bedrooms and 3000 square feet for a husband, wife, and two kids is greed - how many storage units do you rent for all of your stuff?). Yes, the dam has brought progress to the American West, but at what cost? What is the carrying capacity of the West? Are we approaching it? Has it passed us by and we are just waiting for it all to collapse? How low does Lake Powell need to go next time before we wake up and realize that water is not a limitless resource in the arid west?

Glen Canyon Dam was built before I was born; but, if the effort were being made today to build it, I would fight with all of my energy - resistance is never futile. But, it is there and nothing that I do, or the Sierra Club does, or the Glen Canyon Institute does will change that...not without educating Americans to what we are doing wrong and how we can do it right. Geologic time will take care of Glen Canyon Dam; it could be in 200 years, 500 years, 1,000 years, or longer, but it will remove the dam - larger natural dams have existed across the Colorado River and nature has always removed them eventually.

Read these two books. Read the writings of John Wesley Powell. Visit the area, tour the dam, and figure it out for yourself. Then, lets all figure it out together.

>>>>>>><<<<<<<

A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

I was familiar with this book several years before I chose to read it. I knew that it was about a bunch of "lawbreakers" who, in a spirit of environmental idealism, set about to ruin what they considered myriad evidence of massive anti-environmentalism. Their activities included the destruction of highway billboard advertisements, burning and exploding bridges that carried hugh oil tankers across them, as well as sabotaging the oil tankers themselves, and blowing up government built dams that resulted in the drying up of some of nation's most majestic rivers. The four members of the "Monkey Wrench Gang," Doc A.K. Sarvis, his feminist girlfriend Bonnie Abbzug, Joseph "Seldom Seen" Smith, a polygamist Mormon, and George W. Hayduke, also wanted some payback for massive deforestation and for the forced death of thousands of cattle and other animals who were fenced in by barbed wire, thereby prevented from escaping from fierce winter snows and related frigid weather conditions.

At first, I expected to detest these "weirdos" and their wooly headed schemes. The idea of "inconveniencing" the general public by destroying structures built by the government and by private interests (huge billion dollar earning oil corporations) for the so-called public good seemed excessive. Well, the proof was in the reading: these were four sincere, committed, environmentalists, true believers, who were fed up with governmental shennanigans and the general public's passive acceptance of these activities promulgated in the name of progress.

Doc Sarvis, the organizers of the gang, always insisted that no people ever be hurt in their destruction of the myriad anti-environmental structures. Both Bonnie and Seldom Seen Smith were humane, ever loyal to their group and to their ideals. In fact, all four of them were likeable and even loveable individuals. I found George Hayduke, a Vietnam War veteran, a member of the Special Forces, the most loveable of the four. On the surface, he appeared to be a strange man: inordinately hairy, bearded, unkempt, sloppy, almost derelict looking, he lived by his wits and his natural intelligence. Despite the obvious personal and psychological baggage that he carried from his Vietnam days, he possessed an elemental force that proved valuable to the group and to their plans time and time again. Hayduke's earthiness, his liberal use of foul language, to the constant dismay of one of the gang, gave him an extremely funny, if, somewhat "psychopathic" persona. Some of the things that he said and did, and seemingly got away with, should and must be taken with a grain of salt.

_The Monkey Wrench Gang_ works as an exciting adventure novel, a cautionary tale on the habitual, governmentally engineered environmental abuse, as a character study of four very brave, if foolhardy, environmentalists, and quite simply just an incredibly fun book to read.

This is definitely a different book. For a fifteen year old like me, it makes damn sure that we realize that the crap the media fills the world with aint true at all.

I read Desert Solitaire over the summer, and enjoyed it thourougly, leading me to check out MWG from teh school library.

Too many people try to peg Abbey as a naturalist. He's not. He says so in the forward to "Journey Home" (which I started last night). They then try to peg him as a "social terrorist," though I don't see what their reasoning is behind that. This book proves that though he was motivated to do so, he also had the common decency to not blow up bridges or other such nonsense. He stopped at burning billboards.

Really, the greatest purpose of this book seems to be that it reminds people that there are some of us left-wingers out here. If that's the most it does, I think that Abbey would still be satisfied.

Austin

While I consider myself an environmentalist (and I'm vitally interested in the issues presented in this book), I'm amused that most of the reviews here seem to center entirely on The Monkey Wrench Gang's political message. As fascinating and complex as that message is, that's not why I loved the book. This is great writing! One example: The chapter in which Hayduke first returns to canyon country is one of the greatest in all literature, period.

I can't agree with those below who call this writing sloppy, amateurish, two-dimensional, etc. Yes, this book has a unique style (different even than Abbey's other works), but to me it is marvelously evocative of the anarchist desert-rat spirit of a certain segment of 1970's southern Utah's population. To put it another way: There was a group of people who are captured by this book in a way that no other art form of any kind has ever done. They still exist today, although they've largely been swallowed up by the new Cappuccino crowd who populate a Moab that Abbey would barely recognize.

Like John Muir before him, Abbey's writing has always been overshadowed by his message, and that is more apparent here than anywhere else. Someday, though, this book will be as much a testament to a lost time and place in the American West as Muir's "The Mountains of California".

This book is Abbey at his finest. It involves tragedy, satire, wit, and of course, Abbey humor. This book brings you on a journey with four people you wish you knew, and by the time you finish it you'll want to go do some monkey-wrenching yourself. An absolute must for every person who has been hurt watching America perish beneath a bulldozer!

Edward Abbey's writings tend to attract a love `em or hate `em response. "It changed my life." "I've found a hero." "The guy's an idiot." "Monkey wrenchers are criminals."

There are all kinds.

This is a piece of fiction. I suspect Abbey had great fun with it, because there are bits and pieces of Abbey's life and other stories embedded in The Monkey Wrench Gang.

As a story, the characters are unique and quirky. My personal favorite is "Seldom Seen" Smith, a river rat with three wives. As you start reading about Smith, Hayduke, and friends, you wonder how in heck they even connect. But they do, and the monkey wrenching begins.

The story is full of hypocrisy, sincerity, testosterone, and beans. It is Desert Solitaire on steroids. It definitely isn't an anarchy handbook, even though that is its reputation. If you are a radical environmentalist, you'll probably enjoy it more than a miner or a rancher will. Either way, lighten up. It's clearly a piece of fiction. If you can't handle fiction, then go back to CSI or Mary Worth... bad fiction that tries to be real. The Monkey Wrench Gang is an entertaining yarn, no more, no less.

Better yet, read it on a trip through southern Utah.

I am reluctant to give this book five stars, because it is really not all that well-written, and certainly does not compare to Desert Solitaire. However, it is a timeless book, and is as relevant today as it was twenty years ago. The Canyonlands area (which is one of the most beautiful regions in the world) is still being threatened by morons who want to build condominiums all along the Colorado River and destroy what little remains of the wild places in America. Therefore, in spite of my belief that Edward Abbey is not a great fiction writer, I feel that this book will always be worth reading, so long as it continues to inspire people to fight against the senseless desecration and commercialization of our nation's wilderness.