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Title: The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West by Edward Abbey, Jim Stiles ISBN: 0-452-26562-2 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: January, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Abbey for President - Ed come back we need you now!
Comment: Its been over ten years since I read Desert Solitaire and I've combed through a couple of his works looking for another collection of stories that hit me with the same "between-the-eyes" impact as Desert Solitaire. Well, I found it with Journey Home. To me Edward Abbey represents the second coming of John Westly Powell. He, like Major Powell, foresaw the westward expansion of the U.S. and in the case of the desert southwest instinctively knew that water would be the limiting factor. It's important to remember that Abbey saw the huge growth up tick coming some 25 years ago. And places like Phoenix, and Vegas have exploded in size ever since. Abbey puts it all in focus with "The BLOB Comes to Arizona." "Telluride Blues - A Hatchet Job" is another case in point. But for pure fun, nothing tops Abbey's "premarital honeymoon" adventure in "Disorder and Early Sorrow." If you're a fan of Abbey and you buy the book for that story alone, you won't be disappointed.
Rating: 5
Summary: Arguably Abbey's best
Comment: That claim may seem a little rash in the face of Abbey's great prose work, Desert Solitaire, but this book in my view offers a more intimate and personal look at Abbey himself and provides some great insights into his formation as writing placed withi the context of the American west. One of the strengths of this work, as opposed to Desert Solitaire, is the broadness of subject matter covered. Abbey begins by recounting his life changing hitch-hiking, train jumping tour across america to the west in the summer of 1944. His style, however, is like Kerouac, but without the without the self consciousness and pretension. Through Abbey's it is nature that is the subject, his personal exploits are merely secondary/accidental; Abbey is just along for the ride. He tells of his first glimpse of the mesa's of Hopi country on the fringes of the Painted Desert as viewed from the side door of the Pullman as he drifted down the tracks towards New Mexico. Throughout, he describes his love of the desert and the creatures that live there with a vitality and gentleness uncommon in today's environmental discourse. This sensitivity is even more pronounced when compared with his verbal protests against what he sees as the destroyers of his desert paradise, such as, the miners, developers, dammers, trappers and, yes, even the tourists. "The Journey Home" closes with a surrealistic celebration of the desert as seen through the detached lens of an anonymous camera, which I consider some of his most beautiful and original writing. For all those who have read Desert Solitaire, read this to get a more intimate look of the man behind the ideas. Abbey's contradictions are what makes him so great as an American writer. He is at once an anarchist, environmentalist, desert rat, river-runner, essayist and novelist, but above all a man from pennsylvania who became entraptured by the mysteries of the desert and dedicated his life to celebrating its beauty.
Rating: 5
Summary: Extremists aren't usually this much fun
Comment: Reading Abbey reminds me of lines from the Scottish poet, Hugh MacDiarmid:
I'll have no half-way house, but aye be where/ Extremes meet; it's the only way I ken/ To dodge the cursed conceit of bein' rich/ That damns the vast majority of men.
That's Abbey for you, and he has a helluva great time out there where extremes meet. Is there any other way to live?
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Title: Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey ISBN: 0345326490 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 January, 1985 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Down the River by Edward Abbey ISBN: 0452265630 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: January, 1991 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Beyond the Wall : Essays from the Outside by Edward Abbey ISBN: 0805008209 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 15 April, 1984 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey, Douglas Brinkley ISBN: 0060956445 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Fool's Progress : An Honest Novel by Edward Abbey ISBN: 0805057919 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 15 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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