Edward Abbey - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Overview

Edward Paul Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues

Environmentalism

Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...

, criticism of public land

Public land

In all modern states, some land is held by central or local governments. This is called public land. The system of tenure of public land, and the terminology used, varies between countries...

policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

The Monkey Wrench Gang
The Monkey Wrench Gang
The Monkey Wrench Gang is a novel written by American author Edward Abbey , published in 1975.Easily Abbey's most famous fiction work, the novel concerns the use of sabotage to protest environmentally damaging activities in the American Southwest, and was so influential that the term "monkeywrench"...

, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups

Radical environmentalism

Radical environmentalism, is a grassroots branch of the larger environmental movement that emerged out of an ecocentrism-based frustration with the co-option of mainstream environmentalism...

, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire
Desert Solitaire
This article is about the book. For the album dedicated to Edward Abbey see Desert Solitaire .Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness is a literary nonfiction work by Edward Abbey , published originally in 1968....

. Writer Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry

Larry Jeff McMurtry is an American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter whose work is predominantly set in either the old West or in contemporary Texas...

referred to Abbey as the "Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...

of the American West

Western United States

.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...

".
Abbey was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania

Indiana, Pennsylvania

Indiana is a borough in and the county seat of Indiana County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 14,895 at the 2000 census.The borough and the region as a whole promotes itself as the "Christmas Tree Capital of the World" because the national Christmas Tree Grower's Association was...

on January 29, 1927 to Mildred Postle wait and Paul Revere Abbey.

Unanswered Questions

In Fire on the Mountain, the character Vogelin was the real life John Prather. Is Jim Burns in Lonley are the Brave patterned after Prather's newphew,...

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Discussions

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Quotations

My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving.

George Hayduke|George Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang|The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), p. 200

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.

Seldom Seen Smith in The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), p. 313

Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now.

Abbey's Road (1979)

We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.

Abbey's Road (1979)

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

Earth Apples: The Poetry of Edward Abbey (1994)

Without courage, all other virtues are useless.

Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951-1989 (1994)

We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foresight of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement.

The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)

I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.

"The First Morning" (p. 7)

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