Edward Abbey's Legacy...Great Literature and a Greater Appreciation for the American Southwest...And the...

books:


	• Hayduke Lives!: A Novel Edward Abbey Back Bay Books, 1991 - 308 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Hayduke versus Goliath

Read "The Monkey Wrench Gang" first - that is where the characters are developed. Unfortunately, Abbey wastes our time in the first few chapters of this novel trying to redevelop them. However, "Hayduke Lives" recovers with a bout against the all-encompassing American Goliath. When you realize that your government is against your best interests with your national treasures (NPS = National Parking Lot Service), then you will know it is time to pick up the monkey wrench. For example, Yosemite National Park just cut an acre of trees for new development on the valley floor after declaring them a "fire hazard." I am pro-Abbey and a resident of the American Southwest, also a kindred spirit. His "Rule #1 'Don't get caught.'" is also my own. Carry on for the sake of all things living.

Mike Zinsley, author of The Rapture of the Deep

for more information click here

Edward and G O L I A T H

This is definitely a worthy sequel to the classic Monkey Wrench Gang, though here Abbey's writing gets rather cranky and hyperbolic. The Gang has reunited, with crazy Hayduke working undercover and in a variety of subversive guises, to pull off the ultimate humungous eco-activist caper of the century. The villain is the hubristically enormous earthmoving machine G O L I A T H, which is literally moving mountains in Abbey's beloved slickrock country, at the behest of industrial and government lackeys. Abbey unleashes an unceasing torrent of his enviro-anarchist philosophy through the mouths of the characters, both the good and bad guys, though this leads to characters who often make huge voluminous speeches, as opposed to believable conversations.

Abbey throws in some perceptive criticism of less committed and under-informed nature lovers, while lambasting the typical money-hungry developers. This is great for the thinking reader, but unfortunately the book takes on a rather cranky and unforgiving tone overall. There are some plot problems, with under-elaborated characters such as the Colonel, the presence of the Monkey Wrench Gang book in this book's universe (Abbey does not explain this phenomenon well at all), and the presence of the mysterious Lone Ranger character, who is from a different Abbey book that I thought took place in a different reality and time stream. The shifting behaviors and attitudes of Bonnie and Hayduke in particular are also real problems in character construction. But in the end, if you're in the right frame of mind and of the proper political stance, Abbey's philosophy as contained here is incredibly thought-provoking. And the climax to this novel, in which the Gang pulls off an act of sabotage that's G O L I A T H in size and audacity, is hugely uproarious. [~doomsdayer520~]

for more information click here

Edward Abbey's Legacy...Great Literature and a Greater Appreciation for the American Southwest...And the Glen Canyon Dam

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.

>>>>>>>

for more information click here

A must for monkeywrenchers

Damn fine novel. A comabtive and comic work from the "Desert Anarchist". Find out where all that "Hayduke Lives!" grafiti is coming from.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Ed Abbey's 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, ended with a classic--and literal--cliffhanger: it left its hero, George Washington Hayduke III, clinging to a sheer rock face in the wilds of Utah as an armed posse hunted him down for his eco-radicalist crimes. Hayduke Lives! allows the grizzled Vietnam veteran another day in the sun, reunited with his old comrades Doc Sarvis, Seldom Seen Smith, and Bonnie Abbzug to battle the world's biggest earthmoving machine, the aptly named GOLIATH. Their principal foe, apart from that behemoth, is the fundamentalist preacher Dudley Love, the mastermind behind uranium mines, power plants, and other insults to Abbey's beloved desert. Abbey has great fun lampooning the pretensions of environmental activists, New Agers ("vee put flowers on zee Big Bucket, vee put flowers on zee driver's neck and hug heem? her? it? and kiss and luff and squeeze and make GOLIATH stop," says one starry-eyed European crystal gazer), and developers alike as he unfolds his tale of a motorized Wild West and its latter-day outlaw heroes. As full of improbable situations and noisy politics as Monkey Wrench Gang, Hayduke Lives! proves to be great fun for readers as well. --Gregory McNamee

for more information click here

hot