Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

by Edward Abbey

3.17 of 5 stars 6 ratings • 2 reviews • 8 shelved
Book cover for Desert Solitaire

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“Rough, tough, combative . . . a passionately felt, deeply poetic book.”—Edwin Way Teale, The New York Times Book Review
 
“This is not primarily a book about the desert,” writes Edward Abbey in his introduction. “In recording my impressions of the natural scene I have striven above all for accuracy, since I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact. But the desertis a vast world, an oceanic world, as deep in its way and complex and various as the sea. Language makes a mighty loose net with which to go fishing for simple facts, when facts are infinite. If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument. What I have tried to do then is something a bit different. Since you cannot get the desert into a book any more than a fisherman can haul up the sea with his nets, I have tried to create a world of words in which the desert figures more as medium than as material. Not imitation but evocation has been the goal.”
  • ISBN10 0345326490
  • ISBN13 9780345326492
  • Publish Date 12 January 1985 (first published 12 March 1983)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Publisher Random House USA Inc
  • Imprint Ballantine Books Inc.