Desert Solitaire

by Edward Abbey

[jamiereadthis]

The only problem with waiting so long to read a seminal work, by a seminal author, is that you have the idea in your head who they will be. This? I kept thinking. This is the controversial Edward Abbey? This is what’s considered polemic? What, this good-humored common sense?

More funny than it has a right to be. More alive. Also, what Abbey held up himself as his standard: interesting, original, important, and true. A deep respect for our wilderness— and more importantly, our wildness— and a deep offense taken at the myriad threats to it. I like finding my people. Abbey is my people, without a box to hold him.

(I knew myself well enough to have more Abbey on hand once I read my first one, and what’s interesting is, in Postcards From Ed, how harsh his own commentary is on Desert Solitaire. Well, not harsh. He honored it. But he saw it as the first stepping stone, one rock of many, whereas, apparently, he got weary of the lifelong fire from those who saw fault and not virtue— and humor— in what he called its “superficial notions.” “With Desert Solitaire I was only getting started,” Abbey wrote, and thank God for that.)