The Monkey
Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
Funny; Wild;
Wise; Tragic; Beautiful are the words the Houston Chronicle used to describe
this book when it came out in 1975. If
you’ve never read Edward Abbey before, don’t let these words guide you to read
this one first. I recommend you read his
truly beautiful, and still subversively written, Desert Solitaire which I
reviewed some books ago as we journeyed east through the Colorado and Kansas
plains in 100 degree heat. I must add a few descriptive words of my own to
explain.
Viet Nam;
Rough Intimacy (sex); Violent destruction and words; Scandalous behavior, and a
phrase written by more than one reviewer, and the FBI, ‘Keep Abbey on the watch
list. His writing teaches terrorists how
to commit mayhem and murder’. Yes, it could,
and maybe has.
But the GANG
is not an organized group of foreign or even eco-terrorists. Its not a religiously zealous bunch of
super-fundamental Christians or Muslims. And there is no political agenda
except, perhaps, anarchy and defiant ‘keep it as its been’ mentality about
America’s dwindling wilderness.
If you are a
fan of the National Park Service or the Bureau of Land Management you may not
like this book. But if you enjoy a
rollicking, all too believable, ride through amazingly beautiful, clearly described
desert vistas, and accurately visualized destructive actions for supposedly
positive results, you will NOT be able to put this one down.
As we
journey in our 18 ton behemoth from one rock lined gorge walled in between dams
for electric power, valley hemmed in by mountains whose sides are being
excavated to build more roads, or overlooks looking over more smog than city we
see the reasons for Abbey’s radical take on giving nature back to nature.
The 2014 very
non-biblical movie NOAH starring Russell Crowe in the lead brought up a
possible plan of God’s beyond a re-boot of the universe. Perhaps God did not intend that Noah’s family
should do more than save the beasts. Perhaps, at the departure of those beasts
from the Ark somewhere on the mountains of Ararat, after all had gone and Noah
had blessed the Lord with offerings, he wonders if he wasn’t supposed to turn
with his blade toward his family and kill them all, and himself last. Russell Crowe wonders if God really wanted
the chance to start the universe over again, without humans to muck it up.
This, I
think, would be a concept Edward Abbey might have appreciated.
-***** KEN
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