Rating: 
Summary: Solitaire...Savage...Unforgiving...Beautiful
Review: I have always wanted to visit the desert southwest. Last year, after 33 years I finally got the chance. Abbey, in a very small book, encapsulates in a big way the essence of what I saw and experienced in my two week stay in Northern Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. Slow, uncrowded, earthy natural beauty. His prose is witty and sometimes self loathing or loathing of people in general. The kind of personality that would be right at home in the surroundings that he writes about. In another life Abbey and I probably would have been twins (or the same person). Heck, I'm even from the same area of Pennsylvania that he was from. His love for the desert and aloneness I found to be in kindred spirit. A sole voice crying from the wilderness.
Rating: 
Summary: Torn Between Two Voices
Review: To begin, I loved parts of _Desert Solataire_. Abbey seemed to be warbling between humility, confusion, and utter, unabashed egotism. This is charming, because it is honest, and one can't fault someone for being honest. Also, the man actually did something about his frustration, which is more than can be said for the lot of us. Moreover, there were sections of the book that shocked me with their incredible, heartbreaking beauty and insight. For example, the chapter "The Moon-Eyed Horse": the writing in that chapter is utterly original and amazing in the complexity it demonstrates regarding both the narrator and the nature of the horse's character - and what it reveals and changes about Abbey.
Abbey is at his best when he gets out of the way and describes how he sees nature, rather than his own mind. Abbey says at one point that when a person goes into the wilderness he or she is at risk of either seeing merely his or her self in it, or just the opposite, seeing nothing but an opposite image of oneself. This made me wonder about Abbey's exact philosophical position on his own place in nature; furthermore, the passage - in the chapter entitled "Episodes and Visions" - in which Abbey attempts to wax philosophical about civilization and culture was completely lost on me. Maybe it's because I've read too much Heidegger to think that Abbey really understands Heidegger, or maybe it's because I am confused. I am confused because it seems as if Abbey upholds civilization as superior to culture, and yet does he not admire the American Indian tribal culture that he encounters in the park? How does he even define "culture"? If the U.K. and the United States are merely examples of cultures, then is civilization merely the mark of individuals that Abbey likes? I don't think I'm suffering from a lapse in intelligence; apparently, not a few people have agreed with my bafflement, including the "New York literary establishment," according to Susan Zakin in _Coyotes and Town Dogs_. But - and it's a big but - there were certainly moments in which I felt his writing shone. And _Desert Solitaire_ was certainly the book that earned him well-deserved accolades. It made me want to drive to Utah and camp out under the stars, with nothing but the ground beneath me and the night around me, as Abbey would say. I felt a place in my bones when Abbey wrote about what he loved. The thing I can't take is diatribe and cliché - or, as writers politely put it, "received text." Received text unfortunately found its way into _Desert Solitaire_ when Abbey decided to wax egotistical about industrial tourism and his facetious suggestions for a blazing, light bulb ridden sign over the entrance to the park. In those places, the writing's not just irritating, it's not original. Anyone can go off about how stupid mass culture is and how people should change their couch potato, gas guzzling ways, but if you're going to include it in a book, it should fit seamlessly into the design. And those parts, for me, stuck out like a sore thumb. In spite of all his shortcomings as a "literary" writer, Abbey is endearingly human, and that seems to have been a crucial and necessary part of his character. In the end, I remain torn, and I feel sympathy for those who want to change the world and put themselves at risk for what they believe in. But I also firmly believe that, unless we respect and try to communicate with the person sitting across from us who we are opposed to, nothing will ever get done.
Rating:
Summary: A voice crying in the wilderness
Review: Edward Abbey was an outspoken wilderness advocate, and his nonfiction writing falls somewhere between Thoreau and Hunter Thompson. "Desert Solitaire" is classic Abbey, written in the latter 1960s, when he was about 30, and it recounts a handful of summers spent ten years earlier in and around Arches National Monument in southeastern Utah. Here he was a park ranger, when the park was still mostly undeveloped. Living in a small trailer, keeping an eye on the campers and tourists, he mostly relishes the quiet, beauty, and indifference of the desert under its hot sun. The book begins with his arrival in April and concludes with his departure at season's end in September. In between are chapters devoted to descriptions of his rambles across the terrain, helping a local cattleman round up cows in the side canyons, trying to capture a one-eyed feral horse, camping on a 13,000-foot local mountain, hiking with a friend into an uncharted wilderness call the Maze, and retrieving the body of a dead tourist. There's also a dark story concerning the unfortunate fate of some uranium prospectors. The longest chapter is a rapturous account of a week spent rafting down the Colorado River, he and a friend among the last to see the canyons about to be inundated by the Glen Canyon Dam and the creation of Lake Powell. Along the way, there are ruminations on the meaning of it all and diatribes against urbanization, intrusive government, the tourist industry, and the destruction of wilderness. The word "solitaire" in the title is an apt choice, as much of the time Abbey is alone, thinking his thoughts and observing this desert world, its plants and wild life, geological formations, and the big sky with its turns of weather. Even when paired up with a companion, he is often off alone, on a walkabout of his own, like as not shedding his clothes. His thoughts, meanwhile, are informed by wide reading in philosophy, history, natural sciences, and literature. As a writer, he's frequently quotable: "Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless." "It's a great country: you can say whatever you like so long as it is strictly true -- nobody will ever take you seriously." The vistas he describes so eloquently are not hard to picture in the imagination, but I recommend an accompanying volume of photography, such as Eliot Porter's "The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado." Unless you're familiar with borage, paintbrush, globemallow, and dozens of other desert species, a picture guidebook to the flora of the region would also be helpful. I thoroughly enjoyed Abbey's book, shared the excitement of his adventures, found his cranky, ornery, sometimes self-indulgent perspective refreshing, and felt saddened by the end-of-season farewell with which it closes. In any list of nonfiction books about the West, it should be near the top.
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: Excellent. A must read for all with a concern for the American West.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoying Life
Review: Humor and philosophy from a guy who likes to think, understands how to enjoy life, and loves the desert, is what this book is. You don't have to be from the southwest to appriciate it ... this book is mostly a guy rambling on about all his thoughts and opinions. It's not like a book, it's like Edward Abbey is sitting there, talking to you, in a sort of leasurly manner. Much of what he says is very poetic, and you have to read this slowly to really get the full effect. A beautifully written novel, certainly worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: you can't see anything from a car...so start walking!
Review: Best to read if you are visiting Arches, the Grand Canyon, or Lake Powell, or if you have been there, or even if you just wish you were there...
After reading Abbey's incredible illustration of "his" country, you might as well have been there yourself in spirit, if not in body. Desert Solitaire is part memoir, politics, opinion, beauty, myth, journal, eulogy, ravaging accusation of modern society, and general ramblings on the Southwest. There is very little structure, except that the book opens with Abbey entering Arches in the spring as a ranger, and ends with him leaving in the fall. He touches almost every subject under the desert sun. My favorite chapters were: -"Down the River": on Glen Canyon before the dam
-"Polemic Industrial Tourism and the National Parks": scathing and sarcastic, belittleing the American automobile tourist
-"Rocks": a disturbing legend of the uranium boom in Utah
-"Episodes and Visions": general desert musings and tangents The best way to describe the feel of this book is the blurb on the back: "rough, tough, combative [...] this book may well seem like a ride on a bucking bronco."
Rating:
Summary: Soul of the Southwest
Review: Edward Abbey was recommended to me 3 years ago when I was backpacking through the Utah Wilderness. This book brings about a dire longing for anyone who loves the wilderness and solitude. You can only imagine what National Parks and wilderness areas of Eastern Utah and the United States were like before commercial interests got a hold of them. He was a man ahead of his time.
Rating:
Summary: One of My Favorites
Review: Ed Abbey was easily one of the best authors to write about the American Southwest. His humor and wit contrast nicely with his love of the desert. DESERT SOLITAIRE allows the reader to drift into a much simpler, slower life for a short time. Mr.Abbey's polemic about the National Parks is quite entertaining, as I am sure it will just be a matter of time before we have rubber rocks in Yosemite!
Rating: 
Summary: Arches before the park
Review: This slim volume describes Edward Abbey's experiences in and around Arches National Park, mostly before it was developed. The book is a collection of related essays rather than
one single narrative. It includes some very entertaining anecdotes, beautiful descriptions of nature, and Abbey's observations on the commercialization of the remaining American wilderness areas. As it was written in the 1960s, it is somewhat dated but gives a good idea of what Arches was like before the National Parks Service 'improved' it. One of the main points it makes is that it is not possible to make wilderness areas easily accessible and still maintain the feeling of being in the wilderness. This book should be especially appreciated by those who are presently between trips to the Southwest; although it is unfortunately only a rather poor substitute for the real thing.
Rating:
Summary: A genuine and enduring classic about the American Desert
Review: Edward Abbey's DESERT SOLITAIRE belongs on the shortest of several short lists of 20th century classics, whether we are talking of classic literature of the American West, nature writing, or environmentalism. Why is this such a brilliant book? It isn't the originality of ideas. Other writers-Aldo Leopold, Wallace Stegner, Bernard DeVoto, Mary Austin-had already articulated many of Abbey's central ideas either about nature or about Western policy. Bernard DeVoto was an innovator; Abbey is not. Nor is Abbey's anger and fury at exploiters and defilers unique: DeVoto was just as irate and just as incapable of pulling his punches. Nor is it Abbey's overall vision that makes his book so compelling. Again, both DeVoto and Stegner-and especially DeVoto-evidenced a broader and more systematic understanding of the broader issues confronting the West. None of this is accidental. DeVoto exerted a major influence on Stegner, and Stegner taught Abbey in the Stanford University Creative Writing Program. What makes DESERT SOLITAIRE so marvelous is the almost tactile love and passion Abbey displays for the Desert Southwest. Over and over Abbey summons up specific places, particular mountains, individual landscapes. Although he can write about the desert in general, he more frequently writes about particular spots in Arches National Park and the surrounding environs that help explain his attachment to the West. He is the literary equivalent, in his more somber, reflective moments, of Eliot Porter and Ansel Adams. As a result, what one recalls upon remembering DESERT SOLITAIRE is not words so much as a collection of images. Structurally, the book only resembles a memoir of his time working as a park ranger in the Arches National Park. The book makes it seems as if he worked there only one year, when in fact he worked there two. Furthermore, even what appears as a single year fails to account for all the content of the book. He uses, rather, the fiction of a single season as a framework upon which to hang tales, reflections, and rants. This intermixing of narrative with asides gives the book a richness of texture it might not otherwise possess. The narrative of his time as a ranger gives the book much of it structure, but the rants and sidetracking provides it with much of its content. I hate to write something as trite as this being an absolutely essential book for anyone remotely interested in the subjects it touches upon, but such is the case. Abbey wrote many other nonfiction works and novels. All are interesting, several of them quite good, but DESERT SOLITAIRE is easily his greatest. It truly is a classic.
|
