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Summary: Abbey Lives!
Review: There's not a whole lot I can add to all of the reviews posted thus far, so I'll keep this brief. Abbey was ahead of his time in foreseeing the problems that would overtake not only the canyonlands area, but the nation and the world. He wasn't afraid to speak honestly, even if it meant exposing the sometimes contradictory nature that was inherent in Abbey (and that is present in all of us). While some of Abbey's other books were perhaps not up to par, Desert Solitaire is truly a great book. Some have said that it has the power to change lives. I can attest to this personally, because it changed mine.
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Summary: A very enjoyable book!
Review: I've lived in the desert southwest for almost 30 years and have read many books about the area. Surprisingly, I never read one of Abbey's books until now. I guess something else always appealed to me more on the bookstore shelves.As many reviewers have pointed out, Abbey captures the true feeling that one gets when surrounded by the beauty of the desert. It's true that there are other books out there that have also achieved this. What made this book special for me were the author's writing skills. He is truly a gifted writer and knows how to use language. This book is a real pleasure to read. As I read the book I tried to glean a little about the man - Edward Abbey. As a resident of the Sonoran Desert, his name comes up frequently when environmental champions are listed. He is a man that truly believes that the deserts, and all wilderness areas for that matter, are sacred. They are areas to be preserved and enjoyed -- untouched, whenever possible, by the hand of man. What surprised me about this book is that Abbey describes how he engaged in some activities that seem to contradict this philosophy. A few that come to mind: Smashing a rabbit's head in with a rock, not for food, but just to see if he can. Killing a rattlesnake with a shovel just because it lives around his trailer and he is afraid that someday it "might" bite him. Recalling a large brush fire that he accidentally set in a wilderness area, not with remorse, but with humor. Rolling an old tire off the rim of a pristine part of the Grand Canyon just so he could watch it bounce of off the canyon walls (and leaving it there as trash on the canyon floor). He does not seem ashamed of any of these actions. However, I'm sure that if he saw one of the "automobile tourists" that he seems to loathe do any of these things that he would go on an irate tirade. However, although I found these types of things to be a little hypocritical, I respect Abbey candidness - other authors would have just left these transgressions out. This is a wonderful book and should be on the bookshelf of anyone that enjoys nature. If you live in the desert - read this book - you will love it. Even if you a thousand miles away from a desert - read this book - you will love it. Abbey takes you on a journey to a special place that you will enjoy immensely.
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Summary: The mystery of the desert examined but not revealed
Review: Abbey describes the desert as a gentle, austere and morbid place. Having camped in southeast Utah, I know it to be place that has very little concern for human beings. Abbey captures this feeling dozens of times in his book. For him, and those who visit the desert, it is a place to measure the true significants of human life. It is a place that makes you acutely aware of man's shortcomings - ignorance, arrogance, idolatry. Passive, rugged and indifferent is how I'd desrcibe this author. He's a metaphor for the desert itself. This book may leave you feeling comfortably hollow - as if you lost something of unreasonable value but you know its OK.
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Summary: Ya gotta love this guy.
Review: Written by Abbey when he was a park ranger at Arches Monument before it became a National Park, "Dessert Solitaire" is extraordinary. Only a handful of wilderness writers can create multiple visions of natural beauty without becoming maudlin or repetitive. Muir and Leopold come to mine as two who succeed but Abbey speaks in a more familiar voice. His task of bringing life and wonder to a dessert is even more challenging but the book strikes a chord not easily ignored. "A weird, lovely, fantastic object out of nature like Delicate Arch has the curious ability to remind us - like rock and sunlight and wind and wilderness - that out there is a different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours... For a little while we are again able to see, as the children see, a world of marvels. For a few moments we discover that nothing can be taken for granted, for if this ring of stone is marvelous then all which shaped it is marvelous, and our journey here on earth, able to see and touch and hear in the midst of tangible and mysterious things-in-themselves, is the most strange and daring of all adventures." Reading that, I had to see it for myself. The stone and sand of Arches is as wondrous, as ancient and as powerful as Abbey promised.
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Summary: The Best of Its Kind
Review: There's little I can add to the so many outstanding reviews of DESERT SOLITAIRE that have already appeared. I read the book years ago, but only recently visited Arches and the remnants of Glen Canyon. Seeing in person the places described by Abbey made both book and message more poignant for me. Drain Lake Powell? How can we not? If you haven't read the book and/or haven't been to the Southwest, do it and go.
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Summary: Raw but real
Review: This novel is like reading someone's journal. It is strange grammatically, but in the middle of the gorgeous descriptions is an argument about the way we treat the wilderness. Every chapter I finished I called my favorite until I read the next one. You will not be able to put it down and you will want to read it again.
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Summary: Thus spoke Edward Abbey
Review: This book stinks of Neitzsche. Mr. Abbey was as much a loaner as Fredreiche ever was. While staying at the Lazy Lizard Hostel in Moab, I read this book for the first time and discovered the greatness of this desert land in my two week stay there. The desert of Utah is uncompromising and incompassionate, not to be taken advantage of. The small area of land known as Moab is not for the faint of heart, its for those who love nature at its extreme. Unfortunately, the street (there is really only one) of Moab is now lined with 4x4 rental places, a Wendy's, a McDonald's, and all the other garbage that comes with civilization. Abbey's premontions were correct, this place has sadly turned into a Mecca for tourits and 4 wheelers who have no respect for this land and those who came before them. If you go here, pay close attention to the rock and how time has played its cruel tricks upon it, clockwise as the Arches deteriorate.
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Summary: This book should be required reading
Review: Part-polemical essay on conservation, part-journal of his experiences as a park ranger in Arches Monument National Park, Abbey writes with sparse, beautiful descriptions and expounds upon his ideas for conservation of our national parks. His ideas are fascinating, and as more and more of our national parks and monuments are paved to make them user-friendly, Abbey's book becomes more and more important, especially in light of our current administration's (lousy) attitude regarding the environment. It's not the fastest read, but it should be required reading of all high-school students before they're released into the world.
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Summary: If you read only one Abbey book, Abbey chooses this one!
Review: There's a hard to find video about Edward Abbey, that I bought at Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City, UT. Check out their website if you're interested in seeing the video. It's a collection of interviews of friends and family of Edward Abbey, and the best story told in this video was the following. A daughter relates a story of her mother bumping into Edward Abbey at a party. After getting acquainted her mother confessed that she had never read any of his books, and she asked Abbey, that that if she were to read just one, which book should she read? Edward Abbey then took her into a separate room, and made a suggestion to her, the suggestion unknown to the rest of the guests. The daughter smiles, and says, she could never get her mother to tell her what book it was he suggested, because she was sworn to secrecy. However, one day she found in her room, a copy of Desert Solitaire. Desert Solitaire is the novel, along with The Monkey Wrench Gang, that Edward Abbey is best known for. Abbey claimed to never understand why the book became so popular because it took the least effort for him to write. I think that's what makes this book so powerful. It's told straight from the heart, mind and journal of Abbey's experience as a park ranger at Moab, Arches National Park. The novel very much is a stream of consciousness novel; a series of essays, with no effort to make a segue to the next. Yet the themes that stay constant throughout - passion about the wilderness, its protection and nostalgaic reverence - make it unnecessary. Some of his ideas were considered revolutionary and inflammatory then, but now we can read it and call them the voice of reason. Take in point, present government plans to create a parking lot outside of Zion National Park (which Abbey jokingly refers to as Zion National Parking Lot), so tourists riding bulky campers among other things will have to take a shuttle into the park during peak season. At times his stories are very political, then the next chapter can become very raw and personal. His story of getting trapped in a narrow canyon tributary of Grand Canyon is riveting, honest and really offers a surprising contrast to his "tough and rough" demeanor he takes on in many of his essays in other novels. Overall, the images and emotions he expresses are a gift to many outdoor enthusiasts. I know no one else who has put the desert experience better into words than Edward Abbey. And if I meet someone who knows and loves this book, I know that person has experienced the desert (whether or not they actually have set foot in one) much like I have. Edward Abbey tried throughout his life to write the Great American Novel. Though he never admitted it in press or writing (as far as I know...the only reference was when he gave Desert Solitaire a B+ I believe, in one of his introductions), I think he knew Desert Solitaire was his best novel. It was his most personal (this along with Black Sun), and thus, I think the reason he never embraced it publicly.
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Summary: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Review: Edward Abbey didn't like to be known as a nature writer (he was far too proud of his fiction), but after reading this book I would have to say he is among the best. Before I read this book, I had never even considered traveling to the Southwest, this book changed that, and the way I look at nature forever. Abbey has rightfully been called the Thoreau of the American West, this book more than any other shows us why. In Desert Solitaire Abbey is at his best, doing for the Southwest what Thoreau did for Concord and Walden. One of the great strenghts of this book is the way Abbey weaves together such a wide array of subject matter, which illustrates the seemingly endless variety of experience, in what is thought by many to be an inhospitable wasteland. In a collection of breif chapters Abbey touches on everthing from the incredible beauty of forgotton canyons, the Southwest's past inhabitants, a feral horse, the Colorado river, the perils of industrial tourism, and the story of a man who may have came to die at the edge of a cliff. In this book you get a great sampling of everything Abbey has to offer, from his stinging wit and dark humor, rage and sadness concerning the destruction of nature, and finally to hope. Edward Abbey has accomplished on the printed page, what Ansel Adams' photography has done for the Southwest. And yes, both immortalize a time and a place that are being destroyed forever, little by little, day by day, but leaving for us a sad and yet wonderful record of what used to be, and why what is left is worth saving. Desert Solitaire is both a celebration and a lamentation for the disappearing landscapes, and hidden canyons that Abbey chose as his own paradise, and if you read this book it may become yours too. Like Abbey's says get out of your cars and crawl in the sand, and EXPERIENCE what nature has to offer, you might just be surprised at what you find.
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