Confluence Literary Festival

ARCHES 1968

Written within the mindset, and through the eyes and viewpoint of, Ed Abbey.

Goddam people. Goddam stupid people questions. Get the goddam fuck out of MY ARCHES. I ought to shoot you. Or sic one of my snakes on you. Or bury you Beneath blown-up rubble From a destroyed Glen Canyon Dam.

Ahh, juniper. Growing twisted and crazy, Just like me. Thats why I like you, You slow-growing, stubbornly living Anarchic bastard like me.

Ohh, the desert stars, With a trace of moon, And no goddam people. Just enough waxing moon For a nighttime hike Through Fiery Furnace, Then back home The red rock home, not the trailer one To bask in fading heat.

Goddam, Bates! Whats this talk? A National Park now? Wasnt Canyonlands enough? I guess not. Did Proudhon write about Park envy?

Maybe we need to blow up some park roads When we blow up that goddam dam.

Steve Snyder is a newspaper editor, blogger and freelance writer in suburban Dallas. He grew up in the Four Corners area, in Gallup, N.M.

The truth about Eddy
Posted by Jonathan Stull on July 22, 2008
As a college student at the University of Oregon, I took a class dubbed "Environmental Literature" during my most recent term. Considering that no class with such a title could ignore the work of Edward Abbey, I found myself disgruntled at the response of my fellow students to "Desert Solitaire" (for the record - they found him arrogant, cynical, condescending, altogether counterproductive).

Reading Edward Abbey is synonymous with reading my own feelings. Few authors have captivated my love of the natural landscape and my loathe for those who misuse or misunderstand it. The following is an email I sent to my professor, providing a basic analysis of his words and insight into why he is so misunderstood:

"Sarah- "I'm not quite sure how to go about relating this without revealing too much - perhaps I should submit myself to that inevitability. Before I lose my vigor, there are a few truths about Edward Abbey I feel compelled to share. I don't mind sacrificing my own mysteriousness in the process.

"Edward Abbey is quite possibly one the most compassionate, sincere, stoic, and feeling writers I've ever read. Not to demean those who made their voices heard in class, but I think there was possibly one comment about him that provided any type of accurate insight into who he is. That came from someone who went by the name Ally, I believe. Left side of the class. Front row. Ish.

"She talked a little bit about him using a persona. Maybe he's using a 'poker face', as it were.

"Well 'Ally' is 100% correct.

"Desert Solitaire is absolutely and unequivocally the voice of Edward Abbey as Edward Abbey. How could it be otherwise, when he stated in his introduction that a majority of the passages are unedited excerpts of his journals? His facade is an exercise of his desire to mask that the problems of society constantly eat him alive. He is tortured by those who don't see the beauty that he sees. He rejects material objects because they are immaterial to the true values of life: love, fellowship and society, living simply in an increasingly complicated life, living in harmony with all forms of life around him (it's important to note that 'harmony' doesn't necessarily suggest 'without conflict or death'; it's about appreciating a natural order that humanity seems to think it's above). He identifies the majority of society, that on the surface he seemingly rejects, not as an arrogant man who feels he is above it, but as a humble man who wants nothing but to save it from itself. Why do you think he seeks solitude? It's not out of pretentiousness - it's out of pain. He desperately wants to fix the problems he sees, but he understands that the efforts of a mere man are insufficient in the face of a well-oiled capitalist machine. No better is there an indication of this than his reference to various industries as a 'combine'. 'The automotive combine has almost succeeded in strangling our cities; we need not let it also destroy our national parks.' Merriam-Webster would have us think his use of the word 'combine' here is defined as 'a number of businesses or enterprises united for commercial advantage.' But Abbey is toying with us. His command of the English language allows him to play with words, a power he abuses regularly, and subsequently our impression of his perspective. Further contemplation, and for whatever reason my first impression, was that he meant 'combine' to be defined in an agricultural sense - also known as the gigantic mechanism that simultaneously cuts, threshes, and bags grain. What would happen to a man if he stood in front of a combine? If you have seen one, you would understand that a man would likewise be cut, threshed, and bagged like a stereotypical victim of the so-called 'American Dream'.

"Seeing no viable reconciliation of the problems facing his, and now our generation, Abbey's only solution is to distance himself from the suffering he feels when he looks at the 'Wheelchair Explorers', those unfortunate few who feel they need to live life according to the Master Plan, as he references. He genuinely and deeply feels sorrow for these people who presumably do not recognize their ignorance:

"'They work hard, these people. They roll up incredible mileages on their odometers, rack up state after state in two-week transcontinental motor marathons, knock off one national park after another, take millions of square yards of photographs, and endure patiently the most prolonged discomforts: the tedious traffic jams, the awful food of park cafeterias and roadside eateries, the nocturnal search for a place to sleep or camp, the dreary routing of One-Stop Service, the endless lines of creeping traffic, the smell of exhaust fumes, the ever-proliferating Rules & Regulations, the fees and the bills and the service charges, the boiling radiator and the flat tire and the vapor lock, the surly retorts of room clerks and traffic cops, the incessant jostling of the anxious crowds, the irritation and restlessness of their children, the worry of their wives, and the long drive home at night in a stream of racing cars against the lights of another stream racing in the opposite direction, passing now and then the obscure tangle, the shattered glass, the patrolman's lurid blinker light, of one more wreck.

"'Hard work. And risky.'

"This is a plea. This is Edward Abbey, not on his pedestal of pre-eminence, belittling those he identifies as lesser beings with his sarcasm and his cynicism and his glorified self-image; this is Edward Abbey on his knees, imploring you to see that life is what we make of it, that it doesn't have to be as tedious and draining as what he describes, that we don't have to be slaves to a pre-conceived and ingrained-from-birth notion of how we're supposed to live: in our cars. In our offices. Or in our bank accounts.

"Eddy simply doesn't want you, the reader, to see that he suffers for you. It is that particular reason he seems to rebut his pain with callousness. He's identified his suffering as weakness. He's afraid you will identify him as weak because of it. I can almost guarantee you that at some point in Edward Abbey's life, he was consumed with the question of why he felt so much pain, where it was coming from, and how he was going to get rid of it. Eventually he abandoned such questions, recognizing the sufferance as a permanent centerfold in his life. His cantankerousness is a representation of his only remaining option: it's death or deal with it.

"As I have other work I need to do, I'm going to wrap up with this:

"Edward Abbey's writing style is allegorical to both Edward Abbey and to nature itself: it is sloppy, lewd, provocative, casual, mysterious, playful, creative and sometimes infuriating. But if we get caught up in his excessive parenthetical phrasing and unimaginative et ceteras, our obsession with the superficial will hide us from seeing the underlying beauty of such a complex and mystifying author, and such a complex and mystifying world. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason. Consume yourself with the question, 'Why?', and you're already missing the point.

"I know this because I read Edward Abbey and see myself.

"Anyway, I wanted to say that in class but I felt it was inappropriate to call people out or offer unsolicited personal information, but I was heated enough that I needed to get it out of my system. Well, not really heated, I just want people to look past the first impression. There's a huge amount there that indicates he's tortured by himself, it would seem to me. As a fellow tortured soul, I felt obligated to defend him. Ha! How appropriate.

"See you Friday, "Jon"

It genuinely bothers me that someone can read Edward Abbey's work and feel scorn. A response like that represents what infuriates me about people, that one can judge so quickly without pausing to understand what motivates us. Abbey is equally culpable of making quick judgments, but there is too much merit in his words to ignore their message.

Eddy is simply reacting to an internal response to preserve the world we came from, a world we have too easily forgotten. Enjoy what he writes, if only for the novelty of his ignorance, should you see it that way. You can't read his work without laughing at how ridiculous is the notion of immersing yourself in nature from the comforts of your vehicle.

Anyway, that's how I feel about Edward Abbey.

Reconnect with nature?
Posted by Mendo Mango on June 30, 2008
I wish I had hope that Americans will reconnect with nature, but events don't really bolster that hope. Then again, if everyone reconnected, could we stand the crowds? At heart, we who love the wilderness also love our connection to the modern word. It's a matter of balancing it all, isn't it?

IMO-Ed was a lover of humanity who saw
Posted by tommyhutch on May 10, 2008
clearly how vapid our modern lifestyle was...now that he has been gone for 20 years and I have seen his predictions ring true and I have grown in my understanding of our culture..he was spot on..I think we are in a paradigm shift in the US..with failing banks and bankrupt governments...and I couldnt be happier...Good News...cant wait to hear Doug Peacock and Clarke Abbey...chance of a lifetime..