Desert Solitaire
Edward Abbey. Desert Solitaire
personal narrative
personal narrative
Wild . . . surly . . . pugnacious . . . these are some of the first words that come to mind in describing the voice that is Ed Abbey in this book. Closely following those adjectives, however, are words of a different color: thoughtful . . . reflective . . . poetic . . . eloquent . . . mellifluous. All of these can be fairly applied to this provocative account that one reviewer has likened to “a ride on a bucking bronco.”
The famous western writer Larry McMurtry once called Abbey the “Thoreau of the American West,” and this memoir has many parallels to Walden. Here Abbey recounts his years spent working for the Park Service in the late 1950’s just outside of Moab in what is now Arches National Park (then a National Monument). For travelers to Arches and Canyonlands this book provides a point of entry into this extreme landscape from a man who knew the land well and loved it dearly. Abbey’s aspiration in writing the book: “Since you cannot get the desert into a book any more than a fisherman can haul up the sea with his nets, I have tried to create a world of words in which the desert figures more as medium than as material. Not imitation but evocation has been the goal.” ~ C. Bryan
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