Author: BISHOP, JAMES
Title: Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist the Life and Legacy of Edward Abbey
Description: New York: Touchstone, 1995. Paperback. ISBN: 0684804395. B&W Illustrations; 7.8 X 5.0 X 0.9 inches; xv, 254 pages; Soft cover has green spine with white letting. Light rubbing, scuffing to covers. Pages are clean and tight, except for a few pen check marks on pages xiv and xv, plus tidy note, at top of xiv, 'age 62.' . Illustrated with b/w photographs. 'Meet Edward Paul Abbey, twentieth-century polemicist and desert anarchist, a character of elaborate contradictions and eccentricities whose words either infuriated or delighted his readers. In a career spanning four decades, he wrote passionately in defense of the Southwest and its inhabitants, often mocking the mindless bureaucratic forces hell-bent on destroying it. "Resist much, obey little," from Walt Withman, was this warrior's motto. While he was alive, attempts to label him in conventional terms nearly always fell short because he was neither left-wing nor right-wing, nor was he an outlaw. Abbey was a genuine rebel who simply did not believe in the moderns industrial way of life. He wrote against the grain, always choosing the path of the greatest resistance. Beginning in the 1950s, he depicted the Southwest not as a virgin utopia peopled by rugged individualists, but as a region under siege because of government and corporate greed, its people at risk of being cut off from the primary wellspring of their spiritual strength - the wild places. He's been dead for a while now, but the legend keeps in growing.' Index.. Very Good+ .

Keywords: 0684804395 Biography; Environment; Environmentalist; Naturalist; Famous Americans; Novelists; American West; Cultural History; Social History; Literature/Poetry/Classics Cultural History Education History American History Geography Biography/Memoirs/Journ