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People and Property in Edward Abbey's “Monkeywrenching”

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People and Property in Edward Abbey's “Monkeywrenching” Author: Sumner, David Thomas Title: The Limits of Violence: People and Property in Edward Abbey’s “Monkeywrenching” Novels The Limits of Violence: People and Property in Edward Abbey’s “Monkeywrenching” Novels David Thomas Sumner Linfield College Abstract This paper explores Edward Abbey’s fiction asking what kind of ethical imperative his monkeywrenching novels offer. While advocating the destruction of property in defense of wilderness, The Monkey Wrench Gang draws a clear ethical distinction between the destruction of property in defense of wilderness and the harming of people. Yet the sequel, Hayduke Lives!, blurs this ethical line when a security guard is killed during the novel’s final eco-sabotage scene. After exploring several possible textual explanations for this apparent change and then interviewing several of Abbey’s close friends regarding this issue, the author concludes that the shift does not represent a change in Abbey’s worldview, but rather a change in fictional circumstance. Keywords: Edward Abbey, radical environmentalism, environmental ethics, eco-fiction Resumen Este trabajo explora la ficción de Abbey cuestionando qué clase de imperativo ético ofrecen sus NoVol 4, 2 novelas “monkeywrenching”. Mientras aboga por la destrucción de la propiedad en defensa de la naturaleza, The Monkey Wrench Gang también traza una distinción ética clara entre la destrucción de la propiedad en defensa de la naturaleza y el daño a la gente. Pero la secuela, Hayduke Lives!, desdibuja esta línea cuando un guardia muere durante la escena final de eco-sabotaje de la novela. Tras explorar las diversas explicaciones textuales posibles para este cambio aparente, y después de entrevistar a varios amigos de Abbey en relación a este asunto, el autor concluye que la variación no representa un cambio en la visión del mundo de Abbey, sino más bien un cambio en las circunstancias de la ficción. Palabras clave: Edward Abbey, ecología radical, ética medioambiental, eco-ficción In the pantheon of environmental sainthood, Edward Abbey sits alongside Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Arne Naess, and David Brower. But for a radical fringe, Abbey is patron saint. His beatification came in large part because of his 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang. As Douglas Brinkley notes in his introduction to the Perennial Classics edition of 2000, “like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle [The Monkey Wrench Gang is] a rousing wake-up call, this time on behalf of © Ecozon@ 2013 ISSN 2171-9594 166 Author: Sumner, David Thomas Title: The Limits of Violence: People and Property in Edward Abbey’s “Monkeywrenching” Novels endangered species and old-growth redwoods” (xxi).1 And, in the beginnings of the radical environmental movement, many heard the wake-up call. The primary purpose of this paper, however, is not to explore the connection between radical environmentalism and Abbey’s fiction, but rather to explore Abbey’s fiction itself and to ask what kind ethical imperative is offered in The Monkey Wrench Gang, and its sequel, Hayduke Lives!. The Monkey Wrench Gang, while advocating the destruction of property in defense of wilderness, draws a clear ethical line between people and property, a line that seems to be consistent with Abbey’s other work from his master’s thesis onward. Abbey’s last novel, Hayduke Lives!, however, blurs this line in the final chase scene when GEM security guard, Jasper Benson Bundy, is shot and summarily tossed over the canyon rim. On its surface, this shooting appears to represent either a deep change in the author’s ethical thinking, or a significant philosophical inconsistency. The reason for such a change is harder to pin down. The text—either in finished or manuscript form—offers no clear answer. However, after examining the available texts and reviewing the various critics, I interviewed four of Abbey’s close friends: David Petersen, Doug Peacock, Dave Foreman, and Jack Loeffler. Because of Loeffler’s insight, I will argue that Abbey did not see the killing of the security guard as a change in his thinking, but rather a change in fictional circumstance. Furthermore, from Abbey’s view the key to understanding the shooting of the security guard as consistent is in understanding the relationship between Hayduke and Jack Burns. Yet, even with Loeffler’s claim of a philosophical consistency, the shooting of the security guard still offers an ethical problem and a clear break with the ethical imperatives of the current radical environmental movement. I NoVol 4, 2 Critics Don Scheese and Paul Lindholdt have both noticed the “Bundy” problem. In “Desert Solitaire: Counter-Friction to the Machine in the Garden,” Scheese notes that in “all but his most recent work Abbey is systematically careful not to suggest that intentional violence to humans be done in order to defend wilderness” (233). But Scheese, also surprised by the death of the security guard in Hayduke Lives!, feels that the fictional shooting “suggests that near the end of his life Abbey was more radical than he had been about the means by which wilderness is to be defended” (233). Unlike Scheese, Paul Lindholdt argues for a more text-based explanation. Like Scheese, however, he also interprets this event as representing an end-of-life shift in Abbey’s thinking, perhaps influenced by a change in the scale of assault on the western 1 No doubt Abbey would reject environmental or any other type of sainthood. As Wendell Berry writes of Abbey: “No sooner has a label been stuck to his back by a somewhat hesitant well-wisher than he runs beneath a low limb and scrapes it off” (36). Yet, despite this discomfort, Abbey has played a significant role in inspiring others to actions in defense of the more-than-human world. Furthermore, The Monkey Wrench Gang played a key role in the genesis of the radical environmental movement. © Ecozon@ 2013 ISSN 2171-9594 167 Author: Sumner, David Thomas Title: The Limits of Violence: People and Property in Edward Abbey’s “Monkeywrenching” Novels landscape. In “Rage against the Machine: Edward Abbey and Neo-Luddite Thought,” Lindholdt writes: Some Abbey critics allege that the shooting death of the security guard at the conclusion of Hayduke Lives! represents a violation of the gang’s code of ethics, too. But several extenuating circumstances moderate that harsh judgment. First, the character who pulled the trigger, Jack Burns, is not a member of the gang and had not learned about or committed to its rules; he is a throwback to Abbey’s earlier novels and to the Wild West code that licensed bloodshed. Second, the stakes had changed greatly between the publication of the first book in 1975 and its sequel fifteen years later; forces of technocracy, devastating the West at rapid pace, had reached fantastic proportions…” (115) Yet, despite this analysis, Lindholdt still sees the shooting as a problem, asserting that according to his ethical metric, Hayduke Lives! “falls outside the pale of acceptability” (116).2 After examining the texts and interviewing several of Abbey’s closest friends, however, I would argue that neither Scheese nor Lindholdt are completely right. The “Bundy problem” does not represent a sign of increased radicalization late in Abbey’s life, as they both speculate. However, Lindholdt is partially right. He correctly asserts, the shooting does not represent “a violation of the gang’s code of ethics” because of extenuating circumstances (115). Furthermore, Lindholdt is on the right track when he sees Jack Burns as the key to understanding the shooting. However, Jack Burns is key, not because of his “Wild West code,” but because of his relationship with Hayduke. II NoVol 4, 2 I hope to avoid some of the dangers of ethical criticism here. Ethical criticism can be too narrow—too sectarian, partisan, didactic—for the complexities of fiction. As Wayne Booth notes in The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction: “The word ‘ethical’ may mistakenly suggest a project concentrating on quite limited moral standards” (8). Booth writes, “ethical criticism may be as clumsy as that of the old-style moralists and censors who would ban Kurt Vonnegut because the word ‘fuck’” (5). I am attempting to avoid just such a “clumsy” criticism here. Furthermore, writers often rightly resist such ethical evaluation. For example in a 1982 editorial in Environmental Ethics, Abbey defends his novel: “please note that The Monkey Wrench Gang is a novel…and—I like to think—a work of art. It would be naive to read it as a tract, a program for action, or a manifesto” (Ethics 94).3 But it would be equally naive not to recognize that novels and 2 Adding to Scheese and Lindholdt, Paul Bryant claims that Abbey’s novels are more radical than his essays. See “Edward Abbey and Environmental Quixoticism” (37-39). 3 In this editorial, Abbey is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. After claiming that his book is merely a fiction, he then engages in a robust defense of sabotage also noting that sabotage rightly carried out “has never meant and has never implied the use of violence against living creatures,” even going as far as to claim moral justification for the characters of the Monkey Wrench Gang (Ethics 94). In short, Abbey here and elsewhere (see his letters to other writers in Postcards From Ed, especially to Thomas McGuane and © Ecozon@ 2013 ISSN 2171-9594 168 Author: Sumner, David Thomas Title: The Limits of Violence: People and Property in Edward Abbey’s “Monkeywrenching” Novels other narratives make arguments, and arguments—as Kenneth Burke notes—translate into “symbolic actions” and “action implies the ethical” (11). In other words, what I am attempting here is to respect the fictional complexity of Edward Abbey’s monkeywrenching novels while examining the ethical implications of the world these novels create.
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