Edward Abbey Indiana

Born and raised on a farm in nearby Home, Penn­ sylvania, Edward Abbey is one of the more important environmentalist writers publishing today. A long-time lover of the American Southwest, he now resides in Wolf Hole, Arizona, "a ghost town, population zero, even the ghosts moved out, even the wolves.': He is the aut_ho; of the beautifully poetic nature classiC Desert Sollta1re, and has written commentarY. for a number of nature­ photography works, including Slickrock with Philip Hyde and Appalachian Wilderness with Eliot Porter. His novels include Jonathan Troy, The Brave Cowboy, Fire On The Mountain, Black Sun, an·d, most recently, The Monkey Wrench Gang, a highly controversial work concerning the tactics of a sma II but fervent band of eco­ raiders operating against the mining interests which are currently ravaging the canyon country of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. On December ninth and tenth of last year , Abbey gave a series of readings and lectures to a number of classes and assorted gatherings on the Indiana campus. The follow ing are excerpts from the evening lecture and an interview conducted with the editors of The New Growth The passion for beauty, the beauty of Arts Revue. pa ssion ... ha ve been the guiding ideals, seldom fulfilled but always there, of my entire life. (Photo by Debra Sampsell) • from the "interview ... I don'! realLy know how the National Park Service feels about The Monkey Wrench Gang. I have a few 1 don't think preaching and co mplaining will do much friends there who I ike the book and feel the same way good. Bu t 1 do think that economic pressures will slow about those matters, as I do. These are not higher-up ad­ down the growth, development, as they call it. I think a ministrators, however. better way of life may be forced upon us. We will resist it, maybe, although some pollsters say that the majority of Americans are quite willing to simplify their ways of I 'm sure a lot of people are involved in night work. living, willing to give up material goods in exchange for You just get so frustrated and fed up sometimes. clean air, clean water. Probably doesn't so·much good to go out and tear down a billboard or shoot a few insulators off a power line, bu t it I don' I know how the rumor about my being a poet got makes you feel good. And it seems so much more effec­ started. I've written an awful lot of poetry, but none of it tive than writing a letter to a congressman or making a is good enough to try to print or publish. Desert statement at a hearing. · · Solitairez Poetical prose, ma y be . but it's not the same thing as poetry, in my opinion: I would like to write good I suppose it's possible to afford too much overt poetry, but I haven't tried very hard. violence. It might be, as they say, sort of counter­ corrective. Perhaps, I don't know. I never really got attached to a camera, and I'm T he non-violent approach of such groups as mighly g lad of it. I think it's a regular nuisance on any Greenpeace is probably a much better tactic . I think it's sort of outdoors trip. I like to look a t good photographs, a wonderful idea .. and wish them luck. I jus t ha ven't and I'm glad that other people are willing to do that kind thoug ht about it hard enough to make those sort of of work. Bu t for me it would just interfere with my en­ methods apply to, say, the prevention of strip mining or jo ymen t of the natural scene to look at everything powerplant building. You can sit do wn in front of a through the lens of a camera, not being able to look at bul ldozer, but only until the sheriff's deputies drag you anything without imagining it as a photograph. I think away, or ·run over you. the camera puts up a barrier between you and the natural world. I think the typewriter does, too, but I do.n't worry about that now. M y rel igious convictions? They're pretty vague. I was rai sed a presbyterian, butt hat didn' t take at all. I could call m yself a paiute, I'm a sun worshiper, a rock I've worked a fire tower several times, in different worshiper, a tree worshiper, a life worshiper, a woman places. It used to be that all writers wer e ambulance worshiper. But I don't use the word god very much, I drivers in war. Now, all writers are fire lookouts. In don't know what it means, I haven't had any personal fact, I was once offerd a job at the same lookout that aquaintance.with such a being. I wouldn't call myself an Snyder and Kerouac worked at. Somewhere up in atheist, either, because that's also a definite stand. Who Wa shington. Turned it down, I went back to the North knows? R im of the Grand Canyon, which was the nicest place I I believe in mystery, in the unknown. That's what ever worked at. see out there, and in here. I ha ven't given up on this area (western Penna .) en­ There's a mystical streak that creeps into my vironmentally, but because I no longer live here, I'm not ty pewriter now and then. I'm not sure whether I really primarily concerned with it. Most people who do live mean it or whether I just like the ideas and words. here don' t care about it enough to fight fori t.

I think Pennsylvania is a very beautiful place in so When I think of contemporary poets that I really ad­ many respects. There are probably more trees in this mire, whose poetry really moves me, I think of Robert state than in any other. And yet, what you see f rom the Creeley's early stuff, of Jim Harrison. But I don't really highways is so depressing. try to keep up with contemporary poetry, so I have un­ doubtedly missed a lot. Shellac is more effective than karo •. in the fuel tank.

Snyder is one of my heroes, although I like him more, · All the mormons believe that conservation is a com­ I think, for his ideas, his essays, than for his poetry munist p lot. But I get along alright in Utah, ha ve a few itself . The poetry seems a little flat, I don't get any thrill good friends there. I live near Moab. and it's not a or excitement out of his poems. But I certainly admire typical Utah town. There are okies and texans, people his ideas, theway he lives and what he says. drawn by the mining industry. Of course, they're not conservationists - but at least they're not mormons. I never liked Patchen's poetry very much . I like Rex­ I 'm sure they don't read books, Moab has no book store roth for his essays and his translations from the at all. There. is one little shop that sells paperbacks and Chinese has a lot of pinball machines. ' '

I'm writing another novel. It's a· futuristic Western, in the making of decisions, to have a hand in things, to opens with a couple characters riding into Phoenix on participate. I was tired of obscurity, I wanted to be horseback in the year 1999. Phoenix is burning down. famous, like everybody else; at least for ten minutes, Horses are grazing among the sand dunes on Central like [Indy Warhol promised. Avenue. Now I'm older and, maybe, a little wiser (Can one grow wiser without knowing it? Hope so.); and certainly a bit disillusioned. So it's clear to me now that the One of the reasons I was so glad to get out of college writing of words, the making of books, is not a very im· was that I finally had time to read a good book instead of portant activity in our society, that it makes no major those awful text books. difference. After nine books and some 900,000 words, I realize that I am still only another passive bystander, like Uncle Merle; tha-t there are those who make things I started here, at Indiana, in 1947 or '48, and had my happen, those who watch things happen, and those who last classes at New Mexico in '56- .t hat's what, eight or wonder what the hell happened, and most writers, I'm nine years? Then it was a couple years after that that I afraid, belong in that third category. finally got my Master's thesis written, so I say ·ten The writer in America operates in a strange vacuum years. Philosophy and English were my majors. of seeminly total freedom. I can say or write anything I But I didn't spend all that time doing nothing. My wish and get away with it, even get paid for it, because practice was to go to school for a term and then drop out no one cares, or cares very much, or only a few. We for a term and do something else. I hardly ever went two writers in America have lost any and all sense of a con­ consecutive semesters. I couldn't stand it- too boring. flict in ~ur society; even my mother tolerates my filthy vocabulary. 'I read your last book all the way throu'gh,' she said to me, 'though I dreaded turning each page.' Oh, I liked Australia. Kind of a dull coun.try. 1 was a We writers have no sense of opposition to our work, visitor there, didn't really feel entitled to cut their only a genial indifference. Bad book reviews don't help fences. The best thing about the place is probably (And speaking of bad book reviews, speaking of book thousands of miles of seashore. The interior desert is reviews in general, I haven't seen a review yet of any of nice, it's not spectacular like our desert, but some my books that I couldn't have written a lot better beautiful rock, red rock, red sand. myself.); t-ut worst of all, worse than bad reviews, is no. reviews, indifference, the silent treatment. 1 Well, maybe you will get a chance to see Glen Canyon. It won't look too pretty at first. There'll be all that black Of course, we here in this hall still care about books, 1 muck and 'all those sunken boats and drowned water guess, that's why we're here, isn't if? But let's face it, skiers - beer cans, too, of course. we're a little odd, we're in the minority. My last novel . sold about 20,000 copies so far. Assume three readers for each copy, that gives me an audience of maybe 60,000 I think the best art that's been done of the Colorado people. Everyday, 90,000,000 people watch "As The Plateau region are the old Stephen Bookhout linotypes World Turns,'' "Search For Tomorrow," or "Ma that were used as illustrations for Powell's book. Of Perkins Scores Again." It's enough to make a man cour se, there have been a lot of paintings - attempted throw away his typewriter and go to work for Dow paintings - of the Grand Canyon. It isn't really Chemical, or an ad agency. . necessary to paint it at all, or to describe it in words. Why don't I write for the soaps myself? Well, because The thing is there. All you have to do is go get into it. I'm only a semi-serious artist. You have to be deadly serious to write for the soaps. The trouble with soap from the I ecture ... opera is not that it's false to life, but that it's too much like real life, a case of art imitating life much too close­ Home is where you find your happiness. No doubt ly. Real art is not like life, real art is real, while or­ there are many who never make this discovery for dinary life is strange and unreal. themselves, who spend their entire lives in the search for a home, and that is tragic. Those people are not hard to identify, they're the ones who will sell their native So, the ordinary artist-type writers are condemned to acres for easy money, to strip mine and clear cut and irrelevance or a peripheral role in American cultural floo d w it h dams the places where they were bor n. And lif e as w e scrib ble on w i th our si lly novels .and our in· they now propose, after having done their best to make compr ehensible poems and our tedious, long-winded so much of . America an over-industrialized, over­ tracts on the existtensial significance of the copious developed wasteland, they now propose to set us adrift cockroach, and so forth. from the Earth itself, to pack us into space colonies, What am I getting at? I am trying to illustrate my gigantic aluminum garbage cans orbiting the sun. You thesis, that American writers, well-fed and rewarded know the type, they genera fly run things; but they're not though we are, nonetheless have this frustrating sense going to run things much longer. Their day is .over, of b.eing irrelevant. We have a voice, but no responsibili­ Mother Nature is calling, calling you, too, Dixie Ray ty. That explains, I think, the wild frivolity of so much Lee. contemporary American writing, Barthelme, The odd thing about my own situation is that I've ·srautigan, Roth, Matthew, the terrible effeteness of become semi-respectable by preaching semi-revolution. Tom McGuane, the obscu re and complex fantasies of The more scandalous things I write in books, the more Pynchon, Guest, all reflect this feeling of helplessness.· outrageous things I say in public, the more invitations 1 We writers are not real citizens anymore, we're merely get to do it again, the more money those people from entertainers, hired clowns, background musicians mak· New York City keep sending me, the more established ing noise while the eve11ts of true importance take place and respectable I become. God, I'm even beginning to upstage center. look respectable. I'm trapped, and I'm easily corrupted; At times one can almost envy the writers of Soviet easily confused. Russia. There the word is still taken seriously, still I don't think I ever wanted to become respectable. Ten feared, the word is stil! holy, still has the power to affect years ago I would never have dreamed that I'd be human minds- or at least those who rule that country speaking in public to a university audience. Incredible. 1 think so. While here, the writers rant and rave, dance didn't want to be respectable, I wanted to be feared and and sing, and nothing seems to make any difference. Is hated. Instead, everywhere I go people sit around it because America is the most tolerant, permissive, laughing at me. It's exasperating.· I would have been freest country around? Maybe. Or is it the result of the better off going into the auto repair business like my Un­ most subtle kind of tyranny that ever existed? • cle Merle wanted me to. At least then I'd have plenty of enemies, and could take satisfaction in a job well done I like to think that I'm a novelist ·first and an en­ - or badly done. vironmentalist, whatever that is, second. I was I say I never wished to become respectable, but 1 did sidetracked into this environmentalist buSiness; it's a wish to make a difference, and I thought I could do that good cause, and I support it, but I myself afn too un­ with pen and ink, a typewriter. I used to think if only I trained and ignorant to be a true environmentalist, a could beat people over the head with books, and hit them real conservationist. Such people are, or should be, ex­ hard enough, I might win their sympathy and love, im­ perts in one or more various fields: economics, natural prove their ideas, improve their attitudes, change the science, engineering, ecology; and I'm an expert at world (Or at least change America. My ambitions were nothing. I prefer to call myself a wild preservative, a. always modest .and reasonable).' In other words, 1 radical conservative. Keep it like it was, that's my'i wanted to be a citizen. To actually take ari effective part bumper sticker.