miss jenny says this is so not the book I’d ever read!

Es­ti­mated reading time is 5 min­utes.

GOODREADS is a web­site de­voted to books and reading them. And, ap­par­ently, sharing books with other mem­bers. I am a member, al­though a very in­ac­tive one. Yes­terday I re­ceived no­tice from the site that a person named Jenny—who I don’t know and who does not use her last name (wisely)—had made me a friend and that I should sug­gest a book to her. I wrote the following:

“Thanks for the friend­ship here. Haven’t a clue what you might like and rather than lead with a science-fiction title, I am sug­gesting Ed­ward Abbey’s mar­velous The Monkey Wrench Gang, a tale of en­vi­ron­men­tally con­scious sabo­teurs. Find the 1985 edi­tion with the Robert Crumb art­work, as it in­cludes a pre­vi­ously deleted chapter.”

For those of you un­fa­miliar with Mr. Abbey’s work, he is better known as an es­sayist than a nov­elist. From his work as a park ranger in the ’50s, he com­piled a large col­lec­tion of notes, ob­ser­va­tions, and sketches that were even­tu­ally pub­lished in 1968 as Desert Soli­taire – A Season In The Wilder­ness. It was an im­por­tant book in the de­vel­op­ment of eco-awareness, and be­cause of it Abbey is for­ever as­so­ci­ated with the South­west and en­vi­ron­mental concerns.

“Al­though it ini­tially gar­nered little at­ten­tion, [Desert Soli­taire] would even­tu­ally be rec­og­nized as an iconic work of na­ture writing and a staple of early en­vi­ron­men­talist writing, and brought Abbey crit­ical ac­claim and pop­u­larity as a writer of en­vi­ron­mental, po­lit­ical, and philo­soph­ical is­sues.” (Wikipedia)

 

MWG_First

This is the first US hard­cover edi­tion (Lip­pin­cott Williams & Wilkins, 1975). You can find clean copies being of­fered for sale on the In­ternet for $100-200.

A call to protect the wilderness

But his most pop­ular work was in fic­tion: The Monkey Wrench Gang was a best-seller in the ’70s (is still a good selling title in the new and used book mar­kets) and in­spired many Amer­i­cans and like-minded Eu­ro­peans to take ac­tion against the de­struc­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment by Big Busi­ness and Big Gov­ern­ment alike. The of­fi­cial GoodReads re­view of the book states:

“Ed Abbey called The Monkey Wrench Gang a comic ex­trav­a­ganza. Some readers have re­marked that the book is more a comic book than a real novel, and it’s true that reading this in­cen­diary call to pro­tect the Amer­ican wilder­ness re­quires more than a little of the old willing sus­pen­sion of disbelief.

Moving from one im­prob­able sit­u­a­tion to the next, packing more ad­ven­ture into the space of a few weeks than most real people do in a life­time, the motley gang puts fear into the hearts of their en­e­mies, laughing all the while. It’s comic, yes, and re­quired reading for anyone who has come to love the desert.”

The story be­gins with fem­i­nist Bonnie Ab­bzug and her lover-mentor Doc Sarvis car­rying on one of their fa­vorite ac­tiv­i­ties; torching one of the count­less ugly bill­boards that dot the Amer­ican land­scape. Even­tu­ally, we meet the seem­ingly con­ser­v­a­tive and Chris­tianly re­li­gious wilder­ness guide ‘Seldom Seen’ Smith and our even­tual protagonist/hero, George Wash­ington Hay­duke III.

A Vietnam vet when few writers were in­cluding such men in their sto­ries as he­roes, Hay­duke comes home to find his beloved desert canyons and rivers being bull­dozed and ‘de­vel­oped’ by in­dustry and gov­ern­ment agencies.

The four con­nect and the book then pro­ceeds into a se­ries of sit­u­a­tions where they at­tempt to “halt progress” by ever more mil­i­tant mea­sures: from pouring bags of sugar into the fuel tanks of earth-moving ma­chines to even­tu­ally taking on (and taking down) a canyon-spanning bridge. The story can be read as black humor mixed with a call-to-arms, in­spiring count­less readers to act in nature’s defense.

 

MWG_pb2

This is the first US pa­per­back edi­tion (Avon Books, 1976). This is the edi­tion that was read by mil­lions of Amer­i­cans (prob­ably mostly hip­pies and stu­dents) in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It is easily found on the used book market, usu­ally well “used.”

George Hayduke lives on

Film­maker ML Lin­coln’s Wrenched is a doc­u­men­tary based on Abbey’s work and in­flu­ence; it has been win­ning awards at film fes­ti­vals since its re­lease in 2014.

“The film Wrenched cap­tures the passing of the monkey-wrench from the pi­o­neers of eco-activism to the new gen­er­a­tion, which will carry Ed­ward Abbey’s legacy into the 21st cen­tury. The fight con­tinues to sus­tain the last bas­tion of the Amer­ican wilderness—the spirit of the West.” (wrenched)

“Ed­ward Abbey was a nov­elist re­ferred to as the Thoreau of the Amer­ican West. In­fa­mous for his views on the en­vi­ron­ment and his crit­i­cism of public land poli­cies, Abbey emerged from the early six­ties con­ser­va­tionist writers with a uniquely sharp wit and sar­donic sense of humor. His sto­ries warn about the con­se­quences of over-development, par­tic­u­larly in the Southwest.

His most ri­otous novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, de­picts a small gang of monkey-wrenchers, non-violent (to people) but not so for­giving to earth-destroying bull­dozers, ma­ni­acal dam builders and to the count­less bill­boards lit­tering the land­scape.” (wrenched)

So, Abbey is con­sid­ered by many to be one of the finest Amer­ican writers of the post-WWII era, a land­mark among the land­scapes of the South­west. TMWG is a classic, taught in lit­er­a­ture and writing classes. What’s not to like, right?

 

MWG_Crumb

This is the US tenth-anniversary hard­cover edi­tion with cover art and in­te­rior il­lus­tra­tions by R. Crumb (Dream Garden Press, 1985). The art that graces the top of this page is also by Crumb and de­picts Hay­duke sending an earth-defiler to its doom sev­eral thou­sand feet below.

Back to my new friend Jenny

This was Jen­ny’s re­sponse: “RE­ALLY? You have NO idea what I’m about? This is so NOT the book I’d ever read. AWFUL. Kindly never do that again. DO NOT CON­TACT ME. DO NOT REC­OM­MEND BOOKS TO ME. LEAVE ME ALONE, thank you.”

Wowee zowee, baby! Miss Jenny, what hot button of yours did I in­ad­ver­tently push?

Prob­ably fool­ishly, I re­sponded to her mes­sage with a “Why?” and a mild bit of cas­ti­ga­tion for her rude­ness to a “friend.” I ex­pect to hear nothing more from her, nor will she from me. The In­ternet is, among other things, a place the thin-of-skin seem to relish their ability to mis­in­ter­pret the words and/or in­ten­tions of others, and nei­ther re­quest nor re­quire ex­pla­na­tions or clar­i­fi­ca­tion be­fore putting fin­gers to keyboard.

Ba­si­cally, all this boils down to my fragile thin-skinned ego got over Miss Jen­ny’s rude­ness and al­lowed it­self to be in­spired to do a book re­view of sorts. (Sort of a turning-lemons-into-lemonade thing.) So, for those of you who read books and are al­ways on the lookout for good reads, give The Monkey Wrench Gang a look-see . . .

 

RobertCrumb MonkeyWrenchGang sketch helicopter 1000

FEA­TURED IMAGE: The image at the top of this page is a sketch by Robert Crumb of Bonnie Abzug being hunted by the “bad guys” in a he­li­copter. Bonnie is, of course, a member of the Monkey Wrench Gang. I cropped the orig­inal drawing (above) and “bright­ened” it for use as this ar­ti­cle’s fea­tured image.

 

4 thoughts on “miss jenny says this is so not the book I’d ever read!”

  1. Dear Miss Jenny,

    One of my most fa­vorite clichéd re­sponses to your (un­for­tu­nate) in­dig­na­tion: Minds are like para­chutes - they work best when opened.

    Live and Learn

    Reply

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