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"The desert is... atonal, cruel, clear, neither romantic nor classical, motionless and emotionless at one and the same time... Like death? Perhaps. And perhaps that is why life nowhere appears so brave, so bright, so full of oracle and miracle as in the desert." |
| ABBEY, Edward. Desert
Solitaire. A Season in the Wilderness. NY: McGraw-Hill, (1968). Octavo,
original brown cloth, original dust jacket. $850. First edition of Abbey's first work of nonfiction; a classic of the environmental movement. Abbey "worked as a park ranger and fire lookout for the National Park Service in the Southwest, developing an intimacy with the region's landscape that was to shape his writing career. Central to this experience was the perspective it afforded on the human presence in the natural environment. Abbey observed both the remnants of ancient Indian cultures and the encroachment of consumer civilization. His book Desert Solitaire (1968), considered by many to be his best, is an extended meditation on the sublime and forbidding wilderness of southeastern Utah and the human incursions into it. He husbanded his extensive knowledge of the region, admitting 'I have written much about a good many places. But the best places of all I have never mentioned.' Abbey's novel The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) recounts the exploits of a band of guerrilla environmentalists; both it and Desert Solitaire became handbooks of the environmental movement" (Britannica). Book fine, price-clipped dust jacket with a little bit of edgewear and just of hint of toning to the spine. |