Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey 1951-1989 - Softcover

Abbey, Edward

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316004162 ISBN 13: 9780316004169

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1996

Synopsis

Excerpts from the private journals of an eccentric environmentalist feature his notes, philosophies, and character sketches

About this title

Review:

Few have cared more about American wilderness than the irascible Cactus Ed. Author of eco-classics such as The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey reveals all his rough-hewn edges and passionate beliefs in this witty, outspoken, maddening, and sometimes brilliant selection of journal entries that takes the writer from his early years as a park ranger and would-be literary author up to his death in 1989.

From Booklist:

Beatnik turned major American essayist, ecologist in advance of the modern ecological movement, anarchist "in favor of settling the African problem by violent revolution, if at all possible," and self-proclaimed Communist, Abbey is both compelling and infuriating, more so in his essays than the fiction he considered his serious work. His journals show that he didn't so much find a voice as mature the one he always had. He gradually replaces his schematic ideas for novels, which inundated him, with observations and narratives. He lusts after anything in skirts, marries one woman after another, is ebullient at the birth of his first child, more reserved about the second. He responds insightfully to some of his colleagues--he was the first on his block to praise Allen Ginsberg--invidiously to others: "John Irving on the cover of Time (September '81). That magazine never fails to bestow its blessings on the mediocre." A must for every library with serious holdings in the literature of the Southwest; others may find perhaps too much juvenilia in it. Then again, it's Ed Abbey. Roland Wulbert

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0316004162
• ISBN 13: 9780316004169
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 356
• Illustrator: Abbey Edward