Desert Solitaire - Hardcover

Abbey, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0816510571 ISBN 13: 9780816510573

Publisher: University of Arizona Press, 1988

At last, one of the most popular books on the American West is available once again in hardcover. In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Desert Solitaire, the University of Arizona Press is pleased to publish a new edition featuring a new introduction by the author, his definitive corrections to the text, and new illustrations commissioned exclusively for this volume.

Edward Abbey's account of two summers spent in southeastern Utah's canyonlands is surely one of the most enduring works of contemporary American nature writing. In it he tells of his stint as a park ranger at Arches National Monument, of his love for the natural beauty that surrounded him, and of his distaste for the modernizing improvements designed to increase visitation to the park.

"I confess to being a nature lover," admits Abbey more than thirty years after his sojourn in the wilderness. "But I did not mean to be mistaken for a nature writer. I never wanted to be anything but a writer, period." First published in 1968 to "a few brief but not hostile notices," Desert Solitaire quietly sold out of its first printing but eventually developed a loyal enough following in paperback to earn Abbey the "nature writer" label he claims never to have wanted.

Desert Solitaire lives on because it is a work that reflects profound love of nature and a bitter abhorrence of all that would desecrate it. "Abbey is one of our very best writers about wilderness country," observed Wallace Stegner in the Los Angeles Times Book Review; "he is also a gadfly with a stinger like a scorpion." "This book may well seem like a ride on a bucking bronco," added Edwin Way Teale in the New York Times. "It is rough, tough, combative...passionately felt, deeply poetic." But perhaps the spirit of the man, the work, and the circumstances of its writing were best summarized by Larry McMurtry in his review for the Washington Post: "Edward Abbey is the Thoreau of the American West."

Review:

With language as colorful as a Canyonlands sunset and a perspective as pointed as a prickly pear, Cactus Ed captures the heat, mystery, and surprising bounty of desert life. Desert Solitaire is a meditation on the stark landscapes of the red-rock West, a passionate vote for wilderness, and a howling lament for the commercialization of the American outback.

From the Publisher:

The year before I began working at Random House, I took a roadtrip with a friend from college. One night we spent sleeping under the stars on the side of the road, about one-hundred feet from the edge of the Grand Canyon. That night has stayed present for me. And so when I saw the deep desert reds and the striking blue sky of the cover of DESERT SOLITAIRE sitting in the office, I had no choice but to pick it up. Riding through the insides of Manhattan, tunneling through to work, I have been carrying this book with me. I keep closing my eyes and hearing the wolf call, the swish of the wind through the brush and seeing the great vast distances, feeling the heat of the day on my skin and the dry cool descent of desert night. In reading this book I am coming to a whole new understanding of the ecology of the desert west. Edward Abbey went alone to the desert as a seeker of a greater knowledge of himself, but also to dwell in a nature unfiltered, unpersonified, on its own terms. The desert is bigger than any of us, filled with intimate moments. This book will take you there.

Jason Zuzga
Ballantine Editorial

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0816510571
• ISBN 13: 9780816510573
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256