The journey home : some words in defense of the American West

Title:

Author:

Abbey, Edward, 1927-1989, author.

Summary:

Long considered an underground classic, The Journey Home stands beside Desert Solitude as one of Abbey's most important works. In a voice edged with chagrin, Abbey offers a portrait of the American West that readers will not soon forget, presenting the reflections and observations of a man who left the urban world behind in pursuit of the natural one and the myths buried therein.

General Note:

Contents:

Introduction -- Hallelujah on the bum -- The Great American desert -- Disorder and early sorrow -- Fire lookout: Numa Ridge -- Snow Canyon -- Desert places -- Death Valley -- Come on in -- Manhattan twilight, Hoboken night -- God's plan for the state of Utah: a revelation -- The great Globe Arizona wild pig and varmint hunt -- Telluride blues, a hatchet job -- Let us now praise mountain lions -- Return to Yosemite: tree fuzz vs. freaks -- The BLOB comes to Arizona -- The second rape of the West -- Down the river with Major Powell -- Walking -- The crooked wood -- Mountain Music -- Shadows from the big woods -- Freedom and wilderness, wilderness and freedom -- Dust: a movie.

Physical Description:

xiv, 242 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Personal Subject:

Abbey, Edward, 1927-1989.

Subject Term:

Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Wilderness areas -- West (U.S.)

Geographic Term:

West (U.S.) -- Description and travel.

West (U.S.) -- Intellectual life.

Publisher:

Plume,

Electronic Access:

Table of contents
Contributor biographical information
Publisher description

Publication Date:

1991

1977

ISBN:

9780452265622

9780525483960

9780844667065

Publication Information:

New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Plume, [1991]

Call Number:

923 ABBEY

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003341586	Adult Nonfiction	923 ABBEY	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

The Journey Home ranges from the surreal cityscapes of Hoboken and Manhattan to the solitary splendor of the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. It is alive with ranchers, dam builders, kissing bugs, and mountain lions. In a voice edged with chagrin, Edward Abbey offers a portrait of the American West that we'll not soon forget, offering us the observations of a man who left the urban world behind to think about the natural world and the myths buried therein.

Abbey, our foremost "ecological philosopher," has a voice like no other. He can be wildly funny, ferociously acerbic, and unexpectedly moving as he ardently champions our natural wilderness and castigates those who would ravish it for the perverse pleasure of profit.

Author Notes

Edward Abbey was born January 29, 1927 in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and grew up in nearby Home. After military service in Naples, Italy, from 1945-47, he enrolled in Indiana University of Pennsylvania for a year before traveling to the West. He fell in love with the desert Southwest and eventually attended the University of New Mexico, where he obtained both graduate and post-graduate degrees. Abbey was a Fulbright Fellow from 1951-52.

Abbey was an anarchist and a radical environmentalist; these positions are reflected in his writings. His novel Fire on the Mountain won the Western Heritage Award for Best Novel in 1963. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, considered by many to be his best work, is nonfiction that reflects Abbey's love for the American Southwest and draws on his experiences as a park ranger. Among his best-known works are The Brave Cowboy (1956), The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), and The Fool's Progress (1988). In 1966 The Brave Cowboy was made into a movie titled Lonely Are the Brave, starring Kirk Douglas. Two collections of essays have been published since his death in 1989: Confessions of a Barbarian in 1994 and The Serpents of Paradise the following year. In 1987, Abbey was offered the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, but he declined.

Abbey died in March 1989, near Tucson, Arizona, from complications following surgery. He did not want a traditional burial but rather requested to be buried in the Arizona desert, where he could nourish the earth which had been the subject of so many of his works.

(Bowker Author Biography)