Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
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But hell, I do like to write letters. Much easier than writing books.” And write letters Ed Abbey did. In his famous — or infamous — 45-year career, Abbey’s cards and letters became as legendary as his books for their wit, vitriol, and ability to speak truth to power. Published here for the first time, the letters offer a fascinating, often hilarious glimpse into the mind of one of America’s most iconoclastic and beloved authors. No subject was too banal, too arcane, or too deep for Abbey to expound on: sex, cheerleaders, Mormons, Aspen, and the Bond girls are covered as gleefully as Stegner, Dylan, Chomsky, Buddhism, and betrayal. Whether scolding an editor to simplify (“I’ve had to waste hours erasing that storm of fly-shit on the typescript”) or skewering the chicken-hawk proponents of the war in Vietnam, Abbey’s righteous indignation gives hope and inspiration to a generation that desperately needs both.The New York Times - Jonathan MilesIf few surprises are embedded in this trim selection of letters, edited by Abbey's pal David Petersen, it's because Abbey, on the page, was always Abbey: free ranging, cymbal crashing, an anarchist in mind as well as politics, encased throughout his life in an ever-shaken snow globe of contradictions, provocations, bathroom-wall jokes and fortissimo declarations. Who but Abbey could have written a novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, that helped inspire a radical and deadly serious environmental movement (Earth First!) while containing a scene in which an argument about weather is settled with the line "Rudolf the Red knows rain, dear"? That was part of Abbey's prickly charm, his Janus-faced appeal.
