The University of Arizona Press
Edward Abbey
A Life
It separates fact from fiction, showing that much of the myth surrounding Abbey—such as his birth in Home, Pennsylvania, and later residence in Oracle, Arizona—was self-created and self-perpetuated. It also shows that Abbey cultivated a persona both in his books and as a public speaker that contradicted his true nature: publicly racy and sardonic, he was privately reserved and somber. Author James Cahalan studied all of Abbey’s works and private papers and interviewed many people who knew him—including the models for characters in The Brave Cowboy and The Monkey Wrench Gang—to create a complete picture of the writer’s life. He examines Abbey’s childhood roots in the East and his love affair with the West, his personal relationships and tempestuous marriages, and his myriad jobs in continually shifting locations—including sixteen national parks and forests.
He also explores Abbey’s writing process, his broad intellectual interests, and the philosophical roots of his politics. For Abbey fans who assume that his “honest novel,” The Fool’s Progress, was factual or that his public statements were entirely off the cuff, Cahalan’s evenhanded treatment will be an eye-opener.
More than a biography, Edward Abbey: A Life is a corrective that stands the test of time, showing that Abbey was neither simply a countercultural cowboy hero nor an unprincipled troublemaker, but instead a complex and multifaceted person whose legacy continues to be appreciated. The book contains thirty photographs, capturing scenes ranging from Abbey’s childhood to his burial site.
Winner of the Western Literature Association’s Thomas J. Lyon Award
“The best biography ever about Ed. Cahalan’s meticulous research and thoughtful interviews have made this book the authoritative source for Abbey scholars and fans alike.”—Doug Peacock, author, environmentalist activist, explorer, and the inspiration for Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang
“The story of Cactus Ed Abbey’s life as told by Cahalan will engage and inspire, with as insightful a look at the times as it is of the man. Cahalan tells the whole story, and he tells it exceedingly well.”—Robert Redford
“This book will help you know one of the extraordinary people of the twentieth century.”—Pete Seeger
“This is the real thing. This is what we’ve wanted to know. Abbey in the altogether—a chronicle of the writer we love.”—Edward Hoagland
“Finally we join the fury boiling beneath the cool, clear language of Abbey’s published words. The best trail guide for tracking the hungry life of that fabled masked man clutching a monkey wrench.”—Charles Bowden
“A lucid, impressive biography. Those who love Abbey’s books will find much to interest them here.”—Larry McMurtry
“A definitive biography.”—Ann H. Zwinger
“This biography should be definitive for many, many years. Cahalan is the leading Abbey scholar in the country.”—Ann Ronald
“Thoroughly researched . . . Cahalan has unearthed some of Abbey’s finest bons mots along the way. He does an admirable job of correcting many of the misapprehensions surrounding Abbey’s life, not the least of which was fostered by Abbey himself in the service of refining his own image.”—New York Times Book Review
“Cahalan recounts the life fully and fairly, trusting readers to make up their own minds about his volatile subject.”—Washington Post Book World
"Rarely will I stay up past midnight to finish a biography, but thanks to the superior writing of James Cahalan and the tumultuous nature of Abbey’s life, I did on this one.”—Education Digest
“The best portrait of Abbey we’re likely to see.”—Men’s Journal
?“With a subject as mythic as cactus Ed Abbey, separating fact from fiction requires the skills of a researcher like Cahalan—particularly because Abbey promoted much of the fiction himself. Affectionate but not besotted with his subject, Cahalan presents Abbey’s strengths and shortcomings in equal light and without judgment, in the end clearing up many misunderstandings. A beautifully rendered, sensitive and revealing work.”—Publishers Weekly
“Cahalan has a bloodhound’s nose and the patience of a cougar. He tells us where Abbey was on what date and with whom and why. He paints accurate and wonderful portraits of Abbey’s parents, siblings, friends, and enemies. . . . [He] meticulously documents Abbey’s singular life in all its common American squalor and uncommon glory.”—Bloomsbury Review
“Cahalan has dispensed with ‘loose talk’ in this fine biography and takes an honest and straight-on look at the man who meant so much to so many. It’s a pleasure to read.”—Arizona Republic
“Historians of technology will be particularly interested in Cahalan’s discussion of Abbey’s scathing, if frequently humorous, essays and novels documenting the ravaging of these pristine wilderness areas, especially the damming of rivers, the spread of suburban development, and the opening of public lands to economic exploitation and automobile tourism.” —Jordan Kleiman, Technology and Culture
“Cahalan’s book is quite effective at (meticulously!) describing the various threads of that confusion and attempting to unify them into a single, clear narrative. Its chief concerns are to separate the reality from the fiction of Abbey’s life—to demythologize him—and to ennoble his writing with academic and critical appreciation.”—Gregory Gipson, Grist
“Cahalan has managed to animate Abbey in a book sure to delight disciples and the uninitiated alike. Edward Abbey: A Life seems certain to propel this important American author into a new century of appreciation.” —Paul Roberts, Western Pennsylvania History
“Edward Abbey: A Life is to be recommended to anyone who knows of and enjoys Abbey and his work, but the biography is as much a research tool as a life to be dipped into with the help of over eighty pages of excellent notes, bibliographies, acknowledgments and an index provided by the scholar.”—James N. Wise, Criticism
“We see the complication of Abbey’s character as Cahalan peels off successive layers of influence: a socialist, iconoclastic father raising a family in Appalachia during the Great Depression; the Western in cinema; an Appalachian marriage between a working-class husband and a middle-class wife; Beat generation culture; the antiwar and antinuclear movements; years of philosophic study in the academy.”—Owen Grumbling, Western American Literature
“The portrait of Abbey that Cahalan constructs is alive and large enough to contain not only ‘Cactus Ed,’ the redneck ecowarrior, but the other Edward Abbeys—the writer and the activist—whose influence on the environmental movement and nature writing serious students and fans can now better understand and appreciate.”—Melissa White, Environmental History
“Abbey was, especially in his last two decades, such an outsized personality that his image—he was, after all, Cactus Ed the contrarian—threatened to overshadow his accomplishments as a writer. It is good to have a new, reliable biography of Abbey the man.”—Tom Pilkington, Studies in the Novel
“Cahalan’s narrative gets much of its liveliness from his ample quotations from Abbey’s journals. He also draws effectively on the testimony and anecdotes of those who knew him. Throughout the book there is a sort of light, sure touch. He doesn’t belabor. He doesn’t pontificate. He does, however, in his closing sentences, make a strong claim for Abbey’s literary stature, calling him ‘a writer of the first rank, one of the most underrated in American literature.’ It’s a realistic assessment.”—Howard Nelson, The Hollins Critic
“Every couple of years I read a good new book on Edward Abbey, but Cahalan’s Edward Abbey: A Life brought home better than anything else I’ve read how much my vision, and that of tens of thousands of us (most of us male, I have to admit), is a version of the world as Ed Abbey managed to articulate it.” —Dan Flores, Journal of Arizona History
“Truly readable biographies are as rare as listenable Yoko Ono albums, but here is one.”—Inside/Outside Southwest
