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Edward Abbey is a dirty old man. Backwoods, racist, sexist, libertarian, dirty old man. I love him. I would proudly have his babies.This may be the best summary of this book ever. Really it's beautiful. Makes me homesick for the desert and the kind of rugged individualism and anti authoritarianism that Abbey represents so well. Makes me realize that coming home is a powerfully healing thing to do.
This is not a review. Not yet.What I remember at the time is that this book scared the crap out of me, even as I enjoyed it. Because it showed me how out-of-sync I was with myself, my life, my sham first marriage- everything.I'm picking it up to re-read, as my life needs the shake-up this book delivered the first time, and after 13 years, it will be a different book because I'm a different person.
I thought this book was hilarious, which has led me to question my morals.
I both love and hate Edward Abbey. I would love to only love him. I probably could, if I had stopped at Desert Solitaire and Monkey Wrench Gang.But then I had to go ahead and read The Fool's Progress.It is hard to admire him when his sexism is off the charts. Also, his racism.I'm not going to say a lot more about that. I still love the way he writes and I love/hate his cantankerous soul. He has a terrible attitude. Best of all, I love the way he writes about places I know.
Semi-autobiographical. Entirely hysterical and heartbreaking all at once...it brings to life the old saying, 'Everywhere i go, there i am'. This is my favorite book of all time.
I was stuck for two days on Amtrak with this book and I got to page 153. The moment I stepped off the train I would have thrown it into the trash, except it was a library book.
Recently, a group of my guy friends decided to form a book club. One reason: all our wives were already in one, and we felt the need to exercise our own intellects. The real reason: the NFL is over for the year, and we needed an excuse to drink beer on Sunday. (An excuse other than “it’s Sunday!”). In the abstract, I should love being part of a book club. I like reading. I like talking about what I’ve read. I like to drink. It seems a no-brainer. However – and this a big “however” – I hate being...
I love Abbey because he is tough nut to crack, and a hard drink to swallow. He can be downright offensive, but it's important to see his distaste is not limited to women and Mexican's but leveled fully against all participants in society not excluding his autobiographical character Henry H. Lightcap. The autobiographical nature of this novel helped me untangle a bit of the contradictory, larger-than-life image Abbey has here in the west. Reading it after Loeffler's biography was helpful. I don't...
This is an absolutely beautiful book, a meditation on life and death and everything in between as only Abbey could tell it.
This is a hard book to rate. Abbey is at his best when describing nature, or his love of nature, or his love of baseball, or his sentimental memories of growing up in rural America (in the book, West Virginia, in reality, western PA). Many parts of the book are laugh out loud funny, and Abbey's writing is entertaining most of the way through. But his dislike of cities devolves into something approaching racism, and his description of women must be viewed through the lens of how he actually lived...
Review of Edward Abby's The Fool's Progress[paragraphs in italics are snippets from the book]Warning: Edward Abby's writing, and possibly my take of it, may anger some. There are some bits of the story where even my annoyance flared. Understandable, being our species is saddled with the Achilles heel of subjective perception, inherited in our evolution. Nevertheless, this is an exceptional literary accomplishment ranking up there with the best I've read, and the best of Edward Abby's writing. It...
Wow! A funny, emotional, thoughtful, exciting, romantic, gritty, real journey of one man's life. I had never heard of Edward Abbey until a friend recommended this book. I guess he was a bit on the extremist "radical" side - pro nature/anti industrialism type who had somewhat of a cult following in the 70's & 80's. So I wasn't sure if I would like this novel. It is now on my list as one of my all time favorites.The writing is excellent, with so many memorable lines. Also, good weaving of the back...
Apparently, Edward Abbey is an environmentalist whose books have been known to inspire radicals but also open up frank discussions about the treatment and protection of the western landscape. All right. That's one point of view. I can respect that.But, this was not the book to start with. I don't know if he's a great author or not, but, supposedly, this book is autobiographical and I can tell you, if it is (he's dead...so it's all speculative anyway) that I don't like him. Completely self-indulg...
Edward Abbey died in March of 1989. In the latter part of 1988, he saw his last and perhaps most accomplished work brought to bed at his publishers in New York. The author of many highly controversial works of fiction and non-fiction, best known for his seemingly solitary stand against the ecological destruction of the western American deserts, Abbey's last book effectively completed a cycle. At the same time it was a very close foretelling of his own probable doom.Abbey was an environmentalist
This is one of the funniest books I've read in a long time."Like him I'll get shitfaced fallingdown snotflying toilet-hugging drunk. Reality management.""And why? What's my problem? Well, I have this queer thing about pretty girls: I like them. And this weird thing about steady jobs: I dont like them. I dont believe in doing work I dont want to do in order to live the way I dont want to live.""The word itself--skirt--excites im instantly. There is something about that airy garmet, he feels, that...
Having been a long time Abbey fan, I finally decided to read his "masterpiece." I have read his nature writing and most of his novels. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Edward Abbey has had a profound impact on my life. I read The Monkey Wrench Gang when I was 16 working on trails in the backcountry of Yellowstone and I have never looked back.With that intro, I have to admit that this was not my favorite of his works. But when you admire and enjoy a writer's voice so much, even works t...
Abbey hits all of his strengths over the course of this novel--waxing poetic about pristine landscapes, waxing poetic about women, railing against institutions and commercialism...and it's all wrapped into a classic epic journey format, reverse-Kerouac style.Henry Lightcap is sarcastic and cantankerous and, in all honesty, comes across as an alcoholic misogynistic asshole, at least in the beginning of the book (when we first meet him he's shooting his refrigerator because his third wife left him...
edward abbey may be america's most underappreciated writer. he is well-deserving of mention amongst our country's literary titans (whitman, emerson, thoreau, twain), and, thematically speaking, his works were as prescient. short of abbey's journals (confessions of a barbarian) or his letters (postcards from ed), the fool's progess may be the most candid glimpse into his life. subtitled "an honest novel," this is still a work of fiction, but many of the events depicted mirrored abbey's own real-l...
This novel was the most gripping I've read in a very long time. I've been obsessed with the Edward Abbey/Wallace Stegner literary exploration of the American West for a while now. I've made it my pledge to flip-flop from one author to the author until all of their catalogs are exhausted. What I didn't expect with this novel was to see so much Appalachia in Abbey's narrative. I knew that this novel was to be Abbey's unofficial autobiography, but I didn't foresee just how much pain and beauty of A...
Absolutely Abbey's best novel. I love the Monkey Wrench stuff, but Fool's Progress takes Abbey's writing to a whole other level; a personal one. All of Abbey's work is autobiographical on some way, but this heart-wrenching and profound look at the experience of life and death is as close as he gets to true autobiography. And, yes, it's his best novel for that exact reason.