1975;
422 pages. New Author? : Yes. Genre : Contemporary Fiction; American
Literature; Eco-Political How-To Manual; Middle-Brow. Overall Rating : 8*/10.
Meet the Monkey Wrench Gang.
George
Hayduke. A Vietnam vet and ex-Green
Beret. 25 years old and hails from
Tucson, Arizona. Has a habit of
measuring distances in units of six-packs.
Tucson-to-Vegas: 3 six-packs.
Phoenix-to-Los Angeles: 4 six-packs.
Etc.
“Seldom Seen” Smith. A Jack Mormon
who was born in Utah and still lives there.
Has three wives, all of which are kinda cool with that. Earns a living as a river guide, and longs
for the world he grew up in. Don’t we
all, Seldom, don’t we all?
Doctor A. K. “Doc” Sarvis. A
surgeon, and a rich one. Smokes
cigars. No wives, but has a trophy
girlfriend. His favorite pastime is
burning down billboards. Everyone should
have a hobby.
Ms. Bonnie Abbzug. A nurse by trade, and assistant to Doc Sarvis. Likes to help him burn down billboards. Described as a “sexualized feminist”,
whatever that might be. Likes to smoke
up. You know what they say: “Give a girl
enough rope and she’ll smoke it”.
Their
paths will all cross on one of Seldom’s guided river cruises. And they’ll find they all have one thing in
common – a strong desire to stop industries – any and all industries – from tearing up the landscape in the Four
Corners area of the grand Southwest.
What’s To Like...
If you’re the kind of reader who hates having
to keep track of a slew of characters, The Monkey Wrench
Gang is perfect for you. The
story is almost entirely about the shenanigans of our “gang of four”. The only other people to take note of are
Bishop J. Dudley Love and Park Ranger Edwin P. Abbott, Jr. The settings are also easy to remember, they're all in the
Four Corners area.
I
liked the story’s structure. We tag along with Doc in the prologue as he practices his hobby; then get acquainted
with the four main characters, one chapter at a time. After that, it’s all about the hijinks
perpetrated by our heroes, the wit and wisdom of their conversations, and
Edward Abbey’s sweeping descriptions of the great outdoors, to let you know
what they are trying to preserve.
The book is an amazingly detailed “how-to”
manual for eco-terrorists. The Wikipedia
article quotes several eco-activists describing how great an impact it had on
them. Indeed, Wiki claims that the use
of the term “monkey wrench” as a metaphor for sabotaging something springs from
this book. If you want to learn how to
disable earth-moving equipment, destroy a bridge, burn down a billboard, or even
blow up a dam; this book will teach you everything you need to know.
The
writing is superb, and the book is a vocabularian’s delight. There’s a slew of cussing, including some in
Spanish. This apparently offended some
Amazon reviewers, but it didn’t bother me.
And while Bishop Love is the Monkey Wrench Gang’s bane, the real baddies
here are Peabody Coal (mining), Arizona Public Service (electricity), Black
Mesa & Lake Powell Railroad (transporting natural resources), Exxon, Reddy
Mix Cement & Gravel Company, and the American Forestry Association
(clear-cut logging). It was weird to see
Smokey the Bear cast in a negative light.
The ending had some twists, and everything built to a satisfying and
exciting climax. But it was also
somewhat easy to predict the outcome. There’s only
one way for a four-against-the-world
struggle to be resolved. I thought the
epilogue was great, although you could suss out what was going to happen even
there. This is a standalone novel, and
there is a sequel. I label this a “middle-brow” book, suitable for book clubs.
Kewlest New Word ...
Apocdictic (adj.)
: clearly established and beyond dispute.
Others : Concatenate
(adj.) Acedia
(n.) Empyrean
(n.) Virescent
(adj.) Arcologium
(n.) Raddled
(v.)
Excerpts...
“This here’s ahr
air and I reckon we know best what we want to do with it. We don’t like them outsiders from the Sahara
Club tryin’ to tell us what we can do with ahr air.”
“Okay, but look
at it this way, Calvin. Keep your
fscking air here halfways clean and you can sell it to them city dudes by the
jugful, like pure-spring drinking water.”
“We already think
of that. There ain’t enough money in
it.”
“You could put
meters on their noses when they cross the state line.” (loc. 2673)
Smith
sighed. “Three things my daddy tried to
learn me. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘remember these three precepts and you can’t go
wrong: One. Never eat (at) a place called Mom’s. Two. Never
play cards with a man named Doc.’” He
halted. “Deal me in.”
“That’s only
two,” Bonnie said.
“I never can
recollect the third, and that’s what worries me.” (loc. 5234)
Kindle Details...
The Monkey Wrench Gang sells for $8.99
at Amazon. Edward Abbey has another
dozen or so books available for the Kindle, all in the price range of $7.59-$9.99.
Om sweet om: be it ever so
humble …” (loc. 731)
I didn’t
really have any quibbles with The Monkey Wrench
Gang, but if you’re not concerned about things like global warming, the
rapid pace with which we’re using up our natural resources, and overpopulation, I
can see where this might be a bit of a slog.
And I must admit, the book was initially a slow read for me. But things sped up once the Gang became
activists.
It
also helped that I live in Arizona, where part of this book takes place. When Edward Abbey mentions The Arizona Republic, hey, that’s my
newspaper. When he talks about McCulloch
chain saws, well, that was the company (and the developer of Lake Havasu City) that
spurred my parents to move to Arizona from back east.
8 Stars.
One personal anecdote. I am not an eco-terrorist, and the one and
only time I attended a Sierra Club meeting, I was bored silly. However…
Back in my college days, one of my daily activities each summer was to
take the family dog for a constitutional up in an undeveloped hill a block
behind our house. He loved it! I’d let him off the leash, and he had a fine
time chasing rabbits, yapping at birds, running and sniffing wherever he
pleased.
One
summer I came home to find the whole hill plowed up, the first step in
developing it into a subdivision. The streets
and house lots were already staked out. Ugh. There goes the ecosystem. No more rabbit-chasing for my dog.
So I started my own little rebellion. Every night when I walked the dog, I’d pull
up a bunch of those stakes. It made me
feel good, and since I walked the dog at sundown, long after all the
construction workers had gone home, it seemed a safe way to slow down their
project. Until one night, about three weeks into my little campaign of sabotage, what did I espy? A big, burly guy sitting in a pick-up up on
one of those staked-out streets. Just
a-watching. My small acts of defiance
had obviously irked the construction company into taking preventative action.
Prudence
was therefore called for. And thus ended my
eco-protest.
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