Bücher von Edward Abbey

Black Sun is a bittersweet love story involving an iconoclastic forest ranger and a freckle-faced "American princess" half his age. Like Lady Chatterley's lover, he initiates her into the rites of sex and the stark, secret harmonies of his wilderness. She, in turn, awakens in him the pleasure of love. Then she mysteriously disappears, plunging him into desolation. Black Sun is a singular novel in Abbey's repertoire, a romantic story of a solitary man's passion for the outdoors and for a woman who is seeing the natural world's true colors for the first time. "Like most honest novels, Black Sun is partly autobiographical, mostly invention, and entirely true. The voice that speaks in this book is the passionate voice of the forest," Abbey writes, "the madness of desire, and the joy of love, and the anguish of final loss."Edward Abbey spent most of his life in the American Southwest. He was the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including the celebrated Desert Solitaire, which decried the waste of America's wilderness, and the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, the title of which is still in use today to describe groups that purposefully sabotage projects and entities that degrade the environment. Abbey was also one of the country's foremost defenders of the natural environment. He died in 1989.

Jonathan Troy is a brilliant, beautiful, intensely romantic, selfish and irresponsible (but never impossible) hero. Despite his youth, he is a born leader who, like a colossus, dominates the people who come into his life, whether they have sought him out or have been sought after by him. There is his lonely, one-eyed father whose radical activity for the Industrial Workers of the World leads to a shattering climax in which Jonathan knows his own fidelity has somehow been vitally involved. There is Etheline, whose body is irresistibly attractive-and whom Jonathan successfully seduces. There is Leafy who inspires his love and alone can discipline him. There is Feathersmith, the effeminate teacher, who encourages Jonathan's sensitivity to the poetic, and Fatgut, the pathological liar, who is foil both for Jonathan's friendship and his rage. In a way, Jonathan betrays them all, but his greatest, final betrayal is perhaps of himself. Edward Abbey writes with perception that measures the mood and experiences of his characters in every dimension. Beneath the facade of callous brutality lies the real Jonathan, finely sensitive and introspective. The author never loses touch with this spirit on Jonathan's quest, and the cumulative effect becomes overwhelming. This harsh, powerful, disturbing story is an extraordinary achievement for any novel, much less a first one.About the authorEdward Abbey was born in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, in 1927. Eight months before his 18th birthday, when he would be faced with being drafted into the U.S. Military, Abbey decided to explore the American southwest. He traveled by foot, bus, hitchhiking, and freight train hopping.His best-known works include Desert Solitaire, a non-fiction autobiographical account of his time as a park ranger at Arches National Park considered to be an iconic work of nature writing and a staple of early environmentalist writing; the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by environmentalists and groups defending nature by various means, also called eco-warriors.JONATHAN TROY was begun as a creative writing project and is Edward Abbey's first novel.

This book is different from any other Edward Abbey book. It includes essays, travel pieces and fictions to reveal Ed's life directly, in his own words.The selections gathered here are arranged chronologically by incident, not by date of publication, to offer Edward Abbey's life from the time he was the boy called Ned in Home, Pennsylvania, until his death in Tucson at age 62. A short note introduces each of the four parts of the book and attempts to identify what's happening in the author's life at the time. When relevant, some details of publishing history are provided.

In this wise and lyrical book about landscapes of the desert and the mind, Edward Abbey guides us beyond the wall of the city and asphalt belting of superhighways to special pockets of wilderness that stretch from the interior of Alaska to the dry lands of Mexico.

Der Arches-Nationalpark, eine der spektakulärsten Wüstenlandschaften im Herzen Amerikas, steht im Mittelpunkt dieses einzigartigen Buchs, das alles zugleich ist: Autobiografie, Naturbeschreibung, Polemik, Kampfschrift und Abenteuerroman. In faszinierenden Naturschilderungen führt Abbey uns die Vielfalt einer Landschaft vor Augen, die nur auf den ersten Blick tot und einsam erscheint. Sein genauer Blick offenbart dem Leser, dass die Wüste wahrhaft lebt. In diesem längst zu den Klassikern zählenden Buch verarbeitet er sein Leben als Ranger Ende der 1950 er Jahre in der Wüste Utahs. Er sieht sich in dieser Umgebung zugleich als Raub- und als Beutetier, als Eindringling und als willkommener Gast. In diesen Widersprüchen und der Kargheit der Wüste fühlt er sich weitaus mehr zu Hause als in der von ihm als menschenfeindlich wahrgenommenen Industriegesellschaft. So ist ein Werk entstanden, das voller Liebe für die raue Landschaft und die wilde Tierwelt ist, und zugleich voller Hass auf alle, die versuchen, das Gleichgewicht der Natur zu zerstören. Mit Die Einsamkeit der Wüste schuf Abbey eines der wichtigsten Werke des amerikanischen Nature Writing und legte den Grundstein für die moderne Naturschutzbewegung : Als derText 1968 veröffentlicht wurde, brachte dieser ihm nicht nur den lange erhofften Durchbruch als Schriftsteller, sondern führte auch dazu, dass das von ihm beschriebene Gebiet endlich zum Nationalpark erklärt wurde.

Ex-Green Beret George Hayduke has returned from war to find his beloved southwestern desert threatened by industrial development. Joining with Bronx exile and feminist saboteur Bonnie Abzug, wilderness guide and outcast Mormon Seldom Seen Smith, and libertarian billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., Hayduke is ready to fight the power?taking on the strip miners, clear-cutters, and the highway, dam, and bridge builders who are threatening the natural habitat. The Monkey Wrench Gang is on the move?and peaceful coexistence be damned!