The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader

After reading this collection, which serves as a retrospective of the writin career of one of the better SW writers, I was left with a feeling that the selection could have been better, but this probably reflects my own eclectic readings of his work. Abbey's writings always seemed uneven, particularly in his fiction. His comments about the role of the independent writer versus that of the commercial hired of the establishment press seems right on. In spite of his many years of part-time non-writing service to various agencies he still managed to maintain his freedom to say what he wished about the rot he saw in the management of public lands. I suspect that he was always a bit shocked about how cheaply managers of public linds could be bought off. As a review of his lifetime of writing the book is excellent. McCrae includes some of his fiction, both the excellent ("The Brave Cowboy") and only fair (The Monkey Wrench Gang"). The sampling from his writings might be occasionally dated, but are still mostly relevant to the problems of the SW. His polemic about the cowboy ("Free Speech - The cowboy ans his cow") clearly points to the problems of allowing anything like an unrestricted use of and romanticism about what can easily become an extractive industry. At the same time Abbey's followers should have a difficult time justapositionng his sense of anarchy with this complaints about the institutional anarchy of commercial capitalism. To finish. A good read and certainly worthwhile for someone new to Abbey's work while being a fair sample of his writings for a person with only a passing acquaintance with the writings of one of the West's best essayist. The closing comments in Wendell Berry's poem about his friend are most appropriate.