Probably a disposable which is then tossed from a car window.) The one woman is, of course, young and attractive, with 'shaven calves.' (Interesting that she packs a razor for all their wilderness exploits. Then there's the fact that the men are allowed to be old, fat, and hirsute. They motor up and down the very highways they rage against, burning massive amounts of fossil fuels in the commission of their protests, all the while, blithely tossing trash out the windows. The hypocrisy of these eco-terrorists is laughable. The parts I did stay awake for only served to piss me off. I put off picking up the book until just before bedtime, and that one or two paragraphs I managed to read sure did wonders for lulling me into unconsciousness. This tale of four 'goldamn envirn-meddlers' is one of the least compelling stories I've ever read. It's comic, yes, and required reading for anyone who has come to love the desert.

Moving from one improbable situation to the next, packing more adventure into the space of a few weeks than most real people do in a lifetime, the motley gang puts fear into the hearts of their enemies, laughing all the while. As they do, his characters voice Abbey's concerns about wilderness preservation ('Hell of a place to lose a cow,' Smith thinks to himself while roaming through the canyonlands of southern Utah. On a rafting trip down the Colorado River, Hayduke joins forces with feminist saboteur Bonnie Abbzug, wilderness guide Seldom Seen Smith, and billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., and together they wander off to wage war on the big yellow machines, on dam builders and road builders and strip miners.

The story centers on Vietnam veteran George Washington Hayduke III, who returns to the desert to find his beloved canyons and rivers threatened by industrial development. Ed Abbey called The Monkey Wrench Gang, his 1975 novel, a 'comic extravaganza.' Some readers have remarked that the book is more a comic book than a real novel, and it's true that reading this incendiary call to protect the American wilderness requires more than a little of the old willing suspension of disbelief.

Edward abbey the monkey wrench