by Edward Abbey
FROM
Confessions of
a Barbarian
(1994)
Selections from the Journals
November 29, 1976—Moab
The Edward Abbey of my books is largely a fictional creation: the true adventures of an imaginary person. The real Edward Abbey? I think I hardly know him. A shy, retiring, very timid fellow, obviously. Somewhat of a recluse, emerging rarely from his fictional den only when lured by money, vice, the prospect of applause.
February 23, 1977—Moab
Fifty years old! Haven’t I done most everything I ever wanted to do? I’ve enjoyed the friendship of a few good men, the love of several fine women. Fathered three sound, healthy and superior children (superior to their father). Wrote a couple of novels I’m not ashamed of, and some other books. Enjoyed a modicum of fame and glory, sudden money and easy living. Been fairly good to my parents, fairly generous to my friends and lovers and wives. Seen a bit of history in action. Seen some of the world’s most beautiful places. Camped in solitude on the rim of a high plateau, overlooking eternity. And so on.
And yet—and yet—of course, I am not satisfied. There must be something more. Something more I wanted to do … or be.
VALUES:
—Courage (“without courage, all other virtues are useless”)
—generosity: kindness, gentleness, sharing
—wisdom: knowledge and understanding; search for truth
—health
—good useful work to do
—love and friendship
—sanctity of all life, of all forms of being (including rocks, hills etc.)
—intelligence and humor
—music, poetry, drama, fiction, ideas
—Nature
—fruit, nuts and beautiful women
—easy money and fat girls.
Just returned from a week on a fantastic, lovely desert island: Isla de la Sombra. A hauntingly beautiful, desolate place—the desert and the sea, side by side—ah! too much. I was sea-sick with beauty! Encantada….
My readings in Tucson, at U of A, were apparently a great success. The auditorium was packed two nights running; aisles jammed, people in doorways—biggest audience since Neruda, said one lady. And yet, I feel I did not do my best for such an eager, appreciative crowd. Too much playing to the gallery, going for the cheap gag and the easy laugh. I read them my “Profane Love Poems”—much laughter. And “Revelation”—and dumb fan letters—and ‘The BLOB comes to Arizona.” Not good enough. I feel I let them down a bit, those nine-hundred or so enthusiastic young people.
I played the clown instead of the sage. Was that wise? They came, presumably, for wisdom and beauty; I gave them jokes. The Entertainer. Not enough. Not good enough.
—REMORSE….
All these letters, speaking invitations, etc. But never have I received any letters from old friends at UNM, or any kind of invitation from that school. Letters from strangers every day, but never a word from those I’d most like to hear from.
March 5, 1997—Moab
My father was seventy-six last month (born 1901). My mother is now seventy-two. My grandfather John lived eighty-one years, my grandmother Eleanor seventy, my grandfather C.C. ninety-two years, and Mother’s mother? I don’t know. Anyway, it looks like it’s going to be a long haul. (Is that why I awake so often, in the gray dawn, with a heart full of dread? fear? panic? What am I afraid of? I don’t know. The unknown?)
March 22, 1977—Moab
Gotta be good to my wife. I mean, better. For I’ll never find another woman better than Renee [Abbey’s fourth wife]. Or even half as good. And I know it. And yet I keep making these careless, thoughtless, mindless gestures toward break-up and disaster. Out of sheer sloth! stupidity! Some atavistic blind urge to self-destruction. As if I wanted to be lonely and miserable again. As if my present contentment and happiness were not tolerable. As if dejection were my natural norm. As if I hated my good fortune in marrying a girl as pretty, sweet, clever, intelligent and loving as Renee. As if I wanted, once again, to sink into despair, touch rock bottom of the soul one more time. Why?
Is happiness a bore?
God, the absurd pain we inflict not only on one another, but also on ourselves!
April 28, 1977—Moab
Visited Josh and Aaron in Lost Wages [Las Vegas] last weekend. With Suzy. We four had dinner on Top O’ the Mint. Played tennis.
I’m going up on Aztec Peak in the Tonto [National Forest, Arizona] next week. Fire lookout again. I hope finally to finish the fucking novel once ensconced up there. The Sundown Legend.
Should go to Australia, become a sheepherder.
Gave a reading at Utah State, Logan, on April 19th. Big hit, I guess. The hall was packed and they laughed at every line. Read them “Notes Found in a Beer Can: A River Journal.” Answered a lot of questions, both pertinent and impertinent. Then a drunken party at Le Bistro. Dim memories of crawling over and under the table. (Legs and tits. All over the place.)
Agreed to write “Smoky the Cop” bit for Outside. They finally paid for “Desert Island.”
May 7, 1977—Aztec Peak Fire Lookout, Arizona
Lookout job. A beautiful place: yellow pine and aspen and spruce, eight thousand feet elevation. Spectacular view: Roosevelt [Reservoir], Superstition Mountains, Four Peaks, Mogollon Rim, Salt River Canyon, Sierra Ancha Wilderness, buttes and mesas of the Fort Apache Reservation.
Winds have been howling for three days now. Nobody here but me and Ellie, our black Labrador mutt.
The lookout is a live-in, new (built in 1960), on a fifty-foot tower. No woodstove, unfortunately—only stinking propane. Cistern with rainwater and one decomposing rat, which I removed.
The old man was here, briefly, about twenty-four hours. Absolutely absorbed in his fears—heart trouble. Stroke. He wouldn’t stay longer because he imagined he was having difficulty breathing at this altitude. He wants sympathy, but if you give him sympathy, he sinks into self-pity. And if you don’t, he does anyway. No solution. What an abject, miserable way to end your life—in fear. I want to be proud of my father, but he’s making it difficult. Or am I being too callous, indifferent, unfeeling? How would I feel and behave if I were in his situation? More bravely, I hope. But who knows for certain?
July 7, 1977—Aztec Peak
Many newspaper reviews of Journey Home all over the country, but once again the goddamned NYC press seems united in giving my book the silent treatment. Suppression by silence. Same goddamn shit as buried MWG [The Monkey Wrench Gang] Lousy cocksucking motherfucking tri-sexual sonsabitches. Only exception—a fairly good (but condescending) review in New Times, by one G. Wolff. Bastards! It ain’t fair
Should I complain? But to whom?
What the fuck. The press attempts to suppress my books. Old friends never write. The critics ignore my work. But what the fuck. I shall continue despite this shit, this ignorance and harassment. I still have a few books in my soul that must take form and body, must be born. If not for the good of the world, then at least for my own fucking sense of honor.
The reviewers consistently misrepresented the character of MWG.
Letters I Wrote That Never got Answered:
“Dear Judy Collins … bring sleeping bag….”
“Dear Gary [Snyder], I like your stuff too, except for all that Zen and Hindu bullshit….”
To the Editors, Ms. Magazine, NY: “Dear Sirs….”
“Dear Jean Sibelius: Happy Birthday.”
To bill collectors and lawyers: “Edward Abbey regrets….”
“Dear Ambassador Dobrynin….”
—and Letters To Me That Never Got Answered:
“Dear Edward Albee….”
“Dear Senor Abbey, please send two (2) pr cowboy pants….”
—Mario Roderigo Rodriguez-Silva (“call me Rod”)
“Dear Mr. Abbey, Do you have any idea how funny you are? In a sick way, I mean….”
August 11, 1977—Aztec Peak
I’m sitting here at 1400 hours waiting for the lightning strike. A constant fizzing or buzzing noise (like frying eggs) emanates, apparently, from all metallic objects here as the charge builds up. That vast transfer of surplus electrons about to take place … the singing of excited electrons … the light crack of the whip, the flash, the awful crash! I can feel my tower shake beneath me—the smell of ozone—pink lightning strikes through the mist, followed by that rumpling, rolling, crashing reverberation of thunder—like toppling towers of masonry—echoing from mountain to mountain.
[Now comes] a dainty stroke with something like a fireball flung at the tip of it—great balls of fire!
The high thin cruel excruciating scream of the charge begins to fade somewhat now, as the heart of the storm moves beyond me into the west.
B. Traven, Dreiser, James Jones et al—their prose is so bad, so crude, so stupid, that it’s painful to read. And yet these lads often wrote better books than such master stylists as Henry James, Nabokov, Proust. Why? Perhaps there’s something in great verbal felicity that misleads the writer, that betrays him into technique for the sake of technique; while the simple-minded prose writers, free of such allurements, are able to keep their attention fixed on the subject of their interest—the real life of actual human beings. Thus, their work, while repellent in style and detail, achieves great cumulative power through its steadfast devotion to fact, which equals and in the long run is equivalent to, the supreme poetry of truth.
The greatest writers were those, are those, capable of both powers: i.e., Tolstoy, Conrad, Chekhov, Hemingway, Cervantes, Steinbeck and so on.
October 12, 1977—Moab
Oh Jesus Christ—my life is sinking into a bog of details, little ego trips, petty gratifications—this was not what I wanted. Not what I wanted. What I really want to do, to be, is something different. More difficult. My father is now seventy-seven; I am fifty; and love seems so fleeting, my “minor classics” and “regional notoriety” so vain and trivial, and the world—the bloody beautiful heart-breaking world!—so much more painful to understand than I had expected.