The Hundredth Meridianrnby Chilton Williamson, Jr.rnAbbey Lives!rnFifteen years after I arrived in the West,rnI can no longer recall how I first becamernaware of Edward Abbey, though I dornknow that I had been the book editor ofrna national magazine for nearly four yearsrnbefore the name penetrated my consciousness.rn(The parochialism of thernNew York literati.) But I remember as ifrnit were yesterday buying an armload ofrnhis books at the Zion Bookstore in SaltrnLake City (capital of the only society onrnearth where a Jew is a gentile) and readingrnthem in bed in my single-bedroomrnrental in the Regency Apartments inrnKemmerer while blizzards raged out-ofdoorsrnand an occasional pistol dischargedrnin one of the surrounding units, followedrnby drunken shouts and a confused roaring,rnI was working in the oil patch thatrnwinter, arriving home at odd hours ofrnthe day and night, my biological clockrngone haywire, my muscles aching, myrnbody stiff from the forty- and fifty-belowrnzero temperatures; and though I accomplishedrnlittle reading in those months, Irndid manage to plough through everythingrnof Abbey’s I could find in SaltrnLake. Quite an effort—^like managing torndrink a case of beer after being lost in therndesert all day. He has been dead nearlyrnsix years now, still owing me the protractedrnhorseback trip along the Mexicanrnborder we had promised one another,rnbut, as if by some miracle, the booksrnhave started coming again: Confessionsrnof a Barbarian: Selections from the Journalsrnof Edward Abbey, 1951-1989rn(Boston: Little, Brown, 1994), edited andrnwith an introduction by David Petersen,rnthis fall and, next year, a volume of hisrnletters, also edited by Petersen, a longtimernfriend. And of several biographiesrnrumored to be in the making, the first—rnnot really a biography—has recentlyrnbeen published: Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist:rnThe Life and Legacy of EdwardrnAbbey (New York: Atheneum, 1994), byrnJames Bishop, Jr.rnWas Abbey really a barbarian and anrnanarchist? By the standard of Bill Clintonrnand Al Gore, who exhort us plaintivelyrnto have “faith in government,” herncertainly was the latter, while whatrnChesterton called “the huge and healthyrnsadness” of the pre-Christian era pervadesrnConfessions. According to the vulgarrnand narrow understanding of his day,rnEd Abbey was politically unclassifiable,rna torpedo launched at those ungainlyrniron Liberty Ships of carefully weldedrnopinion. Believing that the writer unpreparedrnto tell the truth had better bernlooking around for something else to do,rnhe did not strive for approbation orrnawards (“prizes,” he wrote to IrvingrnHowe, who had just offered him anrnaward from the American Academy andrnInstitute of Arts and Letters, “are for littlernboys”). And to the present Age ofrnSensitivity, he was anathema: tender,rnover-sensitized, and insecure souls couldrneither toss the insult back, or grow arnthicker skin—or suffer. In the companyrnI mostly keep, the name Edward Abbeyrnis either unrecognized or despised.rnThose of my friends (cattle ranchers,rnminers, oilfield roughnecks, local businessrnpeople) who are familiar with thernlegend but have neither read nor heardrnof the highly disruptive speech Abbeyrndelivered at the University of Montana inrnMissoula in 1985 against a backgroundrnof shouts and jeers and gunfire in thernparking lot, would probably be able tornguess correctly the gist of his remarks.rn(“I’m in favor of putting the public landsrnlivestock grazers out of business. . . . Almostrnanywhere and everyyvhere you go inrnthe American West you find hordes ofrnthese ugly, clumsy, stupid, bawling,rnstinking, fly-covered, sh—smeared, disease-rnspreading brutes. . . . I’ve neverrnheard of a coyote as dumb as a sheepmanrnThe cowboy i s . . . a farm boy inrnleather britches and a comical hat. . . .rnAnytime you go into a small Westernrntown, you’ll find [the ranchers] at thernnearest drugstore, sitting around allrnmorning drinking coffee, talking aboutrntheir tax breaks.”) Among my first reactionsrnto Abbey’s work was the thoughtrnthat the author insufficiently appreciatedrnthe degree to which the physical andrnsocial openness of the West depends uponrnthe ranching “industry,” as the Westernrnranch is unimaginable outside therncontext of the wilderness surroundingrnit—a fact of which the present generationrnof ranchers needs to be reminded.rnYet, of Abbey’s eight novels, one (ThernBrave Cowboy) has for its hero a farm boyrnin britches, while another (Fire on thernMountain) is the story of an elderlyrnrancher who defies the attempts of thernfederal government to condemn hisrnproperty for a missile range. More thanrnhe scorned Western cattle growers asrn”welfare parasites” and despoilers of thernland. Abbey admired the best of themrnfor their independence, their toughness,rnand their stubborn commitment to thernpreindustrial values held by citizens ofrnthe old American Republic whose passingrnhe deplored and lamented.rnAn American original and individualistrnwho resisted mass opinion all his life.rnAbbey in late career suffered the inexorablernfate of the celebrated nonconformistrnby inadvertently helping to creaternand shape it. In some degree he hadrnhimself to blame, since he chose againstrndissociating or distancing himself fromrnthe environmental groupies and monkey-rnwrench cultists who fawned on him.rnBut James Bishop, though inept in hisrnrole of literary critic, is sensitive to thernimportance of his subject as a social criticrnas well as a “nature writer” and environmentalist.rnAbbey’s true subject, hernsuggests (echoing an essay by WendellrnBerry), was himself—a self that couldrnnot be complete in a world despoiledrnby a self-ravaged society. “True humanrnfreedom,” Abbey remarked a yearteforernhis death, “economic freedom, politicalrnfreedom, social freedom, remain basicallyrnlinked to physical freedom, sufficientrnspace, enough land.” Unlike thernmajority of “environmentalists,” he believedrnthat what is finally at stake is notrnthe future of the earth, which will endurernfor eons after human beings, their worstrnaccomplished, have driven themselvesrnDECEMBER 1994/49rnrnrn