Cactus Ed's Readin List

[David Casseres]

Steely sez

>Foax, this here is the reading list of the dearly departed Ed Abbey, as
>transcribed in the humorous introduction to his collection of Luddite hit
>pieces, Down the River, circa 1981. Over to you, Ed.
>
>"...contemporary
>American novelists whom I truly admire, such as William Gaddis, Thomas
>Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut, EL Doctorow, Gilbert
>Sorrentino, William Kotzwinkle, Thomas Berger, Joseph Heller, Wallace
>Stegner, Robert Stone, Joseph McElroy..."

Yeah!

Coover!  How come we don't hear about him on this list?  Every American 
ought to read The Public Burning, at least, and The Origin of the 
Brunists ain't half bad, a-and Gerald's Party is one of the weirdest and 
wildest things I've ever read.

And Vonnegut, who grows older and more transparent in each photo of him I 
see but who has never once ceased to speak out for that much-neglected 
virtue, common decency.  Doesn't sound like much until you realize 
practically no one else does.

And Heller, who absolutely blew my mind when I read him in the mid-60's, 
and who reminded us that the military machine is always and invariably 
the Military Machine, no matter who is involved or what kind of war is 
going on.

And another thing about those three is that like Pynchon, they have 
unmistakable and wonderful voices.

Speaking of Voice, somewhere in the front-matter of one of Abbey's books 
is an epigraph that I recall as follows:

  "Better that all mankind should perish
   rather than thou
   O my beloved desert."

But when I went looking for it again, I could only find something else, 
much briefer and paler.  I'm still not convinced it was the same epigraph 
at all.  But if it was, my own mind transformed it in a way that could 
only result from being under the influence of Abbey's writing.


Cheers,
David