The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey: The Novel Cure for wanting to save the planet
Abbey's book remains one of the most passionate pleas in literature to protect our wild places
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Cure: The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
Though we all want to save the planet, recycling the Sunday paper and composting our coffee granules is really little more than a drop in the (warming) ocean. What would motivate us to take the next step – to offset our CO2 emissions each year or, even better, persuade a global corporation or two to follow suit?
Edward Abbey's 1975 call to direct action inspired acts of eco-activism in its day, and remains one of the most passionate pleas in literature to protect our wild places.
When Vietnam vet George Washington Hayduke III returns from the war to find bulldozers tearing into his beloved stretch of the US south-west, he decides to wage his own type of war. He's joined by a motley crew of fellow saboteurs – a feminist, an outcast Mormon, a doctor who burns billboards in his downtime. Together they form the Monkey Wrench Gang, committed to putting spanners – literally – into the developers' machines: cutting wires, pouring corn syrup into fuel tanks and choking engines with sand. Their goal is to bring down the monstrous Glen Canyon Dam and bring back the fragile gorges flooded by Lake Powell behind it.
Full of explosions and enjoyable anarchy, there is a certain comic-strip vibe to this novel which makes the monkey wrenchers' antics not quite as shocking as they might be; and also Abbey's characters are scrupulous about not harming anyone. It's all about the strength of feeling behind the actions.
What gives the novel its power is Abbey's palpable love for the natural world – from the Indian ricegrass and prickly pear by the roadside to the sunfired outcrops of red rock. For Hayduke, these are places "so beautiful they can make a grown man break down and weep". The novel reminds us that wilderness is "not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit", and if we destroy it, we also destroy ourselves.
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