2013 read #68: The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey.

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
352 pages
Published 1975
Read from May 28 to May 31
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5

I prevaricated longer than strictly necessary in adjudging a rating for this book. My ratings, after all, are almost entirely arbitrary; in the end, who cares? For The Monkey Wrench Gang, the rating came down to a debate between the part of me that likes ecoterrorism and the slickrock Southwest, which wanted to rate it quite highly, and the part of me that hates certain conventions of 1970s popular fiction, which wanted to mark it down somewhat.

My least favorite aspect of the book was Bonnie. The 1970s were an awkward time in the evolution of how women are depicted in mainstream fiction, and Bonnie fits the slot of the 1970s New Woman stereotype: contumacious yet concupiscent, "bitchy" one might say, motivated by a vague rage at the very concept of maleness yet possessed of a driving desire to nest, popping the pill religiously yet evaluating every man in her circle as a potential father for her inevitable offspring. Bonnie receives no characterization beyond that period-specific archetype, aside from purely cosmetic flourishes (of Bronx Jewish extraction, thinks of her companions once and only once as goyim because why the hell not), and her motivations are never quite elucidated, beyond a generational mood of boredom. I find this archetype even more annoying than the blank wifey type of 1960s fiction, if only because 1970s New Women tended to have lots of viewpoint chapters where male authors fumbled around trying to "figure out the female mind," as it were.

George Washington Hayduke was something of a disappointment, as well. I'd heard enough references to him to get the idea that he was this larger than life character. An 800 mile hiking trail is named in his honor, for goodness' sake. Maybe in 1975 a former Green Beret and POW with PTSD was a groundbreaking character, but he just didn't do it for me. He was pretty much just a canyonlands Rambo. Maybe I expected something more gonzo. (I expected the book to be funnier and weirder than it was, in general.) I was far more interested in Seldom Seen Smith and Doc Sarvis, who naturally enough are given the least amount of screentime out of the main four.

Embarrassing confession time: Somehow I'd gotten this vague idea over the years that The Monkey Wrench Gang was a talking animal fable, something along the lines of the animals all get sick of humankind's assholery and rise up in a Four Corners ecoterrorist Animal Farm. The famous George Washington Hayduke, in my imagination, was probably a literal monkey or something, while Seldom Seen Smith (whom I'd also heard of at some point) was like a greasy jack-of-all-trades jackrabbit, or whatever. I have no idea where I got this impression. Maybe at some point I saw a paperback edition that had a banana on the cover? Since Abbey is noticeably more skilled at writing about animals and nature than he is at writing fictional people, who knows -- maybe it would've been a better book if it had been.