Edward Abbey

Trivia

• He wanted his body transported in the bed of a pickup truck. He wanted to be buried as soon as possible.
• Edward Abbey died on March 14, 1989 due to complications from surgery; he suffered four days of esophageal hemorrhaging, due to esophageal varices, a recurrent problem with one group of veins.
• He devoted one chapter in his book Hayduke Lives to poking fun at left-green leader Murray Bookchin.
• He differed from the stereotype of environmentalist as politically-correct leftist by disclaiming the counterculture and the "trendy campus people", saying he didn't want them as his primary fans, and by supporting some conservative causes such as immigration reduction and the National Rifle Association.
• Abbey was known to anger people of all political stripes, including environmentalists.
• Abbey claimed the novel was written merely to "entertain and amuse," and was intended as symbolic satire.
• Abbey's abrasiveness, opposition to anthropocentrism, and outspoken writings made him the object of much controversy.

Quotes

• “Grown men do not need leaders.”
• “In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.”
• “Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.”
• “The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.”
• “My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel”
• “For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!”
• “High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring”
• “Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.”
• “In the modern techno-industrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without ever knowing manhood”
• “That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.”