Resist Much, Obey Little ed. by James Hepworth and Gregory McNamee

Abstract

254 Western American Literature human condition. But ultimately, according to Davidson, Bierce’s stories call every perspective into question, demonstrating the disastrous consequences of the limited vision shared by all the children of Adam. Gathering the Desert. By Gary Paul Nabhan. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985. 209 pages, $19.95.) At a time when most readers cannot comprehend scientific publications and most scientists cannot write English, this book comes as a relief. It is this year’s winner of the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding achievement in nature writing. Gathering the Desert results from the author’s work in ethnobotany and argues that the largely discarded botanical knowledge of earlier desert inhabitants is of value both for the present and the future. Nabhan focuses on the Sonoran desert and teaches his lessons with chap­ ters on 12 plants (palms, greasewood, chiles, mesquite, etc.) The book is packed with curiosities: creosote surviving nuclear bombs, bitter squash finally finding a possible use in modern agribusiness as a pest control device, devil’s claw becoming a domesticated part of the Indian garden because of the American appetite for baskets. But it isnot simply a collection of tidbits about botanical oddities. The essays question the modern contempt for native sources of food, fiber and medicine and illustrate the intricate relationships that form between man and beast and plants and insects. The title constitutes a kind of complicated challenge to the reader, since Nabhan describes a Southwest where the desert has been sacked rather than “gathered” and where commercial demands on some wild species threaten to wipe them out. If we are going to gather this desert, clearly we must learn not only where we are, but who we are. The book, lovingly illustrated by the drawings of Paul Mirocha, presents a pleasing design. The bibliographic essay is rich in suggestive titles for both the specialist and lay reader. Resist Much, Obey Little. Edited byJames Hepworth and Gregory McNamee. (Salt Lake City: Dream Garden Press, 1985. 127 pages, $7.95.) On the first page of the first essay in Resist Much, Obey Little, Wendell Berry decides that Edward Abbey isn’t “a boxable ist” of any kind. Berry is right, and in saying so he sets the tone for this entire collection about the M. E. GRENANDER State University of New York at Albany CHARLES BOWDEN Tucson, Arizona Reviews 255 Southwest’s best-known anti-ist writer. Edited by James Hepworth and Gregory McNamee, this group of essays is no conventional set of critical opin­ ions, no boxable package of pedantic assessments (when they asked me to contribute and I couldn’t think of anything nonacademic to say, I didn’t sub­ mit anything at all), no twentieth-century view. Instead, it matches its man. The selections include both formal and informal interviews with Abbey himself, somewhat serious looks at a couple of his books, personal bits of imaginative correspondence, some thoughtful musings, some gentle chidings, and two or three essays that bounce off the wall. That is, Resist Much, Obey Little echoes the strengths, the weaknesses, even the characteristics of its sub­ ject (and Abbey’sstrengths alwaysprevail). So I liked it. Some of the pages (Berry’s, Barry Lopez’s, the interviews) I liked better than others (Mairs’s and Houston’s, for example), but on the whole I found the collection not only provocative but fun to read. There is no pattern to my likes and dislikes, either, for my favorite essays included both the wildest and the tamest. The slim volume could have been (maybe should have been) longer, but I have only people like myself to blame. Because Resist Much, Obey Little is the kind of book to which one responds personally, it’s also the kind of book hard to review. Just as a reader either enjoys or misunderstands Abbey’s works, so he or she either will appre­ ciate or be annoyed by the eclecticism of this miscellany. “I love Edward Abbey,” says Sam Hamill at the end. “He’s a high-class quarrel.” I agree. And that’s what the editors who put together this book’s loving quarrels are trying to say, too. ANN RONALD University...