Wrenched from the Land: Activists Inspired by Edward Abbey ed. by ML Lincoln and Diane Sward Rapaport

Abstract

Reviewed by: Wrenched from the Land: Activists Inspired by Edward Abbey ed. by ML Lincoln and Diane Sward Rapaport Vernon Owen Grumbling ML Lincoln and Diane Sward Rapaport, eds. Wrenched from the Land: Activists Inspired by Edward Abbey. U of New Mexico P, 2020. 304 pp. Paper, $24.95; e-book, $9.99. Correction 08.17.21: In the second paragraph masculine pronouns were mistakenly used. The online version of the article has been updated. This is a marvelous book. These words are perhaps inappropriate to open a review in an academic journal. But Wrenched from the Land not only presents valuable academic source materials for understanding the evolution of American environmental activism, it also offers delightful personal perspectives on Edward Abbey and how his words touched and impassioned important voices protecting the American West—and the whole earth. The range of voices, one of the book's great assets, comes from its provenance: thousands of pages of interviews ML Lincoln had amassed while preparing her tribute film Wrenched (2014). In 2017, says Lincoln in her introduction, as she was fuming over the policies of the new federal administration, she realized that she had access to words of "the heroes that carried the legacy of Edward Abbey's into the twenty-first century … a potent counter to anti-conservation politicians and climate deniers" (xiv). Many of these voices were obvious choices: Dave Foreman, Charles Bowden, Ken Sleight, Doug Peacock, Jack Loeffler, Ken Sanders, John De Puy ("Debris"), as well as Ken Sleight and Ingrid Eisenstadter, the models for Seldom Seen Smith and Bonnie Abzug in The Monkey Wrench Gang. But there are other voices that are less obviously connected: Derrick Jensen, author of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet (2011); Kieran Suckling, founder of The Biodiversity Institute, which, according to Lincoln, has sued the Trump administration 193 times; and Paul Watson, "captain" of The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose ships ram and sink vessels engaged in illegal whaling activity. One evidence of Abbey's continuing influence is Tim DeChristopher, the college-aged activist who in 2008 disrupted the Bureau of Land Management sale of oil leases near Canyonlands by bidding up the price with no intention of buying. He was sentenced to two years in prison, after his judge refused to allow him to argue the common law "necessity defense"—that burning oil would bring about greater harm in loading carbon than his [End Page 197] "paper monkeywrenching" ever could. DeChristopher wasn't born until a few years before Abbey died. When he read The Monkey Wrench Gang, he says, he was "old enough to understand it, but not quite old enough to realize it wasn't a handbook." Words from the introduction to Abbey's Beyond the Wall stuck in his mind: "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul" (246). On the literary side Wrenched offers fascinating insights into the interaction of experience, autobiography, and fiction in how Abbey's books were assembled. Regarding verisimilitude, we hear Ingrid Eisenstadter recall that the original first chapter of The Monkey Wrench Gang described an actual destruction of Glen Canyon Dam—no one hurt, no one arrested, everyone drinking beer and dancing to "Hava Negila." She tells how she saw Abbey dump that scene as "unbelievable." She also recalls objecting to "his stupid obscenity in the book, which served no purpose at all" (177). The criticism she voices exemplifies another of this book's merits: It is not a simple adulation of the man. The interviewees repeatedly point out that they liked the man and his work despite flaws that they regularly acknowledge in the human being. Far beyond the literary and biographical pleasures, the interviews offer profound insights about humanity's crisis on the earth. In the later chapters we find Abbey's heritage articulated powerfully. Kieran Suckling says in his work he is trying "to combat the driving force of environmental destruction: too many of us consuming too many things. This force is driven by an almost universal and uninterrupted propaganda message coming from the media and industry about the necessity of growth" (192). What Abbey did, says Charles Bowden, was make a shift in people...