Postcards from Ed

Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Postcards from Ed presents Abbey’s uproarious and inflammatory take on:

Literature, the West, Wallace Stegner, dreams, Bob Dylan children, Hunter S. Thompson, war, John Erlich, enemies, editors, critics, Noam Chomsky, music, sex, Aspen, civilization, Christians, anarchy, family, the publishing world, Tom Wolfe and Thom Wolfe, Buddhism, trophy hunting, Brower, Foreman, the NRA, vasectomies, God, Wendell Berry, men, John McPhee, Robert Redford, wilderness, Desert Solitaire, The Monkey Wrench Gang, New York, the Sierra Club, “Mizz” Magazine, off-road vehicles, the Bible, the East, Jim Harrison, Pirsig, feminism, cheerleaders, Edward Hoagland,  patriotism,  Franny and Zooey,  the Bond Girls, cooking, Mormons, immigration, Updike, mysticism, Jack Kerouac, cowboys, love, Earth First!, cows, deserts, growth, death, women, betrayal,  and  Annie Dillard. 

“But hell, I do like to write letters. Much easier than writing books.”—Edward Abbey 

From the author of such famous/infamous books as The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire, “Cactus” Ed Abbey’s correspondence.

Over his forty-five-year career as author, educator, and eco-saboteur, Edward Abbey’s postcards and letters were legendary for their wisdom, savage wit, and, ultimately, their ability to speak truth to power. Whether reminding his editor to simplify (“I’ve had to waste hours erasing that storm of flyshit on the typescript”), roasting hawkish proponents of Vietnam, (“the Grim and Roaring Majority”), or lending encouragement to fellow writers such as Cormac McCarthy (“You must have made a compact with the Judge Hisself to write such a book”), here we find the man himself, intimate and revolutionary. 

For new readers, this collection is an introduction to one of the most iconoclastic, idiosyncratic, gloriously hypocritical authors of our time—an authentic American voice in the wilderness—a book that will leave them reeling. This collection chronicles his growth as a writer and important American figure, the early leanings of his environmental policies and his development as an ornery figure on the fringe of society. 

Contributors: Edited By David Petersen