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Abbey’s Road by Edward Abbey

1980; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wal.1980.0073

1948-7142

Tom Pilkington,

American Sports and Literature

Reviews 63 whose reputation greatly exceeded their accomplishments were Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson - who killed only one man and was involved in only three shooting scrapes - Doc Holliday, and John Ringo. On the other hand, among the deadlier and better known gunmen were John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok, and Ben Thompson. Even these are generally credited with more killings than they actually performed. Less known but equally violent were Jim Miller, Harvey Logan, John Selman, and Henry Brown, who killed a total of 38 men. Some of the individuals whose exploits are summarized in the Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters do not belong in the same category with the above worthies. Peace officers such as Jeff Milton and Bill Tilghman, for example, killed several men each in the performance of their duties, but neither should be classified as a gunfighter in the classical sense of the word. O'Neal's voluminous research resulted in a unique publication and represents an excellent beginning for a young historian. Hopefully, we will hear more from him in the future, and he will broaden his horizon of scholarship to include events and personalities of more positive significance to the history of the West. W. EUGENE HOLLON, Ohio Regents Professor of History Emeritus Abbey's Road. By Edward Abbey. (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979. xxiv + 198 pages. $9.95 hardcover; $4.95 paperback.) Abbey's Road is Edward Abbey's latest collection of essays. In it the author is up to his old tricks: kidding and joshing and confusing readersespecially eastern readers - to the point that they sometimes lose their bearings. An. interesting example of such a disoriented reader is Stephen Chapman. Writing in the August 25, 1979 issue of The New Republic, ~hapman accuses Abbey of being self-centered, self-pitying, self-righteousIII a word, "tiresome" - and he dismisses Abbey's Road as a "smug, grace- !ess book." "Graceless" it may be (personal and literary "grace," after all, ~s o?: of those slippery concepts that rely heavily on private preference and IlldIVldual definition), but "smug" it is not. Chapman cites several passages from the work to support his contention that Abbey is morally com- ~lacent and condescending. As it turns out, none of the passages, when con- ~dered within its context, supports that contention in the least; each quote as been totally misread and misapplied. Actually one of the things I like best about the most recent Abbeythe post-Desert Solitaire Abbey, say - is his relative lack of smugness. He seems not to take himself or his "revolutionary" ideas as seriously as he used 64 Western American Literature to. Obviously the author is still committed to a set of far-reaching political and environmental goals, but he is no longer reluctant to have some fun ___ to indulge playfully in humor, satire, conscious exaggeration - in discuss. ing those goals. There is, of course, danger in this method: it is occasionally difficult to determine whether Abbey is trying to be funny or is being dead~ level earnest. Most of the time, though, an intelligent reader has little trou. ble making the appropriate distinctions. I find no merit at all in the assertion that, in Abbey's Road, the writer is offensively self-centered and self-righteous. In the introduction to Abbey's Road, titled "Confessions of a Literary Hobo," Abbey disarmingly admits that the main justification for his publishing yet another book is to make money. Right off the bat, then, we ought to suspect that we are in for a great deal of clowning and kidding - that much of what is to follow should be taken with a grain of salt. Elsewhere in the introduction Abbey says that' he is, as he portrays himself in his books," largely a fictional creation," one that "bears only the dimmest resemblance to the shy, timid, reclusive, rather dapper little gentleman who, always correctly attired for his labors in coat and tie and starched detachable cuffs, sits down each night for precisely four hours to type out the further adventures of that arrogant blustering macho fraud who counterfeits his name," Though I have never met Abbey in person, I would not be surprised if...