Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

Brutal writing.



I like this idea of Abbey's a lot. To me, it means capturing nature through words that are not biased or based on history, formerly perceived metaphors, or through romanticism. It is capturing nature for what it is, what it does, why it does, and how it is right now. I admire this idea because it takes "us" away from it. When we compare a cleomie flower to a firework exploding in the sky, we are comparing that natural element of the world to something more cultural, aesthetic, and memorable. The cleomie is no longer a flower, but a firework. I like the idea of capturing something for what it is, because that's exactly what is going on. My intent on living out my life is not to impersonate or imitate anything that is similar to myself. I want to get down with Abbey's "bare bones of existence....the bedrock that contains us." This leads to Abbey's mentioning of evocation vs. imitation. Abbey does not aim to imitate through writing, but to evoke emotion, thought, and visions. This is a wise move, I think.


Although I admire this idea of brutal writing a lot, I didn't capture as much of it as I would have liked in Abbey's writing. I don't know if it's me, but I noticed a lot of tone/voice changes within his various essays. Of course, that makes sense, because the tone changes with the content, but sometimes it felt as if different people wrote these essays. I can come up with a few examples of when I thought Abbey didn't follow his "brutal writing" idealism. His descriptions concerning the mating dance of the gopher snakes was interesting and somewhat ritualized. Although it is indeed a ritual, it seemed to be described too...flamboyantly? I'm not too sure. It was too much portrayed as a "dance" rather than a necessary mating ritual. But perhaps I am being picky or misunderstanding.

But I do want to try this out. I want the cave that I visit to just be a cave--no longer the cool, gaping mouth that breathes mosquitoes with its moss-scented breath. I want for the crows I hear among the trees to just be crows that call and call. They do not sing. They do not talk. They communicate and I must face the fact that I will never understand. Ha! What an interesting word to use there--Brutality. To whom is this idea being brutal? To the reader? Are cold-hard realities punishing and harsh? What about to the writer? Is there not any comfort in comparison or metaphor? I can appreciate that a black snake on the ground is just a black snake on the ground. I can appreciate that a black cat crossing my path is just a black cat crossing my path and not bad luck. But where is the fun? That's brutal. Reality and stripping. Stripping things of their likely entities in order to get to the true entity. It hurts to not turn the cool, dark cave into an object that warms me someow. To not turn it into a desirable womb or eggshell or home.

Wouldn't the most "brutal" writer be the person who does not write? Is the intent in writing almost always leaning towards "pedestalism"? Is the subject not memorialized or celebrated through decorated words, exaggeration, metaphor, and memory? As a person who wants to write, I often tell myself, "Don't be better at writing about this than you are at actually doing this." I am often envious of people who I come across and find talented or experienced in one thing or another, but do not document it through some creative outlet. They just do and that's good enough. No blogging about it later. No self-taken photographs of themselves doing it. No paintings that are inspired by it. I'm not raging against the arts here. I'm just cheering for (and envying) those who can experience art (brutal!) without having the need to document it through something else that can be shown off. I think that is art.

And wow, I think that was a huge tangent.

I really loved the essay "Water" because for a long time now, I have been fascinated by mechanisms of survival, be it emotional/psychological survival, evolutionary survival, or wilderness survival. Abbey's voice is very evident here. To the point and quite humorous. I really loved how he began this essay with a conversation he had with a tourist. A tourist mentions that the park will be more enjoyable if there were more water. Abbey claims that the park would not be the way it is, then, if there were water. How often we crave just one small change to our physical or emotional environment, thinking that one small change would just make us more content and not really change our environment completely. And how wrong we are! To receive that one small change is more profound than we'd like to believe. I also loved, though, how peaceful this conversation was between Abbey and the tourist. I often found myself surprised by Abbey's calmness for I always associated his name with brutality, cynicism, and impatience.

But in "Water", I like how the form of his writing mimicked the content. For instance, he is blunt about dehydration and knowing when to just shit-give-up when in a desperate separation in the desert. He is blunt, brutal, and rational. This tone or personality he has specifically in this essay reflects (I'd like to believe) nature itself and how blunt, brutal, and rational it is. I might be pushing it a bit by saying nature is rational. But I do believe that nature follows a course that is influenced by cause and effect, chain-reactions, actions and consequences.

When someone approaches me with a story of their luck or good fortune, I tell them that they should thank the world. I believe in the whole butterfly effect phenomenon and how consequences and paths line up or pass at just the precise moment and causes that lucky, good thing to happen. Every statement has its little reasonings behind it.