A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal

Edward Abbey

St. Martin's Press, Aug 15, 1991 - Humor - 128 pages

For the first time in softcover, Edward Abbey's last book, a collection of unforgettable barbs of wisdom from the best-selling author of The Monkey Wrench Gang.

Notes from a Secret Journal

Edward Abbey on:

Government-"Terrorism: deadly violence against humans and other living things, usually conducted by a government against its own people."

Sex-"How to Avoid Pleurisy: Never make love to a girl named Candy on the tailgate of a half-ton Ford pickup during a chill rain in April out of Grandview Point in San Juan County, Utah."

New York City-"New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?"

Literature-"Henry James. Our finest lady novelist."

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - hardlyhardy - LibraryThing

An aphorism is to an essay as a haiku is to a sonnet. It delivers the message in as few words as possible. Edward Abbey (1927-1989) was a master of these one-sentence essays. Even in his longer work ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Devil_llama - LibraryThing

The best sayings of Edward Abbey - and some that weren't so good - collected together in a short, readable book that can serve as a valuable reference for anyone who wants something pithy to answer the next time they're confronted with an anti-environmental heckler.

About the author

Edward Abbey (1927-1989) was born in Home, Pennsylvania. He received graduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of New Mexico, and attended the University of Edinburgh. He worked for a time as a forest ranger and was a committed naturalist and a fierce environmentalist; such was his anger, eloquence, and action on the subject that he has become a heroic, almost mythic figure to a whole host of environmental groups and literally millions of readers.

Abbey's career as a writer spanned four decades and encompassed a variety of genres, from essays to novels to this volume, which was completed two weeks before his death. One of his early successes was the novel The Brave Cowboy, which was made into the movie Lonely Are the Brave. His 1968 collection of essays, Desert Solitaire, became a necessary text for the new environmentalists, like the group 'Earth First,' and his rambunctious 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, a picaresque tale of environmental guerillas, which launched a national cult movement and sold over half-a-million copies. Other titles include The Journey Home, Fool's Progress, and the posthumously released Hayduke Lives!

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal
• Author: Edward Abbey
• Illustrated by: Andrew Rush
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1991
• ISBN: 0312064888, 9780312064884
• Length: 128 pages
• Subjects: Humor / General; Nature / Essays