The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel

by Edward Abbey

Overview

The Fool's Progress, the "fat masterpiece" as Edward Abbey labeled it, is his most important piece of writing: it reveals the complete Ed Abbey, from the green grass of his memory as a child in Appalachia to his approaching death in Tuscon at age sixty two.

When his third wife abandons him in Tucson, boozing, misanthropic anarchist Henry Holyoak Lightcap shoots his refrigerator and sets off in a battered pick-up truck for his ancestral home in West Virginia. Accompanied only by his dying dog and his memories, the irascible warhorse (a stand-in for the "real" Abbey) begins a bizarre cross-country odyssey—determined to make peace with his past—and to wage one last war against the ravages of "progress."

"A profane, wildly funny, brash, overbearing, exquisite tour de force." — The Chicago Tribune

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805057911
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/15/1998
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.16(d)

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. 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!

Editorial Reviews

Praise the earth for Edward Abbey.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Abbey can attain a kind of glory in his writing. He takes scenes that have been well-traveled by other writers and recreates them as traditional American myth.” —The New York Times Book Review

“We are living...among punishments and ruins. For those who know this, Edward Abbey's books remain an indispensable solace.” —Wendell Berry

“He is the voice of all that is ornery and honorable.” —Alice Hoffman

From the Publisher