Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey, Abbey

Product Details

Synopsis

We first met George Washington Hayduke in THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG. As advertised, he was a wilderness avenger, industrial development saboteur, nighttime troublemaker and barroom brawler. No wonder he was last seen clinging to a cliff, under fire from air and ground.

Presumed dead by those who stalked him, whereabouts unknown to those who knew him, Hayduke lives -- and he does it with the same fiery vengeance and inspired scheming that made him the hero of eco-warriors everywhere.

When he appears this time, it's to take on Goliath, the worlds' largest mobile earth-moving machine, now munching its way through the desert in search of toothsome minerals.

Annotation

This superb sequel to The Monkey Wrench Gang, the novel that was called 'ribald, outrageous, and, in fact, scandalous' by Smithsonian, is finally available in paperback. Hayduke, an ex-Green Beret and 'wilderness avenger,' was last seen hanging from a cliff, under fire from both a helicopter and a posse. Now he's back, fighting against the despoilers of the earth.

Publishers Weekly

A posthumous sequel to the cult classic The Monkey Wrench Gang, unhappily, not the finest of farewells from a very original American writer. It is the sort of sequel that picks up all the characters years later; most of them -- Doc, Bonnie, even Seldom Seen Smith -- have more or less settled into respectability after their wild outrages against developers and ruiners of the Great Outdoors. Then along comes GOLIATH, the Giant Earth Mover, about to trample another precious wild canyon, and the fiercest of the old gang, George Hayduke, brings his friends unwillingly out of retirement for the biggest caper of their lives. It's ditzy, entertaining stuff, and Abbey, as always, strikes wonderful grace notes off the landscapes he loves. But the characters are a yard high, and the dialogue the sort that appears in bubbles over people's heads. Naturally the G.E.M. bites the dust, but in the course of the environmentalists' coup a man gets killed, contradicting what used to be the whole point of Abbey's writing: only machines died. This time out, his work seems a little sour and tired.