Burning Billboards and Other Literary Matters

Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang begins with “the aftermath” of the novel itself, the detonation of a bridge in the Four Corners Region of the American Southwest. Like an inspiration born of yippies or Al-Qaeda, the bridge is a high-profile target, sabotaged during a media event with officials glad-handing, local TV news crews videotaping, and the public witnessing: the bigger the spectacle, the larger the message, which is more or less, neo-Luddist.

It is generally a risky move to make literature overtly political (as opposed to presenting your polemics with subtlety, which is the greater trend; done right, nuance can be just as powerful). Fictional agitprop generally does not sell well with the public nor does it charm the midlist critics. Notable exceptions would be Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, both of which went on to affect the public conscience on such vigorous levels that their narratives entered the national debate over slavery and food safety, respectively.

Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang was published in 1975, a fascinating period in liberal dissent, in which some radicals had more or less abandoned sit-ins and peace marches in favor of violence. Members of The Weather Report and the Symbionese Liberation Army really did believe that terrorist acts against institutions that promote or profit off the industry of war and oppression were fair targets and through their destruction would come significant change. Putting down the love beads and picking up the Molotov cocktail, they were fearless, if not misguided individuals operating in a social climate that was moving comfortably towards The Hustle and cocaine on pleather love seats.

Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang is not a clan of hippies indoctrinated by the burgeoning Earth Day celebrations but are men of the earth who have soil in their fingernails and the wherewithal to live by their philosophy, that is that technology and industry are incompatible with the pristine beauty of nature. As Seldom Seen Smith, the polygamous, blonde, lanky, good-humored Mormon whose living, livelihood and life is the marvelous Colorado River, says:

"The river, the canyon, the desert world was always changing, from moment to moment, from miracle to miracle, within the firm reality of mother earth. River, rock, sun, blood, hunger, wings, joy-- this is the real... all the rest is androgynous theosophy. All the rest is transcendental transvestite transactional scientology or whatever the fad of the day, the vogue of the week."

Philosophically, he is right on with Doc Sarvis, a middle-aged surgeon with a pathological antipathy regarding highway billboards, of which he indulges in his pyrotechnic habits. Doc Sarvis views man’s fate through fiery-tinted apocalyptic goggles, the Devil’s Advocate in any conversation related to man’s inherent goodness:

"The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life. Now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness... then the madness becomes universal. And the universe will go mad."

Over a campfire of rations, whiskey, and beer, they discuss possible targets, Doc Sarvis working himself into a rage as he lists nature’s worst transgressors due a mean reckoning:

"And don't forget the billboards. And the strip mines. And the pipelines. And the new railroad from Black Mesa to Page. And the coal-burning power plants. And the copper smelters. And the uranium mines. And the nuclear power plants. And the computer centers. And the land and cattle companies. And the wildlife poisoners. And the people who throw beer cans along the highways."

Doc Sarvis’s secretary and chauffeur-cum-lover, Ms. Bonnie Abbzug, is a Bronx Jewish beauty who is the Patty Hearst of the gang, a city gal politicized by charismatic company and the delight of detonating bulldozers. As the men get carried away with their visions of sabotage, she reminds them that prudence would be key to survival. She’s the voice of the 1960s, bright, lovely, idealistic, meditative, and yet she can see the more clearly than the others:

"But they have everything. They have the organization and the control and the communications and the army and the police and the secret police. They have the big machines. They have the law and drugs and jails and courts and judges and prisons. They are so huge. We are so small."

Her philosophical rival within the group is George Washington Hayduke, a hairy, squat, muscular, vulgar Vietnam Vet with itchy trigger fingers and an incapacity to resist any kind of sabotage, as much for the fun factor as for the environmental statement itself. Though told in the third person, it’s clear that Hayduke is the story’s protagonist, if not Abbey’s altar ego, as he is the most offended by the pathetic turn in materialist America. Hayduke is a kind of rampaging Greenpeace Rambo whose end-all pastoral vision of America is compromised by his ingrained pessimism:

"When the cities are gone and all the ruckus has died away, when sunflowers push up through the concrete and asphalt of the forgotten interstate freeways, when the Kremlin and the Pentagon are turned into nursing homes for the generals, presidents and other such shitheads, when the glass aluminum skyscraper tombs of Phoenix Arizona barely show above the sand dunes, why then, why then, why then by God maybe free men and wild women on horses, free women and wild men, can roam the sagebrush canyonlands in freedom--goddammit!--herding the feral cattle into box canyons, and gorge on bloody meat and bleeding fucking internal organs and dance all night to the music of fiddles! banjoes! steel guitars! by the light of a reborn moon!-- by God, yes! Until... the next age of ice and iron comes down and the engineers and the farms and the general motherfuckers come back again."

Take or leave the politics, this is passionate prose, and the story flows with energy and humor. Progress of the narrative is simple and inevitable: after forming the Monkey Wrench Gang (also called the Wooden Shoe Conspiracy as the word sabotage is derived from the French sabot or ‘wooden shoe,’ as in “from damage done to machinery by sabots (Webster’s)), they progress from simple to complicated operations that lead to evermore close calls with the law, including some extraordinary chase sequences that would make great cinema (though it’s very unlikely corporate Hollywood would spend the big bucks financing such a piece). Throughout the Four Corners region, they have supplies cached for regrouping, survival, and the next act of mayhem. In case you were wondering, the typical inventory was such:

“The stores consisted of (1) food: tinned goods, dried meats, fruits, beans, powdered milk, sealed drinking water; (2) field equipment: medical kits, tarps and ponchos, fire starters, topographical maps, moleskin and Rip-Stop, sleeping bags, canteens, hunting and fishing equipment, cooking gear, rope, tape, nylon cord and (3) the basic ingredients: monkey wrenches, wrecking bars, heavy-duty wirecutters, bolt cutters, trenching tools, siphon hoses, sugars and syrups, oil and petrol, steel wedges, blasting caps, detonating cord, safety fuse, cap crimpers, fuse lighters and adequate quantities of Du Pont Straight and Du Pont Red Cross Extra."

If Abbey is political, he is also poetic and oftentimes funny. The Gang’s enemy, the representatives of industry are the kinds of people that "can hear a dollar bill drop on a shag rug." No institution is safe with Abbey, even cartoon characters suffer embarrassing acts of vandalism:

"Bonnie unbuttoned Smokey's fly, pictorially speaking, and painted onto his crotch a limp pet-cock with hairy but shriveled balls. To Smokey's homily on fire prevention Hayduke attached an asterisk and footnote: "Smokey the Bear is full of shit."

Mr. Abbey

Would you play with dynamite with this man?

In the copyrights page, Abbey declares that though the novel is “fictional in form,” it is “based strictly on historical fact.” Mischievously, he adds that “it all began just one year from today.” It seems then that his novel is a call to arms for all environmental warriors to take up wrenches against industry. As we all know, such a Neo-Luddite revolution never occurred but that is not to say it might happen yet with Abbey some smiling godfather angel poet.

Abbey, who had an FBI file going back to the 1940s, was a fringe thinker with a golden pen, but is not known to have engaged the system as his fictional characters had. But he was at the right place at the right time, as it’s hard to believe that he could get away with his politics in our contemporary and endless War on Terror. Finding an empathetic editor and courageous publishing house would have been extraordinarily tedious. When the character Hayduke speaks for Abbey, “Because freedom, not safety, is the highest good," he is contradicting the literature of our age, with its sanitized, whitewashed machinations. Had he lived long enough, maybe the author would have gone rogue in his eighties. Abbey was too aware of what was at stake to stand by idly. Best to let the bard enjoy the last word:

"That ultimate world... the final world of meat, blood, fire, water, rock, wood, sun, wind, sky, night, cold, dawn, warmth, life. Those short, blunt and irreducible words which stand for almost everything he thinks he has lost. Or never really had..."

The Serendipity Factor Divided by the Butterfly Effect

Those skilled in 'Where's Waldo?' workbooks would perform admirably in any sort of safari but particularly in one in which we are searching for the Siberian Crane. You presume we would have to journey into the Russian heartland in order to spot this large and gorgeous bird, yawning its dazzling wingspan, wading in some ice-cold creek, scouring for small fish with an elongated, orange beak. Well, the Siberian Crane is a migratory bird, sensibly fleeing the miserable Russian winter for the savannah plains of Keoladeo National Park in India's eastern Rajasthan. Only, this year, as it has been annually for nearly a decade, the rains failed, the monsoon didn't hit and the water levels at the park looked depressingly shallow. So the birds did not come, flying the proverbial coop, resulting in a tranquil landscape, but eerily so.

Fortitude, patience, and an encyclopedic knowledge make bird watching quite worthwhile; skills most of us lack in considerable sums. Nevertheless, I journeyed into the park optimistically. Hardly an expert on the birds of South Asia, I was mostly excited to ride a bicycle through a national park. Before that, I hired the service of a cycle rickshaw driver hoping he might acquaint me with the prime vista spots.

Unfortunately, he was able to reveal very little. The birds must have flown across the continent, thousands of miles, bursting with anticipatory glee for the Indian winter only to be disappointed by the water levels and compelled to continue their peregrinations. Or had their expectations already been lowered considerably? Maybe this year they flew right by, or simply paused long enough to rinse out the dust.

As we rode past kiosk signposts with illustrations of the migratory birds, the rickshaw driver mumbled in a low voice, "No come." The greylag goose: "No come." The Asian Open Bill Stork: "No come." The truly radical Painted Stork: "No come." But he pointed out the kiosks, regardless-- something to look at since there was nothing much moving in the trees. "Many parrot sightings," someone at the hotel had quipped facetiously. He might have added crows, swallows and various sundry fowl familiar from home.

There are no Big Five birds to market the pastime (as there is such a trademark in African safaris where you can count on five fingers your sightings of rhinos, cape buffalo, elephants, leopards, and lions). Like all cultural subgroups, birders have a particular vernacular that isolates them from the greater population who "doesn't get it." One theory that explains their phenomenon is its relation to the male hunting instinct. Another is that it appeals to the male habit of "systemizing" (men are disproportionately represented in this particular pursuit). Birders can be handy if you are in the market for new binoculars or a telephoto lens. Of course they have a thriving online presence. On birdwatching.com, you can peruse new technologies ("gifts for birdwatchers"), advice on birding with your kids, tips for "watching birds with your ears", and even a special section entitled "Birding for Hard Times," which contains a number of bromidic themes referring to the activity's high returns on a low-cost investment: stress relief, good exercise, family fun, friendship, and happiness: "the ultimate wealth." However, in Keoladeo, morale was low among the amateur ornithologists, birders, and bird nerds, who grumbling into their zoom scope, spoke wistfully of better days.

Riding through a small, narrow path on my bicycle I spotted an altogether different sign posted explaining all so much: "In your next incarnation you might be an endangered species. Please help save the Siberian Crane." Appealing to one's better karmic instincts is a nice maneuver, especially in a Hindu nation. However, as far as animal conservation goes, India's karma is somewhat dubious. Bureaucracy has done little to heed the warnings of animal rights activists. The Bengal Tiger-- one of the symbols of India's majestic history and its many kingdoms-- is near extinction. As for the birds, the droughts have not helped. Yet even when the monsoons don't fail, there is not enough water for India's ever-expanding population. And as tourism and industry improves the lot of many, an emerging middle class is going to use more water simply because it can. With the arrival of new money lifestyles evolve in kind. Consequently, when golf courses go up so does the dust from an empty lake. And the birds: they just fly on, abandoning the park for something greener, wetter, and perhaps more pristine, wherever that may be...

I spent two days exploring Keoladeo. Unfortunately, officials insist that visitors use bicycles issued by the National Park. Thus your sole option is a noisy, clanky, single gear bicycle, which tends to notify most wildlife of one's presence long before you are able to view the animal yourself. There is no element of surprise. Nevertheless, there were a few moments of accidental sightings. I surprised a family of jackals savoring a cow's carcass and a mongoose and I enjoyed a fierce stare down. I was charmed by mud flap turtles, giant creatures, wrestling in their gooey environment beneath a small copse of deciduous. Owls and kingfishers delighted.

And that night I dreamt of the Siberian Crane. She was lovely in that cavernous, blue sky.

Edited from an earlier draft dated 2006