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by: Edward Abbey
List Price: $15.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.20 You Save: $4.80 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780452265622
ISBN: 0452265622
Label: Plume
Manufacturer: Plume
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: January 30, 1991
Publisher: Plume
Sales Rank: 134452
Studio: Plume
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Long considered an underground classic, The Journey Home stands beside Desert Solitude as one of Abbey's most important works. In a voice edged eith chagrin, Abbey offers a portrait of the American West that readers will not soon forget, presenting the reflections and observations of a man who left the urban world behind in pursuit of the natural one and the myths buried therein.
Amazon.com Review:
'I am not a naturalist. I never was and never will be a naturalist.' So Ed Abbey opens The Journey Home, a collection of essays that turns every page or two to some aspect of the natural history of the desert West. Abbey had recently been compared to Henry Thoreau as a writer who had made a home both literary and real in the wild, and he was having none of it: he wanted to be thought of as a novelist and environmental activist, not as the author of gentle essays on self-sufficiency and the turn of the seasons. The Journey Home is thus full of politically charged, often enraged essays on such matters as urban growth ('The Blob Comes to Arizona'), the gentrification of the small-town West ('Telluride Blues--A Hatchet Job'), and wilderness preservation ('Let Us Now Praise Mountain Lions'). He raised a few hackles with this book, but he also found many devoted readers, fans who wanted and got an update of and rejoinder to Abbey's Desert Solitaire. Agree with him or not, you can't fault Abbey for his honest self-assessment: 'I am--really am--an extremist,' he wrote, 'one who lives and loves by choice far out on the very verge of things, on the edge of the abyss, where this world falls into the depths of the other. That's the way I like it.' --Gregory McNamee
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - The Journey Home
As usual Abbey was brilliant. It was one of the best novels I ever read.
Rating:  - A good collection of essays to follow "Desert Solitaire"
When I sit down to write about Edward Abbey, I feel a pang of affection and sorrow, because through his writing I have really grown to like the guy. I wish I'd been able to meet him.
If you've read his works, I'll bet you know what I mean. He's the kind of guy you want to take camping with you. He's the first one you call when you get an itch to shoulder a pack and head out.
Even if you don't agree with everything he says (or how he says it)--and I know I don't--you just have to ... Read More
Rating:  - He had a great sense of adventure.
Much as others have already said Edward Abbey was a remarkable man. There is no doubt that Desert Solitaire stands out like a beacon in the desert of the usual literature, now called nature writing, available today. It is the shear life, zest and energy that permeates the work as it does here, although not all the time, in "The Journey Home". Abbey's stories this time are more personal and although still not at all self conscious they are deeper because of this. In this sense they are akin to the ... Read More
Rating: - Abbey for President - Ed come back we need you now!
Its been over ten years since I read Desert Solitaire and I've combed through a couple of his works looking for another collection of stories that hit me with the same "between-the-eyes" impact as Desert Solitaire. Well, I found it with Journey Home. To me Edward Abbey represents the second coming of John Westly Powell. He, like Major Powell, foresaw the westward expansion of the U.S. and in the case of the desert southwest instinctively knew that water would be the limiting factor. It's important ... Read More
Rating: - Arguably Abbey's best
That claim may seem a little rash in the face of Abbey's great prose work, Desert Solitaire, but this book in my view offers a more intimate and personal look at Abbey himself and provides some great insights into his formation as writing placed withi the context of the American west. One of the strengths of this work, as opposed to Desert Solitaire, is the broadness of subject matter covered. Abbey begins by recounting his life changing hitch-hiking, train jumping tour across america to the west in the ... Read More
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