CRITICISM

Berry, Wendell. “A Few Words in Favor of Edward Abbey.” In Earthly Words: Essays on Contemporary American Nature and Environmental Writers, edited by John Cooley, pp. 19-34. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Argues against prevailing critical and popular interpretations of Abbey and his work.

Levin, Jonathan. “Coordinates and Connections: Self, Language, and World in Edward Abbey and William Least Heat-Moon.” Contemporary Literature 41, no. 2 (2000): 214-51.

Explores differences in the approaches of Abbey and William Least Heat-Moon to discover “the irreducibly human, experiential perspective of any ecocentric sensitivity.”

McClintock, James I. “Edward Abbey's ‘Antidotes to Despair.’” Critique 31, no. 1 (fall 1989): 41-54.

Distances Abbey from the genre of nature writing and places him instead among writers such as Jack London and Robinson Jeffers who have a more ambiguous relationship with nature.

———. “Edward Abbey: An ‘Earthiest.’” In Nature's Kindred Spirits: Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Gary Snyder, pp. 65-87. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

Addresses the spiritualism behind Abbey's realism.

Morris, David Copland. “Celebration and Irony: The Polyphonic Voice of Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire.” Western American Literature 28, no. 1 (spring 1993): 21-32.

Finds in Desert Solitaire a voice of irony that tempers the revelatory tones of Abbey's views on nature.

Peterson, David. “Cactus Ed's Moveable Feast: A Preview of Confessions of a Barbarian: Pages from the Journals of Edward Abbey.” Western American Literature 28, no. 1 (spring 1993): 33-41.

Analyzes Abbey's journals.

Quigley, Peter, ed. Coyote in the Maze: Tracking Edward Abbey in a World of Words. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1998.

Collection of essays that address literary and social themes in Abbey's works.

Additional coverage of Abbey's life and career is contained in the following sources published by Thomson Gale: American Nature Writers; American Writers Supplement, Vol. 13; Contemporary Authors, Vols. 45-48, 128; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vols. 2, 41, 131; Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vols. 36, 59; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 256, 275; DISCovering Authors 3.0; Literature and Its Times Supplement, Vol. 2; Literature Resource Center; Major 20th-Century Writers, Ed. 2; and Twentieth-Century Western Writers, Ed. 2.