All the Wild That Remains

Starred review from February 2, 2015
Channeling writers Wallace Stegner (1909â1993) and Edward Abbey (1927â1989) and their mutual love of the wide-open spaces of the American West, Gessner (The Tarball Chronicles) delivers a spirited, ecologically minded travelogue, based on his exploration of the wilds of Colorado and Utah in summer 2012. In the author's estimation, Stegner and Abbey were "two of the most effective environmental fighters of the twentieth
century," though "their tones couldn't have been more different." Stegner, a Pulitzer Prizeâwinning novelist, practiced environmental advocacy through consciousness raising and by supporting legislation to protect the Western landscape. Abbey, regarded by many as a neo-Thoreauvian, encouraged "monkey wrenching" or environmental sabotage to obstruct the development of public lands. Gessner quotes liberally from the novels and essays of both writers, as well as from works by other nature writers and conservationists, as he tours a rapturously described Western wilderness endangered by drought, forest fires, and fracking. He writes with a vividness that brings the serious ecological issues and the beauty of the land into to sharp relief. For instance, he likens a dried riverbed overflowing from a sudden flash flood to "a dehydrated man choking on his first gulp from a canteen" and says of a landscape marred by oil drilling that "it looked as if someone had taken a knife to a beautiful woman's face." This urgent and engrossing work of journalism is sure to raise ecological awareness and steer readers to books by the authors whom it references.

January 1, 2015

This engaging book provides an intimate look at Edward Abbey (1927-89) and Wallace Stegner (1909-93), two of America's finest authors, both of whom chafed at being pigeonholed as regional writers. Certainly their fond, passionate focus was the American West, but there is much universality in their concerns. Gessner (Return of the Osprey) traveled to places they haunted, read all he could of their writings, and spoke with people who knew them well. His smooth, literate text is enhanced by photographs of Stegner and Abbey as well as chapter notes that read well. Stegner authored 46 works, including 13 novels, and won a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Abbey wrote 28 books, was a Fulbright Scholar at Edinburgh University, and may be best known for his book Desert Solitaire, which is often said to be as worthy as Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Stegner, clean cut, traditional, with a PhD, and Abbey, an uncompromising anarchist and atheist with a 1960s-ish appearance and lifestyle, provide rich grist for Gessner's mill, which he fully exploits for the benefit of any reader. Gessner himself has penned nine books. All three authors qualify as important environmentalists and writers. VERDICT Highly recommended for everyone interested in literature, environmentalism, and the American West.--Henry T. Armistead, formerly with Free Lib. of Philadelphia

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2015
This smooth book centers on a road trip to the haunts of Abbey and Stegner, two writers and environmentalists of moderate acquaintance. The reserved Stegner contrasts sharply with the outlandish Abbey. Their bodies of work differ, too. Abbey's literary legacy rests on his 1968 classic, Desert Solitaire, while Stegner wrote much influential nonfiction and won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for separate novels. Desert Solitaire, with its unapologetic, charismatic, and sensuous embrace of nature, maintains a vigorous cult following. Revered by veteran members of environmental debate, Stegner helped gain passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. Interviews with Abbey's activist colleagues reveal colorful characters, and Gessner spends a few delightful hours with Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer who also happens to be a major author. This warm, always-controlled book paints a clear picture of both men. But readers without a strong interest in the environment may wilt. For all of Abbey's magnetism and provocative flaws, and for all of Stegner's poignant family life and articulate perception, the road trip lacks full drive.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from January 1, 2015
The lives and legacies of two influential environmentalists.Gessner (Creative Writing/Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington; The Tarball Chronicles: A Journey Beyond the Oiled Pelican and into the Heart of the Gulf Oil Spill, 2011, etc.) weaves together biography, cultural criticism, travel and nature writing in this engaging record of a journey to discover the American West and two of the region's most prominent celebrants: Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) and Guggenheim Fellow Edward Abbey (1927-1989). Besides reading the two men's published works, Gessner visited the places in which they lived; interviewed family, friends, co-workers and students; and mined their manuscripts. Although both men felt passionately about the West and their commitment to environmentalism, they were starkly different: "Saint Wallace the Good" was the "intellectual godfather" of Western writers, "the man of order, the man of culture." He taught at the University of Wisconsin and Harvard, founded Stanford's creative writing program, patiently sat on environmental committees, and was a devoted husband and father. " 'Radical, ' " Gessner discovered, "was a word he came to despise." Abbey, scruffy and combative, was the "the man of wildness, the counterculturalist...serious about his anarchism," who carried out-and incited-acts of environmental sabotage. Married five times and a desultory father to five children, he was "more beatnik than cowboy...right down to the jugs of wine and many women." Yet for all their differences in style, they converged in recognizing the increasing vulnerability of the West to drought, fires, fracking and overwhelming tourism. They both battled romantic Western myths of cowboy culture and rugged individualism. Those myths and a "lyric celebration of nature," Stegner argued, undermined effective environmentalism, which should be focused on practical steps for ensuring responsible land use. Stegner and Abbey "are two who have lighted my way," nature writer Wendell Berry admitted. They have lighted the way for Gessner, as well, as he conveys in this graceful, insightful homage to their work and to the region they loved.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.