{"id":9559,"date":"2012-07-16T05:40:29","date_gmt":"2012-07-16T05:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/07\/16\/journal-notes-on-ed-abbey-from-may-1997\/"},"modified":"2012-07-16T05:40:29","modified_gmt":"2012-07-16T05:40:29","slug":"journal-notes-on-ed-abbey-from-may-1997","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/07\/16\/journal-notes-on-ed-abbey-from-may-1997\/","title":{"rendered":"Journal Notes on Ed Abbey from May 1997"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ed_abbey_tv\"<\/a>I purchased Edward Abbey\u2019s posthumous collection of journal extracts entitled Confessions of a Barbarian<\/em> (ed. Petersen, Little, Brown & Co., 1994) in April of 1997. Here are some journal jottings inspired by it. <\/span><\/p>\n

From the notebooks of Paul Brunton to the journals of Ed Abbey \u2013 from one world to another. Each of us inhabits his own world. You're damned lucked if in a lifetime you meet two or three kindred souls who can enter, even if only a few steps, into one's own world.  The common world in which we meet with many is but the lowest common denominator of our private spheres of meaning. <\/span><\/p>\n

Abbey bears the marks of an undisciplined man, undisciplined in mind and in body. A slovenly reasoner, a self-indulger. <\/span><\/p>\n

Paul Brunton, Ed Abbey, Whittaker Chambers, Gustav Bergmann . . . mysticism, nature, politics, <\/span>ontology . . . . The wild diversity of human interests and commitments.  It never ceases to fascinate and astonish me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ed Abbey: a romantic, the makings of a quester, but swamped by his sensuality. Held down by the weight of the flesh. The religious urge peeps out here and there in his journals, but his crudity is ever-ready to stifle any upward aspirations. <\/span><\/p>\n

Abbey: the sex monkey rode him hard night and day. But did he want to throw him off? Hell no! Augustine wanted to be chaste, but not right away. Abbey did not want to be chaste. Can an incontinent man gain any true and balanced insight into the world and life? Lust, like pride, dims the eyes of the mind, and eventually blinds them. <\/span><\/p>\n

The sex monkey in tandem with the booze monkey, a tag team tough to beat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which is more manly, to battle one\u2019s sensuality like Augustine, or to wallow in it like Abbey? Is it cock and balls that make the man? Clothes? Social status? Money? Political power?  Big truck? (Abbey: "The bigger the truck the smaller the penis.") Or is it that weak little Funklein<\/em>, the fragile germ of divine lght that we carry within?<\/span><\/p>\n

The crudity of Abbey, the elevation of Thoreau. <\/span><\/p>\n

Abbey: a tremendous sensitivity to the beauties of nature and music, but larded over with an abysmal <\/span>
crudity. Half-educated, self-indulgent, willful. But he knows it, and a tiny part of him wants to do something about it, but he can\u2019t. His base soul is too strong for his noble soul. Goethe\u2019s Faust complained, \u201cZwei Seelen, ach, wohnen in meiner Brust, und der einer will sich von den anderen trennen<\/em>!\u201d Abbey could have made the same complaint about two incompatible souls in one breast. <\/span><\/p>\n

Abbey: proud of his sensuality, his big dick, his five children whom he thinks are just darlings while meanwhile holding that others should not be allowed to procreate. A misanthrope \u2013 but not when it comes to himself, his family, and his friends. A tribalist of sorts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The battle between the noble and the base. In Ed Abbey, the base usually wins. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ed Abbey made a false god of nature. There is no god but Nature, and Abbey is her prophet.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for his writing, I'll take it over the social phenomenology of suburban hank-panky served up by East Coast  establishmentarians such as John Cheever and John Updike.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I purchased Edward Abbey\u2019s posthumous collection of journal extracts entitled Confessions of a Barbarian (ed. Petersen, Little, Brown & Co., 1994) in April of 1997. Here are some journal jottings inspired by it. From the notebooks of Paul Brunton to the journals of Ed Abbey \u2013 from one world to another. Each of us inhabits … Continue reading “Journal Notes on Ed Abbey from May 1997”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[581,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abbey-cactus-ed","category-literary-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}