​​Finding Abbey translated to French

n Search of Abbey
Translation from English: Virginie Girard
Colophon: Nicolas Moog

Edward Abbey (1927-1989) is the most famous North American environmental writer of the 20th century.
From his love for the deserts of the American West and his experience as a park ranger in national parks, Edward Abbey drew the material for his work. Author of eight novels and some fifteen volumes of essays, travelogues, journals, and poetry, he has become, since the 1960s, an icon for eco-activists and a source of inspiration for proponents of libertarian thought promoting civil disobedience and direct action against the excesses of techno-industrial society.
An heir to Henry David Thoreau, he has inspired authors such as Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, and Ron Rash. His first novel, * The Brave Cowboy * (1956), was adapted into a film in 1962, under the title * Lonely Are the Braves *, at the instigation of Kirk Douglas, who found in it one of his favorite roles. The publication in the United States of Desert Solitaire (1968; in French by Hoëbeke in 1999, then Gallmeister, 2010) and then of The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975; Le Gang de la clef à Molette (Stock, 1997 then Gallmeister, 2006) established him as a central literary and activist figure in the defense of the environment, which would give rise (with the works of Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson) to Earth First!, a radical environmental organization which would take as its logo... a wrench!
Fascinated by Abbey and his work, Sean Prentiss sets out in Abbey's footsteps, through the places where Abbey lived, meeting his friends (the writers Doug Peacock, model for the character of Hayduke in The Gang …, and Jack Loeffler, and David Petersen, his publisher), then in search of Abbey's grave, which his friends secretly buried in a desert in the West, which the writer loved so much.
More than just an adventure, this journey is for the author a true quest: a search for wild places untouched by human activity, and for a home to settle in. Like Abbey's books, it is also an elegy for untamed nature, for a way of life far from urban centers. Drawing on a close reading of Abbeywork, particularly his journals (previously untranslated into French), Sean Prentiss succeeds in bringing Abbey's thought to life and extending his influence, more than 35 years after his death.

Interior Images by Nicholas Moog