The Monkey Wrench Gang is a novel written by American author Edward Abbey (1927–1989), published in 1975.

Abbey's most famous work of fiction, the novel concerns the use of sabotage to protest environmentally damaging activities in the Southwestern United States, and was so influential that the term "monkeywrench," often used as a verb, has come to mean, besides sabotage and damage to machines, any sabotage, activism, law-making, or law-breaking to preserve wilderness, wild spaces and ecosystems.

In 1985, Dream Garden Press released a special 10th anniversary edition of the book featuring illustrations by R. Crumb, plus a chapter titled "Seldom Seen at Home" that had been deleted from the original edition. Crumb's illustrations were used for a limited-edition calendar based on the book. The most recent edition was released in 2006 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Plot summary

The book's four main characters are ecologically minded misfits—"Seldom Seen" Smith, a Jack Mormon river guide; Doc Sarvis, an odd but wealthy and wise surgeon; Bonnie Abbzug, his young Jewish feminist assistant; and a rather eccentric Green Beret Vietnam veteran, George Hayduke. Together, although not always working as a tightly knit team, they form the titular group dedicated to the destruction of what they see as the system that pollutes and destroys their environment, the American West. As the gang's attacks on deserted bulldozers and trains continue, the law closes in.

For the gang, the enemy is those who would develop the American Southwest—despoiling the land, befouling the air, and destroying nature and the sacred purity of Abbey's desert world. Their greatest hatred is focused on the Glen Canyon Dam, a monolithic edifice of concrete that the monkey-wrenchers seek to destroy because it dams a beautiful wild river.

Legacy

The book received positive reviews.thumb|A monkey wrench and a stone hammer on the logo of [[Earth First!]]

The book is popular among the more extreme faction of the environmental movement, and contributed to the radicalization of some environmentalists. In his book Screw Unto Others, George Hayduke states that Edward Abbey was his mentor and mentions The Monkey Wrench Gang as the origin of the term monkey-wrenching. The Monkey Wrench Gang inspired environmentalist David Foreman to help create Earth First!

Sequel and adaptations

Hayduke Lives! continues the story from where The Monkey Wrench Gang left off.

A film adaptation of the book, written and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, has long been in pre-production. Neil Young is set to score the film, and Open Road Films is its distributor in the United States. The film rights holders for the book filed suit against the producers of Night Moves, claiming that the film's plot is significantly similar to that of the book.

See also

  • Adbusters
  • Culture jamming
  • Environmentalism

References

Further reading

  • Cassuto, David N. "Waging Water: Hydrology vs. Mythology in The Monkey Wrench Gang." ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment 2.1 (1994): 13–36.
  • Slovic, Scott. "Aestheticism and Awareness: The Psychology of Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang." CEA Critic 55.3 (1993): 54–68.
  • Box, C.J., Savage Run, G.P. Putnam's Sons, publishers, 2002;
  • "Rereading: Robert Macfarlane on The Monkey Wrench Gang
  • "As reviewed by Darren Botello-Samson, Department of Social Sciences, Pittsburg State University