Reviews
All The Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West by David Gessner
thisisak's review against another edition
5.0
First, I love books that use adventure or travel to help tell the story. Gessner’s road trip through Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming was super fun to read, and I actually had just visited one of the places he talks about a few days before. Second, I love how everyday of an environmentalist David Gessner. His bit about needing to “own” being a hypocritical environmentalist and not making it a pure, moralistic movement is a message I love. Third, I knew a decent amount about Edward Abbey but not much about Wallace Stegner, so this was a great intro.
whats_margaret_reading's review against another edition
4.0
A double writer's biography, giving my to read list a healthy boost and a context for a lot of the mystification and 20th century thinking about the American West.
m_chisholm's review against another edition
4.0
David Gessner's travel/bio hybrid reads like an adventure through America's western landscape and the landscapes of the minds of that region's great authors. His treatment of both authors is at times random and sputtering, but this interrupting method pulls the reader into Gessner's stream of consciousness as he roams through the lonely and varied western ecosystems (and some eastern ones).
The great strengths of this book derive from Gessner's personal attachment to the authors. Many (even in the Goodreads review circle) have criticized him for this near deification, but I think it's essential to carrying out the mission of driving home how transformative the American West is on our individual psyches and how both Abbey and Stegner wrote such personal accounts of that transformation in all forms of prose.
Gessner also does a great job highlighting the risks to the destruction of the land past the 100th meridian, namely through the lack of water and overabundance of fracking exploitation. The "boom and bust" cycle of the American West is far from over, and as Gessner repeats like a running mantra: "scar this dry landscape and the scars remain."
The weaknesses of this book come out of the drive to perhaps do too much, although I don't see any way around this. This biography/personal travel narrative could have easily been 500 pages long (although it probably wouldn't have sold any copies). Because of its inappropriate brevity, the reader only gets small glimpses of the complexity of both authors' work and lives. At times, Gessner devolves to the common denominator of both men, which approaches stereotype: that Abbey was a wild, immature rogue and Stegner a steady, "company-man" author put up on a pedestal by all around him (and even himself). Gessner does at times try to dismantle these over-simplifications, but he never really arrives at a good counter-narrative that sticks.
Perhaps in these weaknesses, however, is a strength, which is that the brevity of exploration will make the reader go to these authors' body of works to explore more and more the authoritative "minds of the West." I know I will certainly spend much more of my upcoming days with my mind buried in the stories and essays of these sages of our dry frontier.
The great strengths of this book derive from Gessner's personal attachment to the authors. Many (even in the Goodreads review circle) have criticized him for this near deification, but I think it's essential to carrying out the mission of driving home how transformative the American West is on our individual psyches and how both Abbey and Stegner wrote such personal accounts of that transformation in all forms of prose.
Gessner also does a great job highlighting the risks to the destruction of the land past the 100th meridian, namely through the lack of water and overabundance of fracking exploitation. The "boom and bust" cycle of the American West is far from over, and as Gessner repeats like a running mantra: "scar this dry landscape and the scars remain."
The weaknesses of this book come out of the drive to perhaps do too much, although I don't see any way around this. This biography/personal travel narrative could have easily been 500 pages long (although it probably wouldn't have sold any copies). Because of its inappropriate brevity, the reader only gets small glimpses of the complexity of both authors' work and lives. At times, Gessner devolves to the common denominator of both men, which approaches stereotype: that Abbey was a wild, immature rogue and Stegner a steady, "company-man" author put up on a pedestal by all around him (and even himself). Gessner does at times try to dismantle these over-simplifications, but he never really arrives at a good counter-narrative that sticks.
Perhaps in these weaknesses, however, is a strength, which is that the brevity of exploration will make the reader go to these authors' body of works to explore more and more the authoritative "minds of the West." I know I will certainly spend much more of my upcoming days with my mind buried in the stories and essays of these sages of our dry frontier.
ccaedi's review against another edition
5.0
One of my favorite books to have read this year, and honestly I'm not sure why. It was so calming, and reading about the west felt a little like coming home, even as I was literally coming home. I also loved the mixture of nature writing and biography. The mingling of person and place, and time and space lent a sense of greater perspective.
maevejreilly's review against another edition
5.0
Good read when you are traveling out west. Took this along on trip to the Grand Canyon and Arches.
joannema7's review
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
At the start of the book, Gessner noted that many folks from the east coast are unaware of Ed Abbey and Wallace Stegner’s works. I’m from the Midwest (and from a tropical island) and, it’s true, I had not known of them until my increasing interest in environmental issues started pointing me toward them. This is a great book to introduce one to these two authors. I definitely appreciate this and am now inclined to read some of those works.
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