The unity of opposites in the works of Edward Abbey.

摘要

I argue that Edward Abbey's works (both nonfiction and fiction) display the author's aesthetic and philosophy of blurring traditional genres regarding fiction and nonfiction (and their generic expectations). I approach his works from two general perspectives: (1) form, emphasizing that the forms that contain and control his writing present contradictions to such terms as fiction and nonfiction; and (2) theme, stressing that in many of his works, opposite and contradictory polemics, ideologies, notions, characters, and narrators are presented as if they were in complete harmony with each other. Moving from general to specific, I focus on particular essays and novels that I feel are most pertinent. Additionally, I refer to Abbey's journal entries as well as to biographical information.;In the introduction to The Journey Home, Abbey complained that his writing had been pigeonholed by terms such as “nature writing” and “natural history.” Rather, he chose the term “personal history” to account for his so-called nonfiction. Speaking of these works, he wrote: “Those books are in the main simple narrative accounts of travel and adventure, with philosophical commentary added here and there to give the prose a high-toned surface gleam. They have little to do with biological science” (xiii). However, within these accounts of personal history, Abbey frequently fell into a fictional narrative. My central focus for the “nonfiction” is Desert Solitaire, his most widely read work, but I also treat essays from other books. Moreover, I argue that Abbey's fiction is partly “nonfiction” or, to borrow his term, “personal history.” By focusing on certain entries from his journals, this study argues that the seeds for much within his novels came from his personal life.;In addition to the concerns of form which seem to point to (or resolve) issues of contradiction, I contend that there is an abundance of thematic contradiction in Abbey's “fiction” and “nonfiction.” In the novels, characters hold paradoxical ideologies. Characters who have certain beliefs act in ways inconsistent with these beliefs. In Abbey's other works, certain arguments only lead one-hundred eighty degrees in the opposite direction shortly thereafter. Doctrines are refuted and then later encouraged. I believe that Abbey was all too aware of these thematic opposites and seeming inconsistencies that fill his works and at times attempted to reconcile them. I conclude that Edward Abbey's aesthetic and philosophy require a blurring of genres regarding fact and fiction and their contradictory messages.