Book Review "The Monkey Wrench Gang"

Often called as the “Thoreau of the West” Edward Abbey's novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang” published in 1975 criticizes harshly the Industrial Development in the southwestern desert of the United States. The novel concerns the use of sabotage against machines in order to protect wilderness. Buried in the middle of his beloved desert after his death 1989 “The Monkey Wrench Gang is one of Abbey's most famous fiction works and most influential work towards environmentalism. It has not lost its timelessness - today it is more current than ever. It had been a great influence for radical  environmentalist groups and the term 'monkey wrench” has come to mean.
The story focuses on four main characters: the Mormon river guide Seldom Seen Smith, an odd but wealthy and wise surgeon Doc Sarvis, his young  female assistant Bonnie Abbzug and the Green Beret Vietnam Veteran George Hayduke. When Hayduke returns from war he finds his beloved southwestern desert threatened by industrial development. So he decides to do something against it. All four characters meet for the first time at a river trip. They all share their love for the desert and the concern about its future threatened by new roads, bridges and more industrial development. This is why they decide to work together to interrupt further industrialization in a desperate try to protect the beauty of the once intact desert and canyons. 
Financed by Doc the 'Monkey Wrench Gang' destroys bulldozers by filling sand in the tank, trains and bridges for example. Their biggest project is Glen Canyon Bridge which they seek to destroy to give the river its natural flow back. During these illegal activities they encounter inevitably with the law. One antagonist, Bishop Love, a person who is only interested in money and business and does not care about wilderness, made it his business to get the “Monkey Wrench Gang” into jail.
During the few weeks that are described in Abbey's book his characters experience more than some people do in a lifetime. Their wish to protect the wilderness by the more and more developing industrialization is more than comprehensible. Abbey's wonderful descriptions of the desert, canyons and river almost lead the reader to protect  the wilderness himself when he discovers how terribly everything already is destroyed by industrialization. Not for nothing the book has inspired many people to go out and to do something. Abbey's political message is as non conventional as the whole book: it is allowed to protest environmentally damaging activities by sabotage. If nobody does anything, how can we stop governments from building new roads and to industrialize wilderness more? If more and more machines get destroyed then companies would get in a financial disadvantage and decide not to go on with their projects. 
All his characters represent Abbey's concerns about wilderness protection; for example: "Hell of a place to lose a cow," Smith thinks to himself while roaming through the canyon lands of southern Utah. "Hell of a place to lose your heart. Hell of a place... to lose. Period".  Through the novel Abbey shows the reader how alive this place is. He shows that it is worth to protect this unique landscape, it is really not a place to lose. In the further course of action the reader really begins to hate antagonists like Bishop Love, people who waste no thoughts about what they are doing against this ancient landscape.
The interaction between the four different characters is very humorous described. Some readers even see this book more as a comic book than a novel. But Abbey's sense for humor does not downgrade the seriousness of the problem. It just values the reader with a good laughter from page to page.

All in  all  this book is a really  commendable book for everyone who is interest in environment, the wonderful landscape of Utah and Arizona or for people who just want to try something new. They want regret it. Abbey's real concern mixed with his sense of humor and his beautiful writing make the book unique and inspire the reader to do something to protect wilderness him- or herself.