Letters from a Desert Prophet

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Nothing in American history, not even the wars against the Indians, can equal the shame and brutality and cowardice of this war. It makes an obscenity of our Christmas holidays and sinks our own Government and all who passively consent to its atrocities down to the moral level of Stalinist Russia and Hitler's Germany.

Our so-called leaders speak of an 'honorable' withdrawal from Vietnam, but there can be no honorable conclusion to such a dishonorable war. The only decent thing we can do now is to somehow compel those moral degenerates in the White House and Pentagon to stop their cowardly attack on Vietnam and then begin at once, as best we can, to help the survivors in that devastated land rebuild their farms, homes, villages, and cities, and reconstruct their shattered culture. If, that is, they would even be willing to accept aid from our bloody hands.

Edward Abbey

Ultimately, no one mattered more to Abbey than family, including his anticapitalist father. One letter in Postcards from Ed addresses the compiler of a history of 'distinguished citizens' of his home county in Pennsylvania. 'Their contributions certainly exceed mine,' Abbey writes of his parents. 'Therefore . . . I would prefer not to be included in your book unless you also include them.'

To Paul Revere Abbey,
Home, Pennsylvania
(March 14, 1975)

Dear Dad,

Got your long letter and feel very bad. I am terribly sorry if I hurt your feelings. I did not mean to; I was responding to a letter from Mother in which she said you seemed to be wasting away, in effect, by staying in bed all the time. At least that was my impression of what she said, though I'm not sure where I put her letter now.

You know damn well you have always been my hero, and I know damn well you have worked very hard most of your life, and maybe you did, as you say, overstrain your heart at some time. Nor did I know that you have been to see two more doctors in addition to Bee. Of course, if all three doctors agree that you should take it easy, then I agree with them: you should. I guess it is unrealistic of me to think that you could continue to do the extraordinary things you used to do right up to the end of your days.

Painful subject-but surely we can be open with each other. I know that you are going to have to die sometime, probably before I do, and I hope very much that it doesn't happen to you in a goddamned hospital bed. Having witnessed that kind of end for someone I love already, I don't want to see it happen that way to you. On the other hand, I do want you to hang around as long as possible, just as I plan to do myself.

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