Book cover for The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel by Edward Abbey

The Fool's Progress

An Honest Novel

1998 Released
528 Pages
11-12 Hours
★ 4.21 3,417 ratings
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
Holt PaperbacksISBN 9780805057911

The Fool's Progress, the "fat masterpiece" as Edward Abbey labeled it, is his most important piece of writing: it reveals the complete Ed Abbey, from the green grass of his memory as a child in Appalachia to his approaching death in Tuscon at age sixty two.

When his third wife abandons him in Tucson, boozing, misanthropic anarchist Henry Holyoak Lightcap shoots his refrigerator and sets off in a battered pick-up truck for his ancestral home in West Virginia. Accompanied only by his dying dog and his memories, the irascible warhorse (a stand-in for the "real" Abbey) begins a bizarre cross-country odyssey--determined to make peace with his past--and to wage one last war against the ravages of "progress."

"A profane, wildly funny, brash, overbearing, exquisite tour de force." -- The Chicago Tribune

Edward Abbey

<p>Edward Abbey spent most of his life in the American Southwest. He was the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including the celebrated <em>Desert Solitaire</em>, which decried the waste of America’s wilderness, and the novel <em>The Monkey Wrench Gang</em>, the title of which is still in use today to describe groups that purposefully sabotage projects and entities that degrade the environment. Abbey was also one of the country’s foremost defenders of the natural environment. He died in 1989.</p>

More by Edward Abbey

Why Readwise Books?

Readwise Books is an ebook & audiobook platform that automatically logs how much you and your friends read, making it fun and easy to read more. Learn more →