What do you think?
Rate this book
The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader
This book is different from any other Edward Abbey book. It includes essays, travel pieces and fictions to reveal Ed's life directly, in his own words.
The selections gathered here are arranged chronologically by incident, not by date of publication, to offer Edward Abbey's life from the time he was the boy called Ned in Home, Pennsylvania, until his death in Tucson at age 62. A short note introduces each of the four parts of the book and attempts to identify what's happening in the author's life at the time. When relevant, some details of publishing history are provided.
The selections gathered here are arranged chronologically by incident, not by date of publication, to offer Edward Abbey's life from the time he was the boy called Ned in Home, Pennsylvania, until his death in Tucson at age 62. A short note introduces each of the four parts of the book and attempts to identify what's happening in the author's life at the time. When relevant, some details of publishing history are provided.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
29 people are currently reading
332 people want to read
About the author
Edward Abbey
77 books2,078 followersEdward Paul Abbey (1927–1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views.
Abbey attended college in New Mexico and then worked as a park ranger and fire lookout for the National Park Service in the Southwest. It was during this time that he developed the relationship with the area’s environment that influenced his writing. During his service, he was in close proximity to the ruins of ancient Native American cultures and saw the expansion and destruction of modern civilization.
His love for nature and extreme distrust of the industrial world influenced much of his work and helped garner a cult following.
Abbey died on March 14, 1989, due to complications from surgery. He was buried as he had requested: in a sleeping bag—no embalming fluid, no casket. His body was secretly interred in an unmarked grave in southern Arizona.
Abbey attended college in New Mexico and then worked as a park ranger and fire lookout for the National Park Service in the Southwest. It was during this time that he developed the relationship with the area’s environment that influenced his writing. During his service, he was in close proximity to the ruins of ancient Native American cultures and saw the expansion and destruction of modern civilization.
His love for nature and extreme distrust of the industrial world influenced much of his work and helped garner a cult following.
Abbey died on March 14, 1989, due to complications from surgery. He was buried as he had requested: in a sleeping bag—no embalming fluid, no casket. His body was secretly interred in an unmarked grave in southern Arizona.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 10, 2010
Can you really ever separate the naturalist writings from the sociopolitical thoughts of Abbey? Would you ever really want to? I thought this collection did an excellent job of portraying the author in all his facets. The truths behind his fiction really begin to emerge by placing these short stories and excerpts side by side. I might not agree with everything Abbey committed to paper, but I can't deny the sheer honesty and poetry of it.
February 5, 2018
Edward Abbey was one of the good ones. A lover of the desert southwest, an anarchist, a dirty old man, and a fine writer with a sense of humor and outrage. This is a good collection from his books of fiction, non-fiction and essays.
March 24, 2008
One of my all time favorite Abbey collections. A must read for fans of this brilliant man.
April 10, 2021
As a collection of different pieces of Abbey's work, my four star rating of this one is an average: parts of this book get 3 stars, and parts get 5.
As others have written in reviews before me, at times Abbey's politics get a bit overwhelming. The collection at the end moves out of narrative and descriptive writing and become intensely persuasive in nature...at times, it seems to descend into a rant (and the version I have mixed up two essays' pages at the end, which was very confusing).
I must admit, I found the final essays enigmatic: Abbey is a naturalist to be sure, and he looks down upon anyone who does not share his passion for being out in the wild, but at the same time, he doesn't WANT anyone else there. He wants everyone to know how wonderful the wild world is, but it should remain solely for him (keep all those darn tourists out), while he casts judgment from afar on immigrants, Native Americans, city-dwellers, the disabled, and pretty much everyone who is not him.
Now...that said, there were places I found fascinating: as a resident of New Mexico who has spent some time in Canyonlands NP and Arches NP and passed through Moab a number of times, I reveled in the descriptions of that world, like the description of the first time he saw Albuquerque, my own home town: "In the evening we came to a town of 35,000 souls that lay in a shallow valley in the desert between volcanoes on the west and--on the east--a mountain range pink as the heart of a watermelon. Albuquerque. Through the middle of this small dusty city ran a wide but shallow river the color of mud, shining like polished brass under the cloud reflected light of sunset." That's the city (bigger now) that I see before me every day.
And there was a part of me that enjoyed the philosophical musings of the writer: "...it seems to me that the world is not nearly big enough and that any portion of its surface, left unpaved and alive, is infinitely rich in details and relationships, in wonder, beauty, mystery, comprehensible only in part. The very existence of existence is itself suggestive of the unknown--not a problem, but a mystery." Or later in the text, when he is readying to leave Alaska, " The planet is bigger than we ever imagined. The world is colder, more ancient, more strange and more mysterious than we had dreamed... No equation however organic, no prose however royally purple, can bracket our wold within the boundaries of mind." Wow. Well done.
And truly, there are few writers who can capture the beauty of the natural world in words and metaphorically tying it to life so well as Edward Abbey. For example, in describing Indian Paintbrush (a desert plant that grows profusely in the foothills where I live), he manages to capture the wonder of its blooming cycle in a way that teaches us about being human: "its cup of salmon-colored, petallike bracts toward the sky. [It] too is beautiful, with the special and extraordinary beauty of wild and lonely things. Every desert flower shares that quality. Anything that lives where it would seem that nothing could live, enduring extremes of heat and cold, sunlight and storm, parching aridity and sudden cloudbursts, among burnt rock and shifting sands, any such creature...testifies to the grandeur and heroism inherent in all forms of life. Including the human. Even us."
I feel I know Abbey, the person, much better at the end of the book. I'm not sure we would've gotten along very well, despite our common affection for the wild world. He seems to have a pigeon-hole where women fit (bordering on misogyny at some points) and sometimes just seems like a misanthrope. I get the feeling from his writing that he was a narcissist--he considered himself a human above all the other humans. It's easy to portray Eskimos in a negative light in a bar... much more complex to delve into the depths of how systems and history have led them there. And even easier to advocate for just burning the government down than to try to realistically solve the problems. Generally, I didn't care much for his fictional work--I wish the editor would've included more from "Desert Solitaire" and less from his novels--but would that have given me the true picture of Abbey as a whole? Probably not. I should just re-read "Desert Solitaire".
And so, back to where I started. Some of the book was delightful and I reveled in reading it and letting the pictures unfold in my mind; some of it I found just too much a trip into the mind of a person who I'm not sure I wholly admire.
As others have written in reviews before me, at times Abbey's politics get a bit overwhelming. The collection at the end moves out of narrative and descriptive writing and become intensely persuasive in nature...at times, it seems to descend into a rant (and the version I have mixed up two essays' pages at the end, which was very confusing).
I must admit, I found the final essays enigmatic: Abbey is a naturalist to be sure, and he looks down upon anyone who does not share his passion for being out in the wild, but at the same time, he doesn't WANT anyone else there. He wants everyone to know how wonderful the wild world is, but it should remain solely for him (keep all those darn tourists out), while he casts judgment from afar on immigrants, Native Americans, city-dwellers, the disabled, and pretty much everyone who is not him.
Now...that said, there were places I found fascinating: as a resident of New Mexico who has spent some time in Canyonlands NP and Arches NP and passed through Moab a number of times, I reveled in the descriptions of that world, like the description of the first time he saw Albuquerque, my own home town: "In the evening we came to a town of 35,000 souls that lay in a shallow valley in the desert between volcanoes on the west and--on the east--a mountain range pink as the heart of a watermelon. Albuquerque. Through the middle of this small dusty city ran a wide but shallow river the color of mud, shining like polished brass under the cloud reflected light of sunset." That's the city (bigger now) that I see before me every day.
And there was a part of me that enjoyed the philosophical musings of the writer: "...it seems to me that the world is not nearly big enough and that any portion of its surface, left unpaved and alive, is infinitely rich in details and relationships, in wonder, beauty, mystery, comprehensible only in part. The very existence of existence is itself suggestive of the unknown--not a problem, but a mystery." Or later in the text, when he is readying to leave Alaska, " The planet is bigger than we ever imagined. The world is colder, more ancient, more strange and more mysterious than we had dreamed... No equation however organic, no prose however royally purple, can bracket our wold within the boundaries of mind." Wow. Well done.
And truly, there are few writers who can capture the beauty of the natural world in words and metaphorically tying it to life so well as Edward Abbey. For example, in describing Indian Paintbrush (a desert plant that grows profusely in the foothills where I live), he manages to capture the wonder of its blooming cycle in a way that teaches us about being human: "its cup of salmon-colored, petallike bracts toward the sky. [It] too is beautiful, with the special and extraordinary beauty of wild and lonely things. Every desert flower shares that quality. Anything that lives where it would seem that nothing could live, enduring extremes of heat and cold, sunlight and storm, parching aridity and sudden cloudbursts, among burnt rock and shifting sands, any such creature...testifies to the grandeur and heroism inherent in all forms of life. Including the human. Even us."
I feel I know Abbey, the person, much better at the end of the book. I'm not sure we would've gotten along very well, despite our common affection for the wild world. He seems to have a pigeon-hole where women fit (bordering on misogyny at some points) and sometimes just seems like a misanthrope. I get the feeling from his writing that he was a narcissist--he considered himself a human above all the other humans. It's easy to portray Eskimos in a negative light in a bar... much more complex to delve into the depths of how systems and history have led them there. And even easier to advocate for just burning the government down than to try to realistically solve the problems. Generally, I didn't care much for his fictional work--I wish the editor would've included more from "Desert Solitaire" and less from his novels--but would that have given me the true picture of Abbey as a whole? Probably not. I should just re-read "Desert Solitaire".
And so, back to where I started. Some of the book was delightful and I reveled in reading it and letting the pictures unfold in my mind; some of it I found just too much a trip into the mind of a person who I'm not sure I wholly admire.
September 11, 2022
Since I have read many of Abbey’s books, most of the pieces in this collection were not new to me. What makes this collection unusual and worthwhile is that the selections are arranged chronologically, following Abbey’s life through his writings. As one of the blurbs puts it, ‘’it is a clever way to anthologize a talent who is impossible to pigeonhole ‘’. If you are new to Abbey, it is very good introduction to the man and his best work; if you are an Abbey fan, it is a welcome reminder of the originality of his voice and quality of his writing.
December 25, 2025
3.5
I did really like this, I love that he’s just an angry little old man and I’m definitely going to take some interest in reading his other works too! So cool to hear some of these places and be able to say I’ve been there
I did really like this, I love that he’s just an angry little old man and I’m definitely going to take some interest in reading his other works too! So cool to hear some of these places and be able to say I’ve been there
June 14, 2021
Great collection of some of Abbey’s best works
August 15, 2024
Recommended by a patient for the way he writes about the American Southwest, particularly Arizona.
January 17, 2011
"The human world of artifice and imagination can never equal the richness and variety of the real natural nonhuman world. But man belongs to the world; he is no more enemy or alien than the saguaro, the jaguar, or the spinning spider".
"As always when I am alone in a deep and solitary canyon, I become intensely aware of the stillness around me, of a need to be strictly attentive, fully alert, cautious and delicate with every step, as if I were under some kind of preternatural observation."
This gem was found at the Conroe, Texas public library and I read it mostly in the high desert of Texas, near the Rio Grande, and New Mexico, near Deming. It's the kind of book I want to keep until I come across someone who I think might appreciate it as much as I did, and pass it along to them.
"As always when I am alone in a deep and solitary canyon, I become intensely aware of the stillness around me, of a need to be strictly attentive, fully alert, cautious and delicate with every step, as if I were under some kind of preternatural observation."
This gem was found at the Conroe, Texas public library and I read it mostly in the high desert of Texas, near the Rio Grande, and New Mexico, near Deming. It's the kind of book I want to keep until I come across someone who I think might appreciate it as much as I did, and pass it along to them.
October 23, 2012
Fictional and factual. Abbey was an independent thinker, an extremist, a 'desert mystic,' and a prolific writier. Here his longtime editior, John Macrae, has put together a collection of Edward Abbey's essays, travel pieces, and works of fiction that parallel events in Abbey's unusual life. lj
January 5, 2011
This offers a look at a lesser-known Abbey.
August 7, 2009
Great, if you are an Abbey fan.
June 20, 2010
A good sampling of Abbey's work. Unique prose, very ornery political opinions.
August 26, 2010
The danggarn way the man can pack adjectives into a sentence, stir a soul, and bring the pull of the desert to your heart. phew!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews