Marginal Notes: From the Vaults
Edward Abbey
Greetings from the wilds of northern Florida, where I’ve been holed up in a river cottage or out on the water with
for the past few days as she revises her upcoming novel and I try and fail to make time for research reading between the demands of pre-pub for Hot Wax (we’re running a galley giveaway this week, in case you missed it on IG). It’s always a relief to spend time away from my daily life, but even more so when I can spend that time with other writers, insulated from the rest of civilization.A little natural splendor doesn’t hurt.
But this kind of natural splendor is a pretty long way from Philly, which I’ve got to get back to by Saturday for the Pride month celebration at B&N. That means a ten-hour drive today and another five tomorrow. Instead of spending my last afternoon here staring at my laptop, I decided that for this month’s Marginal Notes, I’d rather release something from behind the paywall.
In keeping with the theme of seeking solitude and natural splendor, I’m resharing my Marginal Notes post from this time last year about a book I’ve been obsessed with since I first picked it up: Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire. It was an important read in the writing of Hot Wax, and given all the Dumpster Fire administration’s late assaults on public lands and environmental protections, now is a great moment to dive into Abbey’s work if you’re unfamiliar.
Marginal Notes: Edward Abbey
This weekend a book list I wrote for The Atlantic went live. The topic was insomnia, books to read when you can’t sleep. I’m something of an expert on this particular subject, which made it fiendishly difficult to narrow the list down to just seven titles. But there was one I knew would make the cut no matter how the selection evolved.
Back to our regular programming next week.