I could be watching Gangland. Instead after a dinner with my local riding buddies I came home to read. Unfortunately I'm not reading the fun stuff, but instead I'm reading about birds and cancer which so far is a depressing novel that I hope gets better.
So for a chuckle, I thought I would turn back to Edward Abbey for a moment to revisit his description of a highway scene from
The Monkey Wrench Gang, a novel about eco-terrorism and ecojustice (1975).
Headlights swept across him from the passing traffic. Derisive horns bellowed as sallow pimply youths with undescended testicles drove by in stripped-down zonked-up Mustangs, Impalas, Stingrays and Beetles, each with a lush-lashed truelove wedged hard overlapping-pelvis-style on the driver's lap, so that seen from the back through the rear window in silhouette against oncoming headlights the car appeared to be "operated" by a single occupant with--anomaly--two heads; other lovers screamed past jammed butt to groin on the buddy seats of 880-cc Kawasaki motorbikes with cherry-bomb exhaust tubes--like hara-kiri, kamikaze, karate and the creeping kudzu vine, a gift from the friendly people who gave us (remember?) Pearl Harbor--which, blasting sparks and chips of cylinder wall, roared shattering like spastic technical demons through the once-wide stillness of Southwester night.
And some of us thought that Jap-bashing was a thing done in Harley garages. Here is it in a semi-canonical work of eco-literature. This book,
The Monkey Wrench Gang was optioned to be turned into a movie to be directed by Dennis Hopper at one point. T-shirts in this book's honor have been drawn up by R. Crumb. It is a fun story of burning down billboards, damaging bull dozers, and fighting a war against commercialism.
Abbey was not anti-motorcycle. He served at the end of the war as an MP in Italy, spending most of his time chasing women and exploring the mountains on the army issue motorcycle.
I don't find the anti-Kaw sentiment out of place for a man of his generation. I have heard it from others (although like everything else is not a universal). The Beetle passing without any additional commentary seems odd before it.
I'd rather be "jammed butt to groin" with my wife on the highway than reading tonight's homework. I like Terry Tempest Williams as a writer although this is the first time I've read her in my own studies. Oddly I have read her on my own and teach works by her. She is a good writer, especially if you want modern American creative non-fiction set in the West. Biographically I know TT Williams will live through this novel, because she is still alive so she must. However I'm not sure that the cancer-riddled mother is going to make it. I'm also not so sure about the burrowing owl that is being displaced by highway construction. I hope that they prove resilient. I suppose I should go see.
Homework and a few other things are getting in the way of my motorcycle riding.
