The Fool's Progress
Edward Abbey
<p><b><i>The Fool's Progress, </i>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. </b></p><p>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."</p><p>"A profane, wildly funny, brash, overbearing, exquisite tour de force." — <i>The Chicago Tribune</i></p>