The Monkey Wrench Gang

One of the most important novels written in the last century, Edward Abbey's masterpiece, The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), should be read by as many people as possible. The message it contains and explores is not only pertinent but essential. If you struggle against an oppressive regime, overthrow it and install yourself as an alternative regime, only the actors have changed: the play remains the same. If you seek not to change anything at all but only to keep everything as it was (note the past tense) -- through sabotage, disruption and general harassment of the Big Soulless Machine -- then the world won't have to become better, it will be better already. Like all solutions, an 'ideal' can be corrupted easily; but how does one corrupt a doubt, a problem, a question, a quandary?