The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel (inscribed with signed note)
NY: Holt, 1988. First edition. Hardcover. Inscribed on the half-title page: "to Chris -- all the best! Edward Abbey, SLC, 11/28/88." Also laid in is an autograph postcard signed to the recipient, Chris Jorgensen, sent from Oracle, Arizona, where Abbey lived. It reads in full: "28 June 84, Dear Mr. J: For information about Earth First! (which is my favorite radical environmental group), send $10 etc to EF!, Box 235, Ely, Nevada 89301 and you'll get a year's subscription to their more or less monthly journal. Lots of luck to you and I hope to read your writing in EF! or somewhere. Best regards, Ed Abbey." A nice note connecting Abbey to the group he famously inspired. Also laid in is an article, "The Anarchist's Progress," by Jim Fergus from Outside about the book; an article and obituary for Abbey from Desert News; a clipping of a memorial by publisher Gibbs Smith; and an advanced copy for a news story about potentially naming a wilderness after Abbey in Utah. A nice assemblage all and all. Jorgensen may be the newspaperman who went on to be the managing editor of the Billings Gazette. A very good copy in saffron boards, slightly soiled, with a blue cloth spine; a little dust soiling to text block faces, too. In a very good or better jacket. The postcard is very good with a few light coffee stains and crease down one side. The final novel published during Abbey's lifetime, which he considered his masterpiece. Very good / Very good. Item #2103
ISBN: 0805009213
About the book:
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."
Price: $950.00 save 5% $902.50