Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang: his novel of eco-defense.

See also the pages on the project to write a 50,000-word novel in November - National Novel Writing Month:

• 10 steps to prepare for writing a NaNoWriMo novel.
• Background.
• NaNoWriMo 2005 lessons learned.
• Plan A.
• Status day-by-day.
• Weekly tips and exercises from Baty's book.
• Working Days by John Steinbeck.
• Edward Abbey's Black Sun: his novel-in-a-month.
• Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang: his 1975 novel.
• Other writing work rates.

	Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang.
	And for why, see Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire.

The essence of The Monkey Wrench Gang

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey is a book of eco-defense. The four protagonists are fairly clear that they are attacking machines, not people. As such, they are not performing terrorism but sabotage and eco-defense.

While The Monkey Wrench Gang is a novel, it could serve as a handbook that our beloved French Resistance would have treasured in WWII, for recipes of how to incapacitate or destroy the machinery of the invaders. Were the USA to be invaded, it could come in handy for the Utah Resistance, the Nevada Resistance, the Texas Resistance, the Indiana Resistance, etc. A movie may be made in 2007.

The four proponents are

1. George Washington Hayduke, a Vietnam veteran and fierce force of nature. Relentless, violent, vengeful.
2. Seldom Seen Smith, a "jack Mormon" and river-raft guide with three wives in villages a day's drive from each other. motivated more by love of nature than by hatred of development.
3. Doc Sarvis, a skilled surgeon, able to bankroll the exploits of the Monkeywrench Gang. His medicine bag is the most important piece of his equipment when he is on the run.
4. Bonnie Abbzug, a nurse from Brooklyn, who initially works for Doc Sarvis and then settles into a long-term affair with him, and then has a collision with Hayduke.

Separately or together, they attempt to destroy: billboards, police cars, bulldozers and other earth-moving equipment, coal-mine railways, bridges, roads, dams.

Note Abbey's key rules monkeywrenching, as propounded by Doc Sarvis in this book and the sequel Hayduke Lives!:

1. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody you know. Nobody you don't know. Not even yourself.
2. Don't get caught.
3. If you get caught, you're on your own.

Statistics of The Monkey Wrench Gang

Some statistics (ignoring any time taken to revise and edit), many adapted from the Amazon concordance for The Monkey Wrench Gang:

• 11,957 sentences.
• Contains 125,732 word.
• Readable at 6th-grade level (by Flesch-Kincaid Index).
• Among the most-used words:

  Word.	Occurrences in 125,732 words
  bonnie	432 [name of 4th protagonist; over 0.3%]
  canyon	269
  doc	504 [name of 3rd protagonist; 0.4%]
  down	580 [0.4% here as in Black Sun].
  george	205 [first name of 1st protagonist; 0.2%; 1% with last name.]
  get	302
  hayduke	966 [last name of 1st protagonist; 0.8%; 1% with first name.]
  know	208 [0.2% here as in Black Sun].
  now	331 [0.2%-0.3% as in Black Sun].
  right	309
  road	232
  smith	698 [name of 3rd protagonist; 0.4%]
  time	214 [almost 0.2% as in Black Sun].

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