SOURCE: Rawlings, Donn. “Coyote in the Maze: Eighteen Critics Track Edward Abbey.” Western American Literature 33, no. 4 (winter 1999): 404-16.

In the following essay, Rawlings surveys the essays in Coyote in the Maze, finding that the poststructuralist character of the pieces supports rather than undermines Abbey's work.

Alone, we are close to nothing. … Through the art of language, most inevitable of arts—for what is more basic to our humanity than language?—we communicate to others what would be intolerable to bear alone.

—Edward Abbey, Abbey's Road

Peter Quigley, editor of a new collection of critical essays on Abbey, says that it “was inspired by the wholesale dismissal of Edward Abbey in the arena of ‘serious’ scholarship.” At conferences, he finds, Abbey is talked about “in corridors more so than on panels” (1). Clearly, Quigley's Coyote in the Maze: Tracking Edward Abbey in a World of Words will take a lot...