Saturday, June 02, 2012
Conjectural Emendations in Desert Solitaire
The only copy of Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (1968) in my personal library is the mass market paperback edition (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971; 13th printing, 1985). For other editions see James M. Cahalan, Edward Abbey: A Life (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001), pp. 317-318. Perhaps some of the misprints below have been corrected in other editions.
p. 1 (bottom line): For "intersteller" read "interstellar".
p. 23 (on a pair of gopher snakes): "Their heads and bodies rise, higher and higher, than topple together and the rite goes on." For "than" read "then".
p. 33: For "Primula specuiola" read "Primula specuicola" (the cavedwelling primrose).
Some more tentative corrections follow. Maybe I'm just doing to Abbey what Bentley did to Milton.
p. 13: "Stars which are usually bold and close, with an icy glitter in their light—glints of blue, emerald, gold." For "usually" read "unusually"?
p. 20 (on a diamondback rattlesnake): "With this tool I scoop the snake into the open. He strikes; I can hear the click of the fangs against steel, see the strain of venom." Although "strain" is possible here in the sense of "thread, line, streak," I wonder if Abbey wrote "stain". Venom is a fluid, which can visibly tinge or stain a metallic surface until it evaporates.
p. 30 (on harvester ants): "I cannot resist the impulse to shove my walking stick into the bowels of their hive and rowel things up." Nothing in The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia under rowel, noun or verb, seems to fit. A rowel is an object shaped like a little wheel, sometimes with spikes or spurs, and "to rowel" is to use a rowel. Read "roil" or "rile"? Perhaps the error arose from "bowels" earlier in the same sentence.
p. 112: "The rabbit feels the owl." Read "feeds"? In context, Abbey imagines the owl eating the rabbit.
p. 208: "I am not an atheist but an earthiest." Read "eartheist"? Note that "eartheism" occurs in David Petersen, "The Plowboy Interview—Edward Abbey: Slowing the Industrialization of Mother Earth," Mother Earth News 87 (May/June 1984) 19, where Abbey defined the word as "a basic loyalty to our planet, a reverence for our lives and lives of our families and friends, and a respect for the lives of the animals and plants that exist around us." I haven't seen the interview, but I quote from Cahalan, op. cit., p. 278, n. 28.
p. 216: "Anything rather than confront directly the antehuman, that other world..." Read "antihuman"? Perhaps the error arose from "prehuman" one sentence back.
Newer› ‹Older
p. 1 (bottom line): For "intersteller" read "interstellar".
p. 23 (on a pair of gopher snakes): "Their heads and bodies rise, higher and higher, than topple together and the rite goes on." For "than" read "then".
p. 33: For "Primula specuiola" read "Primula specuicola" (the cavedwelling primrose).
Some more tentative corrections follow. Maybe I'm just doing to Abbey what Bentley did to Milton.
p. 13: "Stars which are usually bold and close, with an icy glitter in their light—glints of blue, emerald, gold." For "usually" read "unusually"?
p. 20 (on a diamondback rattlesnake): "With this tool I scoop the snake into the open. He strikes; I can hear the click of the fangs against steel, see the strain of venom." Although "strain" is possible here in the sense of "thread, line, streak," I wonder if Abbey wrote "stain". Venom is a fluid, which can visibly tinge or stain a metallic surface until it evaporates.
p. 30 (on harvester ants): "I cannot resist the impulse to shove my walking stick into the bowels of their hive and rowel things up." Nothing in The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia under rowel, noun or verb, seems to fit. A rowel is an object shaped like a little wheel, sometimes with spikes or spurs, and "to rowel" is to use a rowel. Read "roil" or "rile"? Perhaps the error arose from "bowels" earlier in the same sentence.
p. 112: "The rabbit feels the owl." Read "feeds"? In context, Abbey imagines the owl eating the rabbit.
p. 208: "I am not an atheist but an earthiest." Read "eartheist"? Note that "eartheism" occurs in David Petersen, "The Plowboy Interview—Edward Abbey: Slowing the Industrialization of Mother Earth," Mother Earth News 87 (May/June 1984) 19, where Abbey defined the word as "a basic loyalty to our planet, a reverence for our lives and lives of our families and friends, and a respect for the lives of the animals and plants that exist around us." I haven't seen the interview, but I quote from Cahalan, op. cit., p. 278, n. 28.
p. 216: "Anything rather than confront directly the antehuman, that other world..." Read "antihuman"? Perhaps the error arose from "prehuman" one sentence back.
Labels: typographical and other errors
