In Edward Abbey’s final book, Hayduke Lives!, he is rescued by “Paul and Nancy Z.” aboard the Sea Shepherd. Anyone know who Paul and Nancy Z. were?
Were they characters from an earlier book?
Paul Watson and Nancy Burnet? Are you sure they were fictional characters?
Interesting question. Abbey often drew on characters from his previous books. He also patterned characters after real people…often his own family or friends. I had kind of assumed that “Paul” in Hayduke Lives was Paul Bondi, the scholarly anarchist from The Brave Cowboy, since Jack Burns from that book also makes a cameo appearance in Hayduke. But I’m at a loss to identify “Nancy Z.”
OTOH, it may have been a more personal characterization…As noted, Abbey did use characters from his own close-knit family in his books. His father was a Paul, and Paul was Ed Abbey’s own middle name. And he had a sister named Nancy with whom he was close.
The entire ending of Hayduke Lives reads as kind of haphazard, makeshift even, and there is a reason for this. It is said that Abbey had a longer and more fitting ending in mind, but he simply ran out of time. He completed the final chapters more or less on his deathbed…knew the end was near and had to do a hurry-up job to finish the novel.
SS
Thanks for the replies. Edward Abbey was a friend of Paul Watson’s and the Sea Shepherds Conservation Society named a boat after him.