In early 1971, Abbey started work on what he was sure to be the first of his “two future masterpieces.” In his journal on February 28, he mentioned the title for the first time when he wrote, “THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG RIDES AGAIN.” (the caps were his)
And there it sat. In October 1972, Abbey acknowledged that he had been gripped with writer’s block and had “not writ a word” in months. Finally, a year later, the creative juices began to flow and by the late summer of 1974, Abbey was 675 pages into the manuscript; by November, the end was in sight. Abbey’s agent was already pitching the novel to publishers.
It’s doubtful that anyone taking the time to read this has yet to read the “Monkey Wrench Gang,” so I don’t think there’s a need to do a spoiler’s alert. You know that after a long chase into the Maze, the Gang, with the exception of Hayduke, surrenders to the authorities who had been after them for months. But Abbey had little knowledge of the law, especially in Utah, but had attempted to ‘wing it’ when he detailed the legal actions that would have followed their arrest. But he wanted to be as accurate as possible, so he turned to his legal brain trust for help. Abbey wrote a short note to Bill Benge and included several pages from the chapter called “Epilogue: The New Beginning.”
Benge came to the rescue.
