Renee Downing, the next to the last of Ed Abbey’s five ex-wives, reviews the new biography of Abbey, author of Desert Solitaire and other novels. “Women who slept with Ed Abbey constitute a sizable, although aging, female sub-population in the Southwestern United States, and [James] Cahalan, a tireless researcher, seems to have talked with most of them,” Downing writes. Cahalan didn’t talk to her, though, for his Edward Abbey: A Life. This is her first word on the subject, published in Tucson Weekly.
Howard Witt has resigned as editor of Washington City Paper, effective Nov. 16. “Please join me in congratulating Howard,” Jane Levine, publisher of City Paper's parent Chicago Reader Inc., says in a memo to staff. "The search will take as long as it takes to find a good editor," Levine says. Meanwhile, Associate Editor Richard Byrne has been named interim editor. MORE: The Washington Post reports Friday morning that Witt is leaving to take a job covering the State Department for the Chicago Tribune.
CityLife, a non-AAN weekly in Las Vegas, said nasty things about the MGM Mirage big boys in a story. The giant casino responded by pulling its ads at a particularly bad time for the company, the Las Vegas Sun reports. "They're not worthy of us," an MGM spokesman tells the Sun.
Jon Gaskell has resigned as editor of Cityview, the Des Moines Register reports. Register columnist Marc Hansen says Gaskell had been in the job 18 months, about the same "spin cycle" as several former editors of the paper owned and published by Connie Wimer. "An anti-establishment paper owned and operated by one of the flowers of the Des Moines establishment. Explain that one," Hansen writes.
