I wonder if the archives in Arizona or Texas might offer a solution. I've skimmed through the latter recently, but I do not recall anything directly related to "Serpents of Paradise" or Drymarchon.

Cheers,
Drew

Andrew Husband
Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English at Texas Tech University
Member of the Literature, Social Justice, and Environment (LSJE) Initiative
Junior Graduate Student Liaison for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)

Personal: http://andrewhusband.wordpress.com/
LSJE: http://www.english.ttu.edu/grad_degrees/LSJE_default.asp
ASLE: http://www.asle.org/
Sowell Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World: http://www.swco.ttu.edu/Sowell/SowellCollectionSWC.php

"[T]he one who teaches one either the written or the oral word remains, for oneself, the most powerful among us." - Nuruddin Farah
From: Western Literature discussion [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Cremean, David [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2013 8:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Abbey's gopher snake?

Indeed, Tom!

David N. Cremean
Professor, English and Humanities
Black Hills State University
Spearfish, SD  57799
Past President, Western Literature Association (2009)
Review Editor, Cormac McCarthy Journal

"[A]ll fishermen know what the public is, else they would not show such eagerness to get away from it."--Odell Shepard, Thy Rod and Thy Creel


From: Tom Lynch <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Western Literature discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, February 25, 2013 5:42 PM
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Abbey's gopher snake?

I'd think a prank if there were something especially funny about Drymarchon, but there doesn't seem to be. It makes me want to check all of his uses of latin nomenclature.
-Tom

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 5:30 PM, Cremean, David <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Tom,

Or even a possible Abbeyesque prank, given other "true lies" and such in Desert Solitaire and other works---still, either way, very nice detective work!

David N. Cremean
Professor, English and Humanities
Black Hills State University
Spearfish, SD  57799
Past President, Western Literature Association (2009)
Review Editor, Cormac McCarthy Journal

"[A]ll fishermen know what the public is, else they would not show such eagerness to get away from it."--Odell Shepard, Thy Rod and Thy Creel


From: Tom Lynch <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Western Literature discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, February 25, 2013 3:11 PM
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Abbey's gopher snake?

So I was teaching Ed Abbey's "Serpents of Paradise" and wanted to post images of the various snakes mentioned in that essay on Blackboard for my student's to see. I typed in a search for images of “Drymarchon corais couperi" which he gives as the scientific name for the bull snake or gopher snake he brings into his trailer (21). But the results I got were for the eastern indigo snake, not the gopher snake at all. I can't believe I am the first reader to discover that Abbey got the scientific name of this snake wrong, but can't find any references to it. Has anybody else noticed this? Seems a pretty serious error to have gone uncorrected and unremarked upon all these years.
-Tom


--


Tom Lynch
Associate Professor
Chair, Undergraduate Studies
Department of English
202 Andrews Hall
P.O. Box 880333
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Lincoln, NE  68588-0333
<<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>>
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

New Books:



--


Tom Lynch
Associate Professor
Chair, Undergraduate Studies
Department of English
202 Andrews Hall
P.O. Box 880333
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Lincoln, NE  68588-0333
<<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>><<<>>>
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

New Books: