I WANT TO DO THAT TOO

Naturally, I've read excerpts from Walden many times, but thought that it was time to actually sit down and read the whole thing. What a mistake.

I may be labeled as a heretic and expelled from Massachusetts, but... meh. There are some enjoyable moments and lovely descriptions of nature, but for the most part I just found the whole thing too self-congratulatory to stomach.

In a twist of good timing, I mentioned this to a friend who had very recently read a piece in the New Yorker that does a MUCH better job explaining my reaction to this book than I could:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum

I had been so timid in daring to admit I wasn't perfectly enthralled with Walden that I can't share what a relief it was to, after finishing the work, go back and read that article and laugh/nod/cheer each step of the way.

I'd avoided Walden for years. Thoreau's prose has been too flowery for me to be patient with, and his outlook reeked of the intellectual roots of being a hipster. Having finally finished the memoir, I will now concede that he does give an interesting perspective, especially as a person that exists in a future that would probably be a dystopia to good ol' Thor.

There's not much I can add, nor will I contribute to too much more of the ink that's already been spilt over Walden. The fact that he was rejecting modern society in 1847 seems both quaint and prescient at the same time. The hypocrisy of "self-reliance" while his endeavor was being financed by his industrialist friend, as well as relying on domestic labor for his meals. His prose is typical of that of the mid-19th century - at a time when reading was the broadest form of entertainment, authors lay on the metaphor and florid language as if it's going out-of-style. At least Dickens had the excuse of being paid by the word, Thoreau just writes this way because he's suffering from a bout of thesauritus and, I suspect, harboring a superiority complex and a good deal of contempt for hoi polloi that naturally comes with being a Grecian weeb.

But at least it sounds nice being read aloud.

DNF

All good things are wild and free. Yes, I’m a modern day Thoreau

*ugh*
Had to read it for school...
...wanted to take my own life... in the woods.

Oh fuck off, Thoreau.

You were ~a total mountain man hippie living off the land~ that was in reality your bro Ralph Waldo Emerson’s backyard WHILE YOUR MOM DID YOUR LAUNDRY AND YOUR FRIENDS CAME OVER FOR TEA.

HOKAY. Uh huh. Sure, Jan.

Sometimes you read a book and desperately want to love it because you know, based on its reputation, that it's clearly a great work of literature. And I so wanted to love this. But it never quite happened. Yes, there are parts of the book which provide some truly exquisite prose but then there are parts that detail the intricate qualities of planting beans. Such is life. Like most people, I was aware of the book before reading it, almost felt I had, in fact, already read it, and sure enough my expectations were probably much higher than they needed to be. The story of a man (Henry David Thoreau) who chooses to live in seclusion for two years and, in doing so, gives us his thoughts on the experience, and on life itself.

My first problem (and this becomes more apparent as you read) is that he doesn't really live in any kind of meaningful seclusion; at worst, he lives at the end of a long street from the main village and even then still encounters rail workers, fisherman, and general passers-by. This slightly alters the experiment of living alone in the wilderness. Not that it matters because the book isn't really about that, it's about his worldview, his philosophy, his relationship with nature. As far as that is concerned, Thoreau is clearly a brilliant man, with a wonderful intellect and a poetic soul. Some of his wisdom is probably already familiar to you.

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,"

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

The book had moments that were truly amazing to read, sections where it felt like I was reading some of the most accomplished and beautiful sentences imaginable. But again, for every page where that was the case, there were six or seven pages where the book became rather dry and hard to engage with, walls of text that offered no respite or elevation. And yet you keep reading hoping that you don't miss the next moment of magical prose or some profound insight into the human condition. If I were to read this book again (or recommend it to others), I would probably dip in and out of it, without worrying about chronological order, fully ingesting the words, before putting the book aside for a while, and repeating the process. That way you can more thoroughly immerse yourself in the language and enjoy the stand-out moments with greater pleasure.

"Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or like fleets at sea, full rigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with light, so soft and green and shady that the Druids would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them; or to the cedar wood beyond Flint's Pond, where the trees, covered with hoary blue berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla, and the creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths full of fruit; or to swamps where the usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white spruce trees, and toadstools, round tables of the swamp gods, cover the ground, and more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, like butterflies or shells, vegetable winkles; where the swamp-pink and dogwood grow, the red alderberry glows like eyes of imps, the waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds, and the wild holly berries make the beholder forget his home with their beauty, and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden fruits, too fair for mortal taste."

Moments like the above are found within a swamp of text that too often doesn't allow you to fully appreciate what you're reading. Or it becomes lost amid a series of dry reflections that lack as much bite. As such the book failed to entirely entertain me but was one which I will probably revisit again in the future, and probably on more than one occasion. There is obviously something great here even if I couldn't fully embrace it this time round. But that's alright because if I did not like the book as much as others then perhaps this is because...

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

I read this book in English class with a hated teacher who gave us an incredibly difficult assignment around Walden that I struggled with and for which he provided insufficient support. Additionally Walden is just super boring. I've also tried to read Emerson as he and Thoreau share some Transcendentalist ideas but alas I find them both super boring.