Opinions

Why ‘Walden’ endures, in spite of everything

I have been struggling to master the boxes of books, papers, photographs, memorabilia and just plain junk that I have acquired in my 74 years. In some circles, this is known as “death cleaning” — but I would call it life cleaning.

I walk into the garage, open a box and confront my life.

Life cleaning is so depressing I can’t take it for long. But this summer, I was surprised by my progress — boxes of magazines and books are going out the door to good homes. I thought schlepping boxes to the post office would depress me. Not so. I feel relief.

Digging through boxes is slow. Books in particular take a lot of time because there is always some reason — excuse — not to part with them. Maybe I will need them for future research. Maybe I should look not for just a good home but the ideal home.

Then I open a book and think, “You read this book more than 50 years ago. What do you suppose you will make of it now?”

This is what happened to me with Henry David Thoreau's "Walden." A few pages became 100, and 100 became 200, and then it was time to cook dinner.

I read “Walden” as a high school student. My copy, a cheap reprint from the 1920s, was a gift from my mother’s brother Mort Sullivan. He probably wanted to improve me — read a good book, become a good man. I am certain this is the copy my uncle gave me because of the teenage scrawl on the inside cover: “Property MJC Via Mort.”

ADVERTISEMENT

A number of sentences, a few whole paragraphs, are underlined. This doesn’t tell me much about Thoreau, but does say something about the 17-year-old reader. He was still in his Jack Kerouac-Allen Ginsberg phase, seeking radical wisdom that would show up bourgeois America.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation,” Thoreau wrote. I underlined this with obvious relish. But all these years later, I can see that at 17, I knew as much about desperation and resignation as I did about romantic love. That is, nothing — except what I got from books.

In the 21st century, I also think that Thoreau was wrong. “Lives of quiet desperation” is not much help in understanding how people actually live. How could Thoreau — or anybody else — know? Talk about a grand inference. Yes, there are desperate people, but as a wise old man told me, “Nobody is the same person 24 hours a day.” He also said, “Your emotions are like the weather — always changing.” But then, let’s be modest and admit penning an aphorism, as my friend did, is not living a life. Life is far more demanding than any aphorism.

Thoreau was opinionated. This is part of his legend and his opinions on nature, self-reliance, personal liberty and the simple life are rightly celebrated. He is a muscular, vivid writer whose descriptions of Walden spring, summer, fall and winter are often beautiful.

He was also a moralist, and as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who loved him said, his virtues "sometimes ran into extremes," imposing a "dangerous frankness" on friends and neighbors.

James Russell Lowe, who knew and respected Thoreau, called him a humorless egotist.

“Walden,” I found as an old reader, is replete with a great man’s prohibitions.

In it, Thoreau advises readers not to:

  • Read newspapers.
  • Use the U.S. mail.
  • Ride railroad trains.
  • Drink coffee, tea, wine, or spirits.
  • Follow fashion.
  • Eat meat.
  • Hunt (although this is fine for boys learning woodlore).

Amy Lowell, a member of the same family as James Russell, began a book of literary criticism this way: “Gentle Reader, The book you are about to peruse has only one object, which is to amuse.” Thoreau would have been appalled. Amuse?

Much of the final chapter of "Walden" reads like a canned graduation speech.

“Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and world within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state ...”

This is pure bombast. It survives because Thoreau said it.

By now, Gentle Reader, you have figured out what it took me hours to understand reading Thoreau in my garage. The old man is not the young man awed by Thoreau. He has too many scars on his soul to be wowed by a sage preaching rules to live by.

And yet.

I have been to Walden twice, made special trips from Boston because I read the book while young. Once, a friend and I walked completely around the pond in spring — both believing the pond survives only because of Henry David Thoreau. The walk took maybe 45 minutes. What a small pond that made such a big splash in American life!

The other visit occurred in midwinter during a snow storm. I was much younger and played tag on the ice with friends as the snow accumulated. Before long, a lawman drove up and with a megaphone ordered us off the ice. We were unsafe, he said.

I suspect that Thoreau would have liked young people paying homage to him on thin ice. And he would be the first to tell us that his ideas were unsafe — just as he wanted them to be.

ADVERTISEMENT

Michael Carey is an Anchorage Daily News columnist.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.

Michael Carey

Michael Carey is an occasional columnist and the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News.

ADVERTISEMENT