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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
If someone were to ask me what's a life-changing book I've read as of late, I have to say that it is Walden. While I don't ultimately subscribe to every belief and theory Thoreau posits, (and sometimes, he may come off as a pretentious prick), I still regard some of his views and how these came about as relevant. A brainchild of his experience during the cusp of Transcendentalism, Walden encourages its readers to live and experience life beyond the parameters of society. But despite this revolutionary take, Thoreau manages to elicit a comforting feeling brought by the company of simplicity, nature, and the rhythm of life.
Personally, it's not so much of a thoughtpiece that warrants a provoking deconstruction. It can be a bit boring in between the pages. But for me, it's more of an experience that introduced me to the prospect of an ideal life lived simply yet peacefully and with satisfaction.
Personally, it's not so much of a thoughtpiece that warrants a provoking deconstruction. It can be a bit boring in between the pages. But for me, it's more of an experience that introduced me to the prospect of an ideal life lived simply yet peacefully and with satisfaction.
Well, I appreciate the main thrust of Thoreau's book - live simply. But, then the message is drowned out by a smugness, a willingness to judge other people, and an intellectual self-importance that was interminable. Thoreau is as much interested in moral education, the edification of the individual, and his own character as he is in nature. But this sort of reaction seems pretty common across a number of sources. I am glad I listened to it and I am glad I finished it.
Thoreau is a pale shadow of his contemporary, John Ruskin. Though to be fair - Ruskin lived almost 40 years longer and published prolifically throughout his life. Thoreau dies of TB in 1862 at the age of 45.
Still 2 stars for being too smug.
Thoreau is a pale shadow of his contemporary, John Ruskin. Though to be fair - Ruskin lived almost 40 years longer and published prolifically throughout his life. Thoreau dies of TB in 1862 at the age of 45.
Still 2 stars for being too smug.
reflective
slow-paced
Although I found certain chapters to be quite engaging, others were tedious to get through as they didn't touch on anything I could relate to. My absolute favourite was the chapter on "Reading". As a classical student, his words on the classics were incredibly uplifting and made me smile.
I say I have read this, but really I haven't sat down and ever read cover to cover. Bits and part of it inspire me at different times, and I still have yet to read all of it.
Did not finish it, i made it to about 2/3 but I will not endure the torture that has been turning a single page on this book. It is repetitive and boring, I thought I would love it. I love hiking and being in nature, I hate consumerism and the use and toss society we live in. But seriously by this book alone the author sounds like a douche, a holier than thou douchebag
So thanks but no thanks - DNF.
So thanks but no thanks - DNF.
Begrudgingly I have to award Walden with the praise it begets being so firmly entrenched in the canon because of how dense and fascinating it’s content is — both intentional and unintentional — and how clearly and widely it’s influence is felt both admirable and awful.
I was regretting revisiting Walden about half way through. It was a decision no doubt inspired by quarantine and my own predilections for escaping into solitude every now and again. But, Thoreau’s philosophical musings were a pain. He can’t have a thought without praising himself for having it. He is as pompous and insufferable as his detractors claim.
What made Thoreau even more fascinating though was how similar his philosophy is to my own — I think we’re both ardent solipsistic thinkers — but how just a few differences in his thinking make him in many ways my opposite. He spends the first half of the book using his philosophy to both criticize the masses for not freeing themselves (as a man who went to Harvard — I shiver) and justify his opposition to charity (he said it doesn’t suit him), other’s education and — of course — paying taxes.
Thoreau is a proponent of solipsism ("Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state,") but in his practice his universe is the perfect one and he’s more frustrated with people for not buying into his philosophy than he is empathetic to them for their trials. Though I suppose all philosophers are egomaniacs in this way. Thoreau is a humanist — wanting people to claim the best of their lives — but a selfish one, and a narrow-minded one, suggesting he’s the only one that has an idea how to.
The second half of the book is almost enough to clean the sour taste of Thoreau’s philosophizing out of your mouth (not entirely — he suggests at some point caucasian people are inherently smarter than Arabic people).
Thoreau is a much better student than teacher as he spends the back half of the novel observing and recording nature and interpreting lessons from it and from his living. It brings about some truly incredible moments of writing, thinking, and ultimate truth:
"How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?"
"“A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there—in solitary confinement.”..."hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance."
On the resurgence of the ground-nut:
“In these days of fatted cattle and waving grain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield of the Indian's God in the southwest, whence he is said to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe.”
And perhaps most honestly:
"Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection."
It is thoughtful, unselfish, truly fascinated and fascinating writing. It is at times funny! (Thoreau’s strength — which makes you hate how good he is when you disagree with him) and tender. It is — along with Whitman’s Song of Myself — the great text I’ve read about the relativity of life. And if you can get through the first half, it makes a convincing case we should all spend a summer at Walden Pond. I’ll leave this with my favorite passage of the book:
“I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling-clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is "in full blast" within. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviae from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into.”
I was regretting revisiting Walden about half way through. It was a decision no doubt inspired by quarantine and my own predilections for escaping into solitude every now and again. But, Thoreau’s philosophical musings were a pain. He can’t have a thought without praising himself for having it. He is as pompous and insufferable as his detractors claim.
What made Thoreau even more fascinating though was how similar his philosophy is to my own — I think we’re both ardent solipsistic thinkers — but how just a few differences in his thinking make him in many ways my opposite. He spends the first half of the book using his philosophy to both criticize the masses for not freeing themselves (as a man who went to Harvard — I shiver) and justify his opposition to charity (he said it doesn’t suit him), other’s education and — of course — paying taxes.
Thoreau is a proponent of solipsism ("Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state,") but in his practice his universe is the perfect one and he’s more frustrated with people for not buying into his philosophy than he is empathetic to them for their trials. Though I suppose all philosophers are egomaniacs in this way. Thoreau is a humanist — wanting people to claim the best of their lives — but a selfish one, and a narrow-minded one, suggesting he’s the only one that has an idea how to.
The second half of the book is almost enough to clean the sour taste of Thoreau’s philosophizing out of your mouth (not entirely — he suggests at some point caucasian people are inherently smarter than Arabic people).
Thoreau is a much better student than teacher as he spends the back half of the novel observing and recording nature and interpreting lessons from it and from his living. It brings about some truly incredible moments of writing, thinking, and ultimate truth:
"How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?"
"“A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there—in solitary confinement.”..."hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance."
On the resurgence of the ground-nut:
“In these days of fatted cattle and waving grain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield of the Indian's God in the southwest, whence he is said to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe.”
And perhaps most honestly:
"Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection."
It is thoughtful, unselfish, truly fascinated and fascinating writing. It is at times funny! (Thoreau’s strength — which makes you hate how good he is when you disagree with him) and tender. It is — along with Whitman’s Song of Myself — the great text I’ve read about the relativity of life. And if you can get through the first half, it makes a convincing case we should all spend a summer at Walden Pond. I’ll leave this with my favorite passage of the book:
“I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling-clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is "in full blast" within. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviae from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into.”
It’s probably been roundabout a decade since I read this book (i’m updating this from goodreads, one by one bc I couldn’t figure out the export thing) — anyway! This book had a huge impact on me when I first read it, and it really oriented the trajectory of the following few years of my life. Later on I learned that Thoreau really never lived that far from civilization, and that his parents occasionally did his laundry while he was living at Walden Pond. And, of course, he possessed a level of wealth that allowed him to just F-off for a while and not work a job. All of these things really changed my perception of the book, and I might not enjoy it if I returned to it. Maybe I’ll try one day. But the fact remains that when I first read it, it was beautiful and moved me very deeply and became the spark which later built into a more mature politics and worldview. I’m grateful for where I am now, and despite everything misleading that Thoreau portrayed in this book, I may not be where I am if I hadn’t read it in my younger years.
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced