Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by brendapike
The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau
3.0
I started reading this when we climbed Mount Katahdin this summer, and as a travelogue, I found it fascinating. Despite growing up in Maine, I don't know much about it during that time period, and reading about how unsettled some of these now-familiar places were is intriguing.
However, I don't know how far to trust Thoreau. He seems to be the sort of person who exaggerates his own accomplishments and the faults of those around him. And I think he also intentionally exaggerates the wildness of the area. For instance, when going up Katahdin, he specifically approaches it from the side without the easier road, and throughout his travels he avoids other white men whenever possible. And he represents Sangerville in 1853 as being far more unpopulated than it actually was. At least two of my great-great-grandparents were born in Wellington (just two towns over) a decade before, indicating the presence of families there and not just hunters and lumbermen.
It's when he moves away from the travelogue and starts editorializing that I actually hate him. His disparaging comments about Indians in general and the guides he hired specifically were the worst. For someone who supposedly idolized nature, he certainly didn’t appreciate how closely Indians lived to it. He actually says at one point: “What a coarse and imperfect use Indians and hunters make of Nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated.”
Also, Thoreau—who once accidentally burned down 300 acres of Concord woods—regularly makes bonfires in the middle of the forest ten feet wide that flame up beyond the treetops, and talks about how the amount of wood he used for one night's campfire could keep a poor city family with an airtight stove in wood for the whole winter. But he bemoans the white pine and moose killed by others as a waste. I guess, to him, anything not in the service of beauty is a waste. He actually says at one point: "It is the poet who makes the truest use of the pine." He even talks about the frequent fires in Maine, "which we hear so much about on smoky days in Massachusetts," caused perhaps by the lumbermen regularly not putting out their fires, but he makes no connection between that and himself.
I should like Thoreau—I imagine we have many of the same ideals—but I can't bring myself to it. He reminds me too much of Collin Beaver ("No Impact Man"). Lots of grandstanding, much of it completely unrealistic. Lot of reflexive admiration for things that he sees as being more "authentic" than his own environment. Not much understanding of other people. His trips through Maine smack of the slum tourism that privileged Americans today do in third-world countries. You'll notice that when he spent his year in the woods, it wasn't in Maine, but in what was essentially a park in his own hometown.
However, I don't know how far to trust Thoreau. He seems to be the sort of person who exaggerates his own accomplishments and the faults of those around him. And I think he also intentionally exaggerates the wildness of the area. For instance, when going up Katahdin, he specifically approaches it from the side without the easier road, and throughout his travels he avoids other white men whenever possible. And he represents Sangerville in 1853 as being far more unpopulated than it actually was. At least two of my great-great-grandparents were born in Wellington (just two towns over) a decade before, indicating the presence of families there and not just hunters and lumbermen.
It's when he moves away from the travelogue and starts editorializing that I actually hate him. His disparaging comments about Indians in general and the guides he hired specifically were the worst. For someone who supposedly idolized nature, he certainly didn’t appreciate how closely Indians lived to it. He actually says at one point: “What a coarse and imperfect use Indians and hunters make of Nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated.”
Also, Thoreau—who once accidentally burned down 300 acres of Concord woods—regularly makes bonfires in the middle of the forest ten feet wide that flame up beyond the treetops, and talks about how the amount of wood he used for one night's campfire could keep a poor city family with an airtight stove in wood for the whole winter. But he bemoans the white pine and moose killed by others as a waste. I guess, to him, anything not in the service of beauty is a waste. He actually says at one point: "It is the poet who makes the truest use of the pine." He even talks about the frequent fires in Maine, "which we hear so much about on smoky days in Massachusetts," caused perhaps by the lumbermen regularly not putting out their fires, but he makes no connection between that and himself.
I should like Thoreau—I imagine we have many of the same ideals—but I can't bring myself to it. He reminds me too much of Collin Beaver ("No Impact Man"). Lots of grandstanding, much of it completely unrealistic. Lot of reflexive admiration for things that he sees as being more "authentic" than his own environment. Not much understanding of other people. His trips through Maine smack of the slum tourism that privileged Americans today do in third-world countries. You'll notice that when he spent his year in the woods, it wasn't in Maine, but in what was essentially a park in his own hometown.