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andjhostet 's review for:
Walden
by Henry David Thoreau
Honestly pretty miserable experience reading this. 98% of it is just holier-than-thou, pretentious, hypocritical, insufferable garbage, and it's definitely not worth wading through it all to hit upon the 2% of it that is actually quite brilliant.
Thoreau glorifies isolation and acts as though he's too good to be lonely, however he receives visitors every day, can see people riding the train, can hear the train whistle, and only lives 2 MILES from a town. He acts as though getting away from humans is cleansing, but talks about how good it feels to hear the train whistle and think about society. He literally has people do his chores for him while he pretends to be rugged on his friends land.
He's preaches self-reliance, yet is a squatter on his buddies land, and literally lives off of gifts that people give him. He says that philanthropy is "overrated" yet he is a mooch and entirely dependent on it. Pure hypocrisy.
He occasionally blindly stumbles upon brilliance and profundity and has some quotable moments but I don't see how anybody can take this guy seriously. He just seems like a hypocritical, self-aggrandizing, pompous asshole to me, and constantly contradicting himself. Maybe I'm too simple to understand it.
Thoreau glorifies isolation and acts as though he's too good to be lonely, however he receives visitors every day, can see people riding the train, can hear the train whistle, and only lives 2 MILES from a town. He acts as though getting away from humans is cleansing, but talks about how good it feels to hear the train whistle and think about society. He literally has people do his chores for him while he pretends to be rugged on his friends land.
He's preaches self-reliance, yet is a squatter on his buddies land, and literally lives off of gifts that people give him. He says that philanthropy is "overrated" yet he is a mooch and entirely dependent on it. Pure hypocrisy.
He occasionally blindly stumbles upon brilliance and profundity and has some quotable moments but I don't see how anybody can take this guy seriously. He just seems like a hypocritical, self-aggrandizing, pompous asshole to me, and constantly contradicting himself. Maybe I'm too simple to understand it.