The book is a literary disaster. I have spent my adult life writing for a living. I can recognize good writing. [Thoreau] shows occasional flashes of brilliance, but most of the book is either irrelevant or insufferably boring. It is worse than National Public Radio's All Things Considered
This is ignorant. Thoreau's prose is modeled on that of the 17th-century writers he admired. The concluding lines of Walden are wonderful: "Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."
That Thoreau does not write like a 21st-century journalist is hardly cause for criticism.But Thoreau was a crank. "Henry," Emerson observed, "is, with difficulty, sweet." That their friendship endured, I suspect, owes more to Emerson's forbearance than to anything on Thoreau's part. Even Henry's night in jail was mostly for show. He left readily enough once Waldo had paid the fine.
Thoreau is best understood, I think, as a type of the Puritan: dour, sanctimonious, and rigid. Happily, he mostly inflicted his Puritanism on himself. His work is a record of a tormented life. Had he run away to sea, he would have ended up like Captain Ahab.
Frank, please go back and re-read just the first five paragraphs and tell me you don't think this post is an example of character assassination and an offensivley bad book review.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that Mr. North is if anything reviewing the 20th Century's misreadings of Thoreau, and mistaking them for Thoreau himself. He has the same ideological fever, just a different phase.
ReplyDeleteHi Lincoln,
ReplyDeleteI think what you say is pretty much on the money. And what George says is right as well.
Thanks for commenting.