tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post7687568942710673877..comments2024-03-28T05:13:13.921-04:00Comments on Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Pissing on ThoreauFrank Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18410473158808750903noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-48282288300015144162016-07-04T19:19:01.588-04:002016-07-04T19:19:01.588-04:00Somebody posted a link to this article on this blo...Somebody posted a link to this article on this blog when the article first appeared last October.<br /><br />Having read it, I must say that the author did Thoreau the justice of reading him, which many of his admirers clearly have skipped. It seemed to me on reading <i>Walden</i> for the first time (about 30 years after it was assigned in school), that his popularity during the 1960s could be explained only by an inability of most of the readership to understand what was before them on the page.<br /><br />If a cause for sainthood were going forward, Ms. Schulz would be unanswerable as the devil's advocate; the proponents would have throw in their hands. But if the controversy concerns Thoreau's standing as a great writer, then I don't think that she has really hurt him. Robert Louis Stevenson and Jacques Barzun have made cooler estimates of his strengths and weaknesses. I wouldn't wish to live in a world arranged according to Thoreau's rules. Yet I could fill my garage with randomly chosen issues of The New Yorker before I found matter to outweigh <i>The Maine Woods</i> or <i>A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers</i>Georgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com