Yes, I know that "Walden," first published in 1854, is considered a classic by many.
Some people revere the book, which is partly based on the two years Henry David Thoreau lived alone in a cabin by Walden Pond outside Boston. Thoreau's philosophy of rejecting frivolous trappings of modern life and returning to a spartan life close to nature strikes home with many people.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify," Thoreau famously says. At another point, he commands, "Live free and uncommitted." And he notes: "There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still."
But for every nugget of wisdom Thoreau offers up, there are a dozen other sentences that go off the rails. They start intriguingly and you wonder where he's going, then the sentence twists and bends and soon becomes so tangled as to be indecipherable.
One of his sentences -- I'm not making this up -- clocks in at 248 words. At another point he throws in a 173-word sentence about pine groves. immediately followed by a 194-word sentence. Were there no editors in the 19th century? I love a good puzzle, but no amount of reverse engineering can make sense of some of the writing.
Thoreau can write lyrically, even beautifully, but he doesn't know when to stop. At one point, for example, he describes the glassy surface of Walden Pond like this, "When you invert your head, it looks like the finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another." Nice, right? Yes, except Thoreau keeps restating the same point -- the pond is smooth as glass -- for six more pages.
Thoreau lectures readers on the failings of their lives ("Men live lives of quiet desperation"), while exhibiting exceptional arrogance. "I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and have yet to hear the first syllable or even earnest advice from my seniors."
"Walden" has no real story, no compelling direction, and the chapters are arranged in no particular order.
Then there are the contradictions. At one point Thoreau says, "I dearly love to talk," but later he says "I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." Just eight pages later he says, "I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way." Yet, throughout the book he ridicules most people as shallow and shortsighted.
I understand that Thoreau's philosophy strikes a nerve. I think we all recognize ourselves, even today, when he says, "Our life is frittered away by detail." We think of our phones and other gadgets when he says, "Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys which distract our attention from serious things."
And I'm sure many readers like that Thoreau encourages a lifestyle of working as little as possible.
But just when you start to think, "Hey, this guy Thoreau knows what he's talking about" he'll throw in a passage that makes you question his grasp of reality. Like this one:
"A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil."
Let's break that down. First, a man who brags that he barely works doesn't have time to shake out a mat? And second, a mat to wipe his feet is the beginning of evil? What would happen if -- gasp! -- someone offered him a towel?
Many people are fascinated by the idea of breaking free from the bonds of civilized society and living independently with few responsibilities or commitments. While few of us are willing to drop our jobs and leave behind our modern comforts, the idea that it might be possible to do so is an entrancing thought.
For those people, Thoreau is a shining light of possibility. But a small collection of Thoreau quotes will do you quite nicely; you don't need to read the whole book.
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