Customer Reviews

Walden and Other Writings

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Teachers and Thoreau fans beware: this anthology contains heavily redacted versions of Thoreau's works and is not a reliable textual source. The version of _A Week_ is missing huge chunks of vital material, though the editor claims that he has included a complete version. Many titles and smaller details are wrong as well. The source editions for this anthology are pre-WWII. Much has changed for the better in the interim, and you cheat yourself by not ordering a more recent anthology--the Library of America one is excellent, textually impeccable.

How refreshing it was/is to pick up something like this. I had heard about it for such a long time and just refused to buy into the hype. Then again, I've been wanting to move out into the woods and live more simply before I read it. Now that I've finished it, all I can say is, "Don't wait! Read it now!" If you've got any soul left after what the concrete and highways have done to you, you'll love this book.

Also recommended: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, and Bark of the Dogwood by McCrae

I find it very sad that so many Americans think this book rubbish. It is pity to acknowledge that this generation of America is so disconnected with its past. This book, if nothing else, stands as a great testament to American individual freedom, which is obviously lacking in this day and age. Walden, along with many of his other writings, is a classic, special not only for its literary merits, but also for the tiny ray of light it sheds in a continent so full of highrises, shopping malls, and concrete. Those who find this book boring or "full of bs", should read it again while camping in the outdoors!

"A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck." ~Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard from 1833 to 1837. He had a complete fascination with the natural world and great literature in general. Life seemed to him to be a playground of thoughts. He draws from a great volume of understanding and his thirst for information seems unquenchable.

If you have read or listened to The Iliad and The Odyssey, you will especially enjoy some of his references. He also weaves verses from the Bible into his writing in an interesting way and you will appreciate his writing more if you have a basic understanding of Homer, Shakespeare, Plato, Chaucer, John Milton, Alexander Pope and Emerson.

Within this book you will meet a man of independent thought who is completely consumed with the sheer delight of discovery. To wander in the woods in solitary thought was a spiritual experience. He was also involved in a philosophical and literary movement which flourished in New England from 1835 to 1860. Both he and Ralph Waldo Emerson were at the center of transcendentalism and influential in American thought and literature.

Thoreau's thoughts flow from one subject to the other throughout this book. The contents include Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, The Allegash and East Branch, Walking, Civil Disobedience, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown and Life Without Principle.

Walden - Walden represents our ability to follow our individual dreams all while being willing to be satisfied with less in order to gain greater intellectual freedom.

Thoreau built himself a cabin on the edge of Walden Pond and lived there from 1845 to 1847. During this time he supported himself by surveying and growing vegetables.

He rambled about in the woods and collected his thoughts in detailed journals. His friendships seemed few and far between, however the friends did make seemed to turn into deeply satisfying relationships.

Walden Pond becomes Thoreau's lover. He drinks from her cool refreshment, swims in her enveloping waters, knows her every mood in summer or winter and observes her with the utmost attention as she freezes, melts and dances playfully in the sun. The descriptions of this pond are well-worth reading as he has a talent for capturing her very essence with his extensive vocabulary.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Thoreau and his brother made a river voyage in a boat they built. This experience was the basis for his first self-published book in 1849. One minute you are reading about the river and the next you enter an entirely different world of thought about friendship.

"You are the fact in a fiction, - you are the truth more strange and admirable than fiction. Consent only to be what you are. I alone will never stand in your way. This is what I would like, -to be as intimate with you as our spirits are intimate, -respecting you as I respect my ideal. Never to profane one another by word or action, even by a thought."

Cape Cod - Thoreau made the first of four trips to Cape Cod in 1849, and he later delivered lectures about his experiences.

Allegash and East Branch - A journey made in 1857 with Edward Hoar and an Indian guide who brings some humor to the tale. Edward gets lost and we see a side of Thoreau that shows his concern for his fellow human beings. He is normally just so independent.

Walking - Quite humorous at times and explains his love for walking and for letting the wildness in man come out to play.

Civil Disobedience - This essay seems to have been born during the time Thoreau had to stay in a prison because he refused to pay a poll tax. This essay is said to have influenced Gandhi in India and the civil-rights movement led by Martin Luther King.

Slavery in Massachusetts - A lecture given in 1854 at an Independence Day meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Plea for Captain John Brown - In October 1859 the abolitionist Capt. John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and Thoreau spoke in defense of his character.

Life Without Principle - Here he gives his views on rushing off to California in search of gold.

This man's mind was a deep forest and his descriptions of nature are quite inspiring. Where else would I have read about a whale's vertebra being used as a mortar or been so highly entertained by his conversations with an eccentric elderly gentleman?

There are also descriptions of shipwrecks and discussions about survival in the woods. Thoreau's humor will often catch you unaware and if you collect quotes, you will find quite a few.

Since most of us will never build our own homes, cook over a wood fire on a regular basis or take our baths in a pond, this book presents a lifestyle we may never experience. You will rarely find an individual in your own circle of friends who would encourage you to downsize your life in a super-size world.

The uncommon perspective presented in 732 pages will appeal to writers, poets, philosophers and anyone who values their thoughts more than material possessions.

During the week of reading this book, I was inspired to take a trip out to the mountains, walked along a river, and worked in my garden with a new sense of purpose. The world became a vibrant, new environment filled with possibilities.

Intense reading? Yes. A week's worth of reading will inspire you for a lifetime.

If at all possible, read while this book while floating in a boat on a pond or while on a camping trip in the woods.

~TheRebeccaReview.com

Walden and Moby-Dick are the two inexhaustible classics of the American Renaissance. You cannot call yourself an educated, reflective, responsible citizen if you haven't at least tried to absorb the messages in each: live lightly, think deeply, resist commercialism and the pressures of the crowd. Not easy, in an increasingly commercial, crowded, wasteful world, but your grandchildren will thank you for trying. For extra inspiration, check out Thoreau's wonderful essay "Walking" in this edition, and don't skip Prof. Howarth's introduction to Thoreau's life, work and character: it's lucid, informative and moving.

I would give this book 4.5 stars if I could. I probably should give the book 5 stars, but I won't. If you aren't a conformist, you will really enjoy this book. I THOROUGHLY enjoyed it! Thoreau's thoughts really delve into spiritual issues (subtlely most times) and how culture forms peoples' beliefs (whether they make any sense or not). There is infinite wisdom to be found in this book and I imagine the same questions will appeal to thinkers (if any are left by then) anytime in the future. It truly is sad that some of the reviewers didn't like this book at all, but to each his/her own. Some commented that anyone liking this book had been brainwashed, but I would argue the opposite. Today's youth (and adults) are brainwashed by advertising and the media as to what a "successful" life really entails. We've been programmed to buy, buy, buy without thinking one iota! Materialism is running rampant and it scares me to think that it is what our whole economy is run on (for the most part). Seems everyone these days is so busy with projecting an image to everyone that they ignore their souls--the blind leading the blind. We become so concerned about what others are thinking when essentially what does it matter? Debt is taking over peoples' lives while the rich get richer. We don't take the time to nurture our families, feed our souls, etc. b/c we're too busy trying to get ahead or too tired from trying. Thoreau's plea for simplicity is a message we all could use. Our lives have been decorated up greatly over the years, but the human condition remains essentially the same. Although Thoreau wasn't a professed religious man (not that you have to go to church to believe) I think his ideas are essentially spiritual in nature. It seems he did believe in a God. I think Christ's words accurately wrap up Thoreau's sentiment (poorly paraphrased) -- What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, if he forfeits his soul? As Thoreau's experience tells us, it's not just eternal life that we gain by finding perspective. We gain our life! Sorry to use this review as a preaching opportunity.

Thoreau is sometimes classified as a "nature writer", but his reflections extend into economics, politics, health, recreation, aesthetics, moral issues of personal character, fidelity to principle and self discipline, and to the very nature of reality and perception. He was a dominant figure in the Idealist school of philosophy labeled Transcendentalism. Emerson called Thoreau the truest American. This because of his passionate respect for the dignity of the individual. Years before the Emancipation Proclamation or the Civil War, more than a century before the American civil rights movement or the global push for 'human rights', there was Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government, which is commonly titled Civil Disobedience. (Mahatma Gandhi acknowledged Thoreau's influence on his life as did Martin Luther King, Jr.). Several decades before the environmental movement was born and ecological awareness began to seep into public consciousness, while John Muir was but an infant, there was Walden. On issues of human dignity, moral consistency, environmental responsibility, even diet and health, he was as an unappreciated light in a gray world of small thinking. In his short life, he had rather few readers and was generally thought of as being a nutty malcontent, as has been the case for so many thinkers of antiquity and of today.
"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad," states Thoreau, who like other great Idealist thinkers insists that Truth and the crowd generally stand in opposition to one another. Solitude being the state in which one can "discern his proper objects," Thoreau's record at Walden Pond is a wonderful account of such discernment. In his opening treatise on economy, Thoreau says that philanthropy is esteemed so highly only because we are so selfish. It is in his less provocative yet careful analysis of objects of nature that Thoreau delights his reader. His account of a battle between an army of red ants and an army of black ants is meticulous and absolutely wonderful. This great work of American writing and philosophy is an invitation to hear the music of "a different drummer."
"Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails."

Walden is a masterpiece of aberrance and non-conformity. It did a good deal to debunk the predominant concept that a life of luxury, superfluous wealth, and avarice was the "good life." He was a great iconoclast. He tells us that society and concupiscence can enervate us horribly. An ascetic exsistence is the only path to truth and spirtual elation, and society is a malediction upon us all.

This book did more to change my way of thinking than any thing I learned in high school or college. Thoreau spent two years of his life looking into the importance of staying simple and humble in a society where material wealth and ignorance were the norm. It was important some two-hundred years ago, and it's ten times as important now.

This is a book Thoreau wrote after living almost self-sufficiently in the woods for 2 years. He talks about daily living and society as seen through the eyes of a hermit/poet. Many famous quotes are from this book due to the clarity of some of his sentences. But a bit of warning before reading it, he may just convince you to quit your 9-5 american consumerism lifestyle.