I wrote a story over here, under another edition of Walden on all-consuming. I read the book some time ago, so I have no idea what edition I read, or if it is still in print, but it really doesn’t matter.

This was a beautiful book and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys nature, or who may want to view things in a different light. Thoreau is a very poetic writer and I often read the same paragrah two or three times just to fully absorb his words.

I agree with a previous poster before me that said the conclusion was one of the better parts of the book. He captured the importance of self-discovery so perfectly. I was struck by how personal and intimate his writing was throughout. It was if he was writing a letter across generations.

Thoreau‘s Walden is a classic, no doubt about it, and worth reading twice. The best chapters are the first and last, “Economy” and the “Conclusion”, in which he exhorts us to spend as much time as we can doing what we want, and not what others expect of us. If life is too costly, just stop spending money and go live in the woods, he says. And that’s what he did.

However, he did cheat a little in doing this himself. He went to live on a friend’s land. Back in the 1800’s, how many poor people had friends who would let them squat on their property? How many people today could do this? I think it’s easier said than done.

Further, he completely ignores the fact that many people have health issues which are quite costly to treat. He himself suffered from tuberculosis, and died at the early age of 44. Would he have lived longer if he had had more money to spend on treatment? Perhaps money was not an issue for him, since a successful treatment for tuberculosis had not been developed in his lifetime. But it was for many others with treatable diseases, and continues to be today.

These are the main flaws that I see in Thoreau’s arguments to live simply – they are unrealistic in some respects. I give the book four stars because of these problems, and also because it’s overly lengthy and could have used a strong editorial hand in trimming some of the last chapters, which got rather boring. Despite all that, I still find his views very appealing. And now that I live close to Walden Pond, the book is made richer than it was for me originally, because I can “put a face to the name” of local features like Lincoln Woods and Flint’s Pond, and towns like Fitchburg.

Thoreau on the energy crisis (p.270):

bq. It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold…. In this town the price of wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how much higher it is to be this year than it was the last.

I’m still slogging through Walden; the last few chapters strike me as downright dull!

p 43: “Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three feet wide… and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night… and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free.”

I’m still reading Economy, the first section of Walden. This snippet reveals an underlying theme in the book. Thoreau has a very narrow measure of what is necessary, against which he weighs everything he does: He wants to be free to do whatever he wants, and for him that does not overlap well with a paying job. He looks at every new purchase with an eye to how much this will really cost him in terms of freedom. How many hours of working for someone else, doing something he doesn’t care about, will this cost him?

As I expected, I find that Thoreau is a cranky man. Mainly, he complains about his New England neighbors. Apparently, they think life is too hard and that they must work from sun up till sun down just to survive. Thoreau sees it differently; he thinks that they are too consumerist, always wanting a bigger plasma TV, the latest model gas-guzzling SUV, and a McMansion to fill with stuff.

This is one of the things that I like about Walden; this attitude mirrors my own. I certainly have a lot more junk than Thoreau did, but I tend toward being extremely frugal. I often find work as unbearable as Thoreau did, and chafe at the need to make a living when there are so many things that I’d rather be doing (some of them are free, but some of them cost money, necessitating the job, and making me complain like Thoreau’s neighbors did). When I think of buying an item (for example, a GPS system, which tempts me mightily), I consider how much food the money would buy if I were to take on a backpacker’s lifestyle, and how I’ll probably just have to sell it eventually, when and if money gets tight. That kind of thinking puts the temptation in perspective.

I read Walden when I was quite young – I’m guessing around the age of 12 or so. I enjoyed it, and it made a big impression on me, to the extent that Thoreau was one of my heroes for quite some time. I particularly liked his ideas about individualism and his adherence to the spartan lifestyle.

My recent visit to Walden Pond has prompted me to reread the book. With age, my memory of it has faded and my impressions have changed. I have a feeling that I won’t like it very much, and that I’ll think Thoreau is a big complainer, permanently stuck in his adolescent phase. We’ll see.