Some people just don't "get" Thoreau

Roughly ten years ago, a well-educated journalist who is a staff writer for the New Yorker published a scathing hit job on Concord's favorite son, Henry Thoreau, a true American, and one of the most esteemed writers in the history of American letters. The piece was initially published with the crass moniker "Pond Scum," though I have to believe that a naturalist and a saunterer like Thoreau would have chuckled approvingly at being called such a name.

It's a bit of a mystery what prompted Kathryn Schulz -- who is by all accounts a talented, thoughtful writer -- to tee off on Thoreau, but she also appears to hate Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and so she may simply be acting out the frustration so many high school students feel when confronted with "classic literature" that doesn't connect with them. For, while the piece is quite clearly well written, it's presented with all the patience and pondering of a petulant child.

Many Thoreauvians, as well as the general population of well educated readers and, of course, English teachers, were able to quickly discount most of Schulz's complaints and criticisms while also acknowledging that Thoreau can be "a bit prickly" as an individual, as a writer, and as a thinker. We're all going to have issues with someone as prolific on all manner of living as Thoreau was -- a man who, in addition to his incredible output of published writing in a short forty-four year life, also composed a near daily journal of more than two million words. 

But most of us don't have such sneering contempt for such an iconic and significant writer, and that's mostly because we have put the time in to actually understanding the writing of the man. In other words, Kathryn Schulz simply doesn't get it, or him. And numerous accomplished writers responded in kind with responses, retorts, rebuttals, and corrections of the many myths about Thoreau and the simple ways he is misunderstood. Some of the best are Jedidiah Purdy's "In Defense of Thoreau" and Rebecca Solnit's "The Thoreau Problem." And perhaps the most astute piece about all the things that Schulz gets wrong is Donovan Hahn's "Everybody Hates Thoreau." 

And, as I've been doing my work on "The Punk on Walden Pond," I'd like to add some insight from the esteemed and beloved American writer, E.B. White, who was an ardent Thoreauvian.

“Many think [Walden] is a sermon … an attempt to rearrange society ... an exercise in nature loving … a rather intimidating collection of inspirational puffballs by an eccentric show-off. I think it is none of these … Even as it is, it will continue to annoy the literal mind and all those unable to stomach its caprices and imbibe its themes ... To reject the book because of the immaturity of the author and the bugs in the logic is to throw away a good bottle of wine because it contains bits of cork. … [Thoreau] is a better companion than most, and I would not swap him for a soberer or more reasonable friend, even if I could.”

You see, Ms. Schultz and all those of her ilk who have failed to get the point, not to mention the joke, “Walden is a work of art and philosophy which ponders and argues and wonders in deep thoughtful fascination with life, but it’s also satire and irony as he critiques his society and a new economy that leads people to 'live lives of quiet desperation.'"