A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Henry David Thoreau (Author), H. Daniel Peck (Editor, Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: December 1, 1998

Thoreau's account of his 1830 boat trip weaves together travel writing, essays and lyrical poetry.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (December 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140434429
• ISBN-13: 978-0140434422
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,067,509 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In the beginning, Thoreau and his brother took a trip . . ., October 14, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Hardcover)

It's a sinuous read, this book. Like the river it is modelled on, it curves nicely in some parts, elsewhere stretching into long expanses that can enthrall or bore. Read it as a journey. Read it as the development of a unique mind that is purely American. Read it as an elegy to a long-dead brother. Don't read it as "Walden: The Beginnings," for that only leads to disappointment. Take the trip. When Thoreau shakes his stick at you, shake back. When he looks too long at the world around him, speed him along. Remember that he is young and youth is impetuous; forgive him his mistakes; ignore the editing. Revel in the voice, and the implicit strength of mind married to depth of thought that will eventually find its rightful place in _Walden_.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A pre-_Walden_ that's best read *after*, September 14, 2002

By 

Corinne H. Smith (Athol, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Thoreau sought the seclusion of the pond to write *this* book, not _Walden_. In 19th-century terms, this treatise is a modified travelogue based on a 13-day boat trip that Henry and his brother John took in 1839. By today's standards, contemporary editors and many an English teacher would decorate this manuscript with red ink and admonish the author that he strays too often and too far from the main subject. Bill Bryson's essays wander too, but he doesn't usually reach back and quote the Bhagavad-Gita, Homer, Chaucer, or Shakespeare. But whenever Henry takes in his surroundings, he is reminded of something else, and before you know it a serious discourse is off and running, and it has nothing to do with floating upstream or down. He expresses his opinions or offers his knowledge about fish, mythology, religion, poetry, reading, writing, history, government, traveling, waterfalls, friendship, love, life, nature, art, dreams, and science. He reminisces about a previous trip to the Berkshires and a sail down the Connecticut River. He breaks into poetry at whim -- sometimes his own words, more often someone else's. Along the way, the brothers paddle from Concord, Massachusetts, to the area around Concord, New Hampshire, and then turn around and go home. We meet some of the people they encounter along the way and get a glimpse of New England life during that time period. In some respects, the people and the land haven't changed much at all. We can see Thoreau's environmentalism when he talks about dams and their effects on the habits and habitats of fish -- concerns that are still with us today. We can laugh at his puns and enjoy his wordplay (i.e., "The shallowest still water is unfathomable" and Man needs "not only to be spiritualized, but *naturalized*, on the soil of earth.") Above all, we can explore these rivers and shorelines during a time period that we will never see personally, with the aid of a native naturalist who's in the habit of sharing his observations and thoughts.

Read _Walden_ first. And if you find you enjoy Henry's take on nature and civilization and life and living, pick up _A Week_. There are a few gems lurking in here that you might connect with.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars an invigorating book, May 15, 2001

By 

NotATameLion (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Lately, I've come to really like the writings of Thoreau. It has taken me several years to return to this author...after being forced to read excerpts from Thoreau at a ridiculously fast pace during high school. Little time to read and less time for reflection left a bad impression of Thoreau in my mind that has, as I said, only recently been overcome.

But now, upon my return, I have found "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" by Henry David Thoreau to be a very invigorating book...one to be savored and not read too quickly. Taken at a good pace, it has been a joy.

While transcendentalism still strikes me as a rather facile and egotistical philosophy, I have really come to see and appreciate the mystical quality in Thoreau's works. Like most mystical authors, Thoreau is not always engrossing--he is actually rather tedious in points, but his work is punctuated by passages of sheer brilliance.

Seeing nature through Henry's eyes has been a wake up call to me personally. This book breathes excitement and lust for life upon the reader. Even his long winded discussions of different kinds of fish serve to alert me to my own lack of wonder. This world, even in its current subjection to futility , is still a wonderful creation. Nature (and Thoreau's picture of these rivers especially) echo the declaration of the Psalmist: "The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands" (Psalm 19:1).

I highly recommend this wonderful book.