Customer Reviews

Henry David Thoreau : A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers / Walden; Or, Life in the Woods / The Maine Woods / Cape Cod (Library of America)

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Four of Thoreau's best works come to life in their full and unabridged versions. Thoreau portrays a land of immense natural beauty, and his keen observations focus on subjects as diverse as native plants and animals to his musings on the peculiar people he meets. Thoreau's revelations on conservation show us he was a century ahead of his time, aware of a landscape and nation which was already irreversibly changing. Yet his simple life at Walden pond shows us that we are perhaps most content with ouselves when we are the most alone and unencumbered. Contains a brief chronology of Thoreau's life which presents us with many previously unknown facts. Each work in this collection has been available before, but the Library of the America's has researched and investigated the most accurate materials and corrected errors contained in previous publishings.

While reading the four books of Henry David Thoreau (1817 -- 1862) included in this volume, I was reminded of the piano sonata no. 2, the "Concord" sonata by the American composer Charles Ives (1874 -- 1954) and decided to listen to it again to complement my reading. The Concord is a monumental work in which Ives tried to capture the "spirit of transcendentalism" associated with Concord, Massachusetts. Its four large movements bear the names of Emerson, Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, and Thoreau. The "Thoreau" movement of the Concord captured in music for me what I had been reading in Thoreau's texts, with its reflective arpeggios, long hymnlike introspective passages, distant sounds of bells, and quiet close. Ives wrote the movement, he said, to reveal the "vibration of the universal lyre" to which Thoreau had alluded in the chapter of Walden titled "Sounds". Those who love Thoreau or the American Transcendentalists should explore Ives's great musical tribute to them and their thought.

This volume is the first of two in the Library of America devoted to Thoreau, with the second book consisting of essays and poems. It includes the two books published during his lifetime, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" and "Walden" together with two books published shortly after his death, "The Maine Woods" and "Cape Cod". The former two books are philosophical and introspective in tone, even though they include much of the descriptive writing about nature for which Thoreau is famous. They are the writings of Thoreau the Transcendentalist, the Thoreau of Ives's Concord Sonata. The second two books are describes Thoreau's travels. They originated the American practice of writing about nature.

Thoreau's most famous book, "Walden" describes the two years he spent living at Walden Pond, near Concord, from 1845 -- 1847 on a tract owned by Emerson. Walden is deservedly an American classic, as Thoreau reflects upon and attempts to simplify his life, to appreciate it for itself and for the everyday, without the strains of commerce or the pursuit of wealth. It is an eloquent study of learning to be alone with and content with oneself.

Thoreau wrote the first draft of "Walden" while he resided there and also wrote "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" which in 1849 became his first published book, enjoying little success at the time. This book describes a trip Thoreau took with his brother and there are many detailed observations of people, places, and plants and animals. But the book is full of detailed digressions on literature, philosophy, the Greek Classics, friendship, and Thoreau's religious beliefs. This book shows the large influence of Eastern thought on Thoreau. It is filled with allusions and quotations from poetry on virtually every page. It is a joy to read.

There is little overt philosophising in Thoreau's latter two books. But both these books made me want to leave, at least for a short time, my life in the city and to run and visit the wild places Thoreau described. In "The Maine Woods" Thoreau describes three trips he took to Nortwest Maine -- its forests, rivers, lakes, and mountains, in 1843, 1853, and 1857. It includes detailed descriptions of rugged camping, in the rain and sun, on water and on land. The higlight for me was Thoreau's discussion in the first essay of the book of his climb on Mount Ktaadn, with Thoreau's description replete with both actual description and ancient Greek and American Indian symbolism.

Thoreau's final book, "Cape Cod" describes three visits in 1849, 1850, and 1853 (A fourth, later visit to the Cape is not included in the book.) This is Thoreau's only book which features the ocean and the seashore. It describes a rugged place, but the tone is leisurely and humorous in many places as Thoreau takes his reader on a thirty-mile "ramble" over the Cape. Thoreau introduces a memorable character in his chapter "The Wellsfleet Oysterman" and draws a picture of a lighthouse, no longer standing, on the Cape, "The Highland Light." Reading this book made me want to walk the sands and dunes that Thoreau walked and described over 150 years ago.

As with all volumes in the LOA series, this volume is lightly annotated but includes a valuable chronology of Thoreau's life which helps in approaching the texts. Transcendentalism and naturalism both have played critical roles in the development of American thought and you will find them both here. And if you enjoy Thoreau, I encourage you again to approach Ives's masterpiece, the "Concord Sonata" and meet Thoreau realized in sound.

Robin Friedman

While every artist is tied to their time and place, this is especially true of Henry David Thoreau. To me, Thoreau has always seemed like a beautiful and tender plant that could only exist in a specific time and place. His world was rich enough to allow him to enjoy nature rather than see it as something to tame. Yet it was also rural enough to leave him natural space to enjoy as if it were wild.

It also seems to me that Thoreau's writing is more beautiful and observant than penetrating and intelligent. It is more about the senses than analysis. I think this is why it appeals so much to young people of so many generations and why he became such a symbol for the Back-to-Nature portion of the Boomer generation.

This volume contains his most influential works (the essays and poems are collected in a companion volume also from the wonderful Library of America): A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, The Main Woods, and Cape Cod. So much has been written about these works that I can't think of anything specific to add except to encourage their being read. However, I would encourage adults who remember reading them in their youth with such enthusiasm to read them again from the vantage point of mid-life. I think they will find somewhat less to be enamored of in the content, but they will appreciate his sheer power of writing more.

The total collection is more than a 1,000 pages and includes a chronology of Thoreau's life, notes on the text, relevant maps of the areas covered in the book, more notes, and an index.

Henry David Thoreau is one of America's greatest literary treasures, and this Library of America compilation of his four complete, full-length books is an excellent purchase for any Thoreau fan. It includes possibly Thoreau's most famous work, Walden, as well as lesser-known (but still immensely inspired and entertaining)works. I would highly recommend this purchase to any interested Thoreau reader, as I am yet to find a comparable compilation for nearly as good a deal as this.

Of the books that I own, this one is the best prepared and printed. It is also very complete rather than a scattering of selections. I recommend it highly to the curious Thoreau reader.

I come from Maine and when he tells of stepping onto land that has never before been stepped on by man, it gave me goosebumps. This was in the 1830s, can you just imagine how beautiful it must have been and all the wildlife and fish and birds! What a shame that we have done so much damage to this great place.

This review is for the Library of America edition of Henry David Thoreau's four full-length works, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Walden, The Maine Woods, and Cape Cod.

So far I have only read Walden so my review will limit itself to that book. As I make my way through the rest of the books I will add to my review.

WALDEN

Walden is an extremely rich book. It is rich in beauty, in description, in wisdom, in humor and in wit. It would be impossible, therefore, to encapsulate this book in a single review. Everyone reading this book is going to have different experiences, and take away different things. Someone whose primary interest is in philosophy, or economics, or political philosophy is necessarily going to have a different experience reading this book than the "literary critic" or "the naturalist". Thoreau offers something to all these people, but he offers somewhat different things to each (though there is certainly a unity of message).

My review is necessarily going to have as much to do with my own personal preoccupations as it will have with Thoreau's book. It is only one possible perspective on this book, and certainly by no means "the best".

I personally tend to read Thoreau as one of a long line of writers, beginning probably in the late eighteenth-century and moving all the way to modern times, who attempts to address the "spiritual" problems raised by a growing capitalist society (And I do not mean to imply any ontological dualism between matter and spirit with the term 'spiritual'). Thoreau, in Walden at least, is attempting to confront the very real despair he sees afflicting this modern form of society. Thoreau writes, "I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and every where, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames...even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness" (pg. 326). And later, "A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind" (pg. 329).

What is the reason for this despair? What can be done about it? Underneath all the complexities of society, and our seemingly endless array of desires, what is it that we really want? These are the questions that motivate Thoreau, even when he is at his most "metaphysical". It does not seem to me that Thoreau is interested in "metaphysical" speculations simply for their own sake but only to the degree that they arise out of the very real problems of life. In this respect I see a real similarity between Thoreau and Plato, the "founder" of Western philosophy. Thoreau is in many ways more faithful to the tradition of philosophy begun by Plato than many professional philosophers today who concern themselves with far more abstract and esoteric problems without any obvious connection to life (and this should not necessarily be taken as a criticism since to some degree I count myself among the number of such philosophers who concern themselves with abstract and esoteric problems). Plato's question, "what is justice?" may seem abstract to us today, but it was a very urgent question to the Athenians at the time he was writing, especially among the youth, which I think any close reading of The Republic will make clear.

Thoreau, like Plato before him, and like Marx, and Heidegger after, attempted to address the very real problems effecting his time; and, to the degree that Thoreau attempted to address the pressing problems of his own time, as opposed to getting lost in some eternal or timeless realm of absolute truth, I consider him a philosopher in the very best sense of the word. Thoreau will be much more palatable to many Americans than either Marx or Heidegger because unlike Marx he did not advocate full-scale social or political revolution, and unlike Heidegger he remained a committed democrat. Thoreau's solutions to the problems effecting the modern age were unique and well worth studying. It is probably not possible for most of us to follow Thoreau into the woods. I probably would not last a day; but the solutions Thoreau offers in Walden do not require that of us; they are more universal than that.

So what is the sickness afflicting modern society that has caused life to become despair for so many? Thoreau attempts to diagnose this sickness quite early. Thoreau writes, "How many a poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot!" (pg. 326-327). "Why," he asks, "should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt?" (pg. 396).

Much later in the book Thoreau is even more explicit in diagnosing the problem, "I respect not his labors...who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get any thing for him; who goes to market for his god as it is...whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars....whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth" (pg. 479).

Clearly Thoreau believes something is wrong with our values. We have loaded ourselves with more than we can possibly carry, and more than we could ever need, and we have come to value nature, and the world, only in terms of its monetary value. This is where the committed Marxist would begin to complain of the "fetishization of commodities" under capitalism, and begin to yearn for a new form of society in which means and ends are not inverted in this perverse way (and I do not want to sound critical of Marx, or Marxists, who I personally admire). But Thoreau goes a different route from Marx.

The difference, I believe, is largely a result of their different views on the relation between society and the individuals who compose it. Marx sees the individual as being shaped by society. Thoreau, on the other hand, though I'm not sure he ever makes this view explicit, would probably reverse this and see society as a reflection of the individuals who create it. If we live in a society where values are inverted, where money is treated as an end rather than as a means, and where possessions are valued more than the actual living of life, or the development of our own inherent capabilities, it is because our minds and our souls are sick.

Towards the end of the book Thoreau writes, "Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense?...While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?" (pg. 581).

It is this `brain-rot' which is responsible for our current despair. Our minds and our senses are dull. Thoreau's goal in writing Walden (or at least one of them) is to try to cure us of this brain-rot. While Marx seeks a fundamental transformation of society, Thoreau is attempting to cure us one person at a time.

Thoreau is attempting to awaken us to reality, which is what, he believes, we really crave. Thoreau writes, "Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business" (pg. 400). We should begin to feel the `spring of springs' in our life which would of necessity raise us "to a higher and more ethereal life" (pg. 355).

Thoreau has an entire theology built around this view of life. Thoreau writes, "God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality which surrounds us" (pg. 399). And later, "There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness" (pg. 586).

This view has a great deal in common with the philosopher Heidegger (another philosopher I admire). According to Heidegger we are universally in the habit of focusing on beings instead of Being (the very process of coming to presence). We get caught up in our everyday concerns, we treat objects as tools, we analyze their objective properties, but we miss the Event of Being which is happening every moment. This, I believe, is the "perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality which surrounds us" that Thoreau is describing.

So in conclusion I would simply say that I would recommend Walden to anyone interested in philosophy or the great questions of life. It is a book full of beautiful description, insight, and wisdom.

-Brian

Great book, came in very good condition and earlier than expected. Exactly what I was looking for!

It was Thoreau who made me understand that writing had everything to do with one's sum total and worth as a human being, and everything to do with one's passion and sense of purpose in life. It was while reading from an anthology of his work that I first made contact with a superior being. I recognized a mind that I could be intimate with, a mind and soul of someone with whom I could spend endless hours and never cease to learn from.


Thoreau's style is cumbersome. He can be terribly dry, and his paragraphs run way too long. But who cares when passages ignite the page with brilliance, flame from the black and white of paper into the depths of one's being. 'Walden' has more profound and relevant quotes than any other book I've read. They're the purest gems to be found in the rough of a larger work. A work that I wouldn't dare to diminish, but forewarn the reader so that they have the patience and perseverance to continue.


I would like to mention a superb biography written on the life and mind of Thoreau, a biography that exceeds and exceeds in going deeper into the life and mind of this great and humane and very misunderstood man, it is called: 'Henry Thoreau -- A Life Of The Mind,' by Robert D. Richardson Jr. Mr. Richardson not only wrote a biography, he was on a mission, for he knew and believed in what his subject was about. As comprehensive, insightful and exhilerating as any biography can or should be.


The price and quality of this anthology can't be beat. Beautiful to read and beautiful to see on my book shelf. Buy it! Get to know this man of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

I would like to publicly thank Henry David Thoreau for teaching me this:

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." -Henry David Thoreau

Zev Saftlas, Author of Motivation That Works: How to Get Motivated and Stay Motivated