The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant [Hardcover]

Robert Sullivan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2009

Henry David Thoreau is one of those authors that readers think they know, even if they don't. He's the solitary curmudgeon with the shack out in the woods, the mystic worshipping solemnly in the quiet church of nature. He's our national Natural Man, the prophet of environmentalism. But here Robert Sullivan—who himself has been called an "urban Thoreau" (New York Times Book Review)—presents the Thoreau you don't know: the activist, the organizer, the gregarious adventurer, the guy who likes to go camping with friends (even if they sometimes accidentally burn the woods down). Sullivan argues that Walden was a book intended to revive America, a communal work forever pigeonholed as a reclusive one, and this misreading is at the heart of our troubled relationship with the environment today. Sullivan shows us not a lonely eccentric but a man in his growing village: a man who danced and sang, who worked throughout his short life at the family pencil-making business, and moved into his parents' house after leaving Walden, but always paid his father rent. Passionate yet whimsical, The Thoreau You Don't Know asks us to re-examine our everyday relationship with the natural world, and one another.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sullivan (Rats) weaves biography and American history in this playful attempt to recast Thoreau as more a complex (and convivial) creature than a dour and ascetic environmentalist and anarchical loner. The book may stir controversy among those who have appropriated Thoreau for a particular cause—a welcome prospect for the author, who writes, I suppose I have an ax to grind. The Thoreau you know bothers me too, in light of the one I think I've seen. According to Sullivan, the man has been lost to the myth, and the myth has removed him from the context of 19th-century Concord, Mass. Was he an eccentric genius? Probably. Was he an isolationist hermit with a lazy streak? No. In fact, Walden was just a stroll from town, and Thoreau thrived on visits from friends. Sullivan gleefully complicates our understanding of Thoreau and the values he championed—civil disobedience and environmentalism. Although the book may not be as revolutionary a study as Sullivan claims, he proves a fine companion on yet another pilgrimage to Walden. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* A mischievous reporter on the universe, Sullivan has found beauty in a notorious swamp in The Meadowlands (1998) and wisdom in an alley in Rats (2004). In his latest slyly philosophical inquiry, he endeavors to free Henry David Thoreau from his calcified reputation as a cantankerous hermit and nature worshipper. Sounding like your favorite teacher who manages to make history fun and relevant, Sullivan vibrantly portrays the sage of Walden as a geeky, curious, compassionate fellow of high intelligence and deep feelings who loved company, music, and long walks. An exceptional writer mad for puns, Thoreau was also a bold social critic and—the crux of Sullivan’s stimulating argument—a brilliant, tongue-in-cheek humorist. Sullivan, himself plenty saucy, also elucidates Thoreau’s radical focus on “man’s interaction with nature.” In command of a great diversity of fascinating material, Sullivan succinctly illuminates the striking parallels between Thoreau’s time and ours—foreclosures, lost jobs, and rapid technological change. Thoreau remains vital and valuable because of his acute observations, wit, and lyricism and his recognition that the “force of life is everywhere,” a perception even more essential now that the consequences of the societal choices Thoreau prophetically critiqued have reached staggering proportions. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First Edition edition (March 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061710318
• ISBN-13: 978-0061710315
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,013,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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37 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Turns out the Thoreau I thought I knew is the Thoreau Sullivan thinks I don't know, March 25, 2009

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Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

This is an exceptionally strange book. At the heart is something of an odd presumption. Sullivan imagines that you don't know who Thoreau was. Or, even if you do know who Thoreau was, he believes that you will recognize that most people don't know who he was. Now, I have to say that I have little doubt that Sullivan has a pretty good grasp of Thoreau. Whenever he writes about Thoreau, just tracking his own beliefs and ideas, I enjoyed the book. But when he was striving to correct misunderstandings of Thoreau, I'm afraid that I lost interest. I was constantly struggling with the Thoreau with whom I am familiar and which is pretty close to the Thoreau that Sullivan wants to put forward, and relating that to this other Thoreau, which Sullivan thinks is the standard or at least widespread view of Thoreau.

Personally, I don't think that people actually have this huge misconception about who Thoreau is. I think there are many people who are simply ignorant, but I'm not at all certain that this Thoreau that you supposedly know is actually all that prevalent. And even if it is, is it a good stepping off point for a book? Shouldn't Sullivan's editor have told him, "Hey, instead of combating this image of Thoreau that people may or may not have, why not just say what Thoreau believed?" Honestly, I blame his editor as much as Sullivan for this book. A good editor would have told him that this was a terrible pretext for a book. At most, this idea of the Thoreau that everyone knows versus the Thoreau that "you" don't know should have been an aside, not the basis for exposition.

I am not the target audience for the book and Sullivan pretty much admits that. That is, I've read both a great deal by and about Thoreau. I've read many of his major essays, sometimes (like "Walking") several times. I've read WALDEN three times. I've read Walter Harding's biography and Robert Richardson's intellectual biography. I've also read Richardson's biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I've read extensively in Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman, in addition to Thoreau. I've read in Gura's book on the American Transcendentalists, the relevant sections of Sidney Ahlstrom's A RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE and F. O. Matthiessen's AMERICAN RENAISSANCE. And I've read books by Lawrence Buell and David S. Reynolds. Not to mention bits on Thoreau in books on environmentalism and other books on American intellectual history. This is not an area of specialization, but these are the kinds of books that a host of reasonably well-read people with some interest in Thoreau will have read. And none of these people will have the kind of misconception that Sullivan is trying to combat. On the other hand, they are probably overwhelmingly the possible target audience for any book on Thoreau.

Sullivan does have a good knowledge of Thoreau and the book is not entirely without value for someone wanting to know more about Thoreau. The problem is that he is constantly introducing stuff as if it might be news to someone. He is constantly tacking between Thoreau and the Thoreau he imagines that people "know." The book is also hurt by persistent quirks. To cite just one of these, he writes at one point of doing a 180 as a skateboarding term. Really? Even though it predates skateboards? I'm sure it is the context in which he first learned the term, but not all people or perhaps not even most.

The best parts of the book come when Sullivan is trying to characterize the larger social setting in which Thoreau wrote. Here I actually realized some things about Thoreau and his time that I hadn't previously. I wish he had concentrated on this instead of combating a misconception of Thoreau that I suspect is itself a misconception. The other part of the book that I liked a great deal and that I believe will be of considerable use is the "Notes" section, which is actually something more like a bibliographic essay. I love it when authors write about books that they consulted in writing their work. One of the books from which I learned something about Thoreau was Roderick Nash's WILDERNESS AND THE AMERICAN MIND, which concludes with a long bibliographic essay. I've probably read more books as a result of that essay than any other single source. So, I always welcome essays like the one in Sullivan's book.

In short, I cannot recommend this book to anyone who knows anything about Thoreau. Even if you don't know about Thoreau, I would recommend the biographies by either Walter Harding or Robert Richardson (which Sullivan cites as the two main sources for his knowledge of Thoreau's life) well before this.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Frustrated, May 13, 2009

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Thomas A. Potter - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant (Hardcover)

This work is frustrating for several reasons. First, quotes and references are used without footnotes. Where did those comments come from? Are they in context? They often carried much weight but meant little if the reader could not pursue them. Second, there was no index. When I wanted to retrace my steps I had no way to go about it. I cannot conceive of a decent work about such an important figure as Thoreau without a more serious structure to the work.

On the other hand, perhaps it will stimulate readers to return to the original works of Thoreau and/or to some of the better written and annotated secondary sources and biographies. Those would include Walter Harding and Robert Richardson's biographies and Lewis Hyde's annotated collection of Thoreau's essays among others.

It was a light read and entertaining as such. I read the work with a sense of obligation to keep up with what is being written about Thoreau. That said, I did my duty with a sense of frustration when finished. I cannot fathom that many quotations without a proper set of footnotes. Fortunately I have enough background in the subject that only a few were obscure enough to raise serious questions about context and source.

I could only recommend this read to those wanting a quick summary of Thoreau's life. I recognize that there is a large popular readership out there and to that end it will serve a purpose. But dig deeper--there is much there to challenge us both regarding Thoreau's influence on environmental issues and his challenge to our personal ethic.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An insightful personal encounter with the still-vital life and thought of Henry David Thoreau, May 25, 2009

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Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

To read this book rightly, you have to ignore the title. It's a publisher's gimmick, as far as I can tell, designed to make this book about an old dead guy (not just any old dead guy, but still...) sound like it's saying something new, something that hasn't been said, and something relevant to contemporary environmentalism. There is a bit of all that in here, of course. There is the debunking of popular myths about Thoreau the hermit, the recluse, the radical, the tree hugger, the extreme survivalist. But that's not really the point, and none of this "debunking" will come as a surprise to anyone who's read much Thoreau and especially who's read any of the classic secondary literature on Thoreau (such as Walter Harding's The Days of Henry Thoreau or Robert Richardson's Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, both of which Sullivan cites approvingly). What's most valuable in this book is its thoughtful revisitation of Thoreau's thinking in context, that demonstrates his thinking to be something much more challenging and worth consideration than the popular myth of a dogmatic Thoreau would have us believe.

What this book is, really, is a thoughtful encounter with the life and thought of Thoreau by an intelligent contemporary writer on subjects that range nearly as widely as those that preoccupied Concord's famous son. I'd read a few biographies and most of Thoreau's published work, and so much of what Sullivan writes here was not new to me, and is not entirely original. Still, he is a thoughtful reader of Thoreau's work, and knows the background much more thoroughly than me, and so I enjoyed the book as if it were a conversation with an intelligent and occasionally brilliant reader of an author I have come to love. Sullivan does write quite lucidly and well, and I find his thoughts on Thoreau to be stimulating.

The book is refreshingly different than a scholarly study of Henry David Thoreau, and I enjoyed reading it. Some of his attempts at establishing the "relevance" of Thoreau to our age felt a bit forced and unnecessary - he compares the local habit of sharing sheet music with our current obsession with downloading mp3s, for example - but such extreme examples are rare and on the whole the book gives a fresh look at the biographical and bibliographical material about Thoreau, that is less ponderous than some of the more scholarly tomes about him but also more personal. At times, and apart from the more forced attempts at "relevance," it reads like the kind of personal journey through a life that one might expect Thoreau to have worked on. Not in the sense that it sounds like Thoreau, but that it bears the mark of his influence throughout.

It is, still, a bit of an awkward book to recommend, since newcomers to Thoreau would do better to read his work directly and then, if still interested, to read the biographies mentioned above. At the same time, the book is in many ways aimed at the newcomer, but is specialized and detailed to an extent that might put off the casual reader for whom the details of Thoreau's career might hold little intrinsic interest. The best reader of this book is likely to be the one who has read some of his original work and knows a bit about his life but would like to know more or is beginning to form opinions about the overall value of his work, and could use someone to talk these through with. I certainly found it worth my while.