Customer Reviews

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

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I was given this book by someone who knows I have a lifelong interest in HDT. It consists of the old straw dog argument. The author conjures an imaginary Henry and deconstructs him. But then, the actual Henry doesn't exist in any of these so-called biographies.

You need to read his journal and a couple of less skewed accounts of his life to get a sense of what he was a really up to. No, he wasn't a hermit saint, nor was he a party animal. The truly great individuals are utterly unique and defy pop biographies like this dud.

plb

Robert Sullivan is no doubt one of our country's experts on the history of Henry David Thoreau. He is also, in my mind, a skilled writer. I think his goal is to give us a portrait of a Thoreau who was not a somber, isolated "tree-hugger" - The Thoreau we know - but, rather, a vital, hard-working, Transcendental Hipster with a good sense of humor.

Sullivan, as other reviewers have noted, has a few inaccuracies in his facts, and some of his opinions are pretty thin. He describes Ralph Waldo Emerson at one point as "America's First Public Intellectual". I won't say who definitively merits that description, but Benjamin Franklin died thirteen years before Emerson's birth, and it would not be difficult to argue that Franklin was an American Public Intellectual.

Sullivan has a grasp of the man and the era, and early on says that his goal is more to give the reader a sense of the time and Thoreau's place in it than a strict traditional biography. His writing style is not nearly as dull as most academic texts, with a little slang and street vernacular thrown in to keep the reader from dozing. But he wants the reader to do more than know about Thoreau - he wants you to LIKE him.

In a few places Sullivan specifically tries to corral the question "Was Thoreau a jerk? Did people around him LIKE him?" Dead for 150 years, I'm having a difficult time imagining why the answer is important, and Sullivan's answers aren't enlightening. "Some liked him, some didn't" seems the conclusion. I don't really see why it was important in 1850, and today it seems even less relevant.

It seems a good bet that the friends and family of many celebrities LIKE them, and think they're "a good person". If celebrity is at an autograph session and signs 200 free autographs, probably most of the 200 come away thinking they had some kind of positive interaction with said celebrity. If celebrity says "sorry... gotta go!" and you're #201 in line and you or your child doesn't get a signature, you may think "what a JERK!", and loudly and publicly say so. Being a "celebrity" seems a no-win situation. It seems far more important to focus on the accomplishments of the celebrity rather than try to determine whether or not they are a jerk.

The Thoreau we know remains vitally important in World History for his inspiration to environmentalists and Civil Disobedience. I'm not sorry for reading this book and for finding out that Henry apparently had a good sense of humor. Sullivan wrote that during the famous two years Thoreau lived in his homemade cabin on Walden he was criticized because he carried his laundry back home for his mother to wash. The writer tells us that the criticism could have been tempered because there wasn't THAT much laundry for the man living the (for the moment) simple rural lifestyle. Again - my question is "why should I care?"

I'm going to put my vote with the 2 and 3 star reviews here. I think the author is setting up an artificial premise, having come to a conclusion prior to researching his material and then selecting only those facts which might seem to support it.

To put it another way, if "nobody gets the joke" then the joke didn't work. I think if you want to understand Thoreau, just sit down and read Thoreau. Sure he's a bit eccentric, but we aren't talking about Immanuel Kant here. Henry is accessible to us all.

Still, after all is said and done, I do recommend the book for some interesting details of Thoreau's life that I did not know. But that's not the same as not knowing the man.

Sullivan is to be commended for trying to spread the word of Thoreau, but the truth is that one would be far better off simply reading Thoreau's works. I've read Walden maybe a dozen times, and it's one of the reasons I have come to value wilderness and solitude so highly. But there is nothing in this book that supersedes or really even enhances that book, or most of the rest of Thoreau's oeuvre.

I've read much of what Thoreau wrote, including the oft-fabulous diaries, which stretch for miles but also contain some of Hank's finest moments. This book has no such moments, and while I appreciate that it may bring new readers to one of the very finest of American thinkers/writers, it's nowhere near the quality of the many fine biographies of HDT already out there.

Nonetheless, any time I see Thoreau's name it makes me smile, and anyone willing to spend this much time to "correct" misconceptions, even if there truly aren't that many, deserves kudos.

Read Walden and especially the diaries. That's where "what he really meant" is most in evidence.

Now, if you're going to write a book called The Thoreau You Don't Know, you better give the reader something big and blazing that we don't know about him, especially to those diehard fans out there like me. Of course I'm writing this review from a different perspective since I do know a lot about him, having read Walden over ten times, and many biographies on his life. I can see what the writer was trying to do, show him in a different light than as a prophet of nature that lived in the woods. But honestly, I have to say I didn't learn much about Thoreau in this book that I didn't already know. I do like how the writer goes into the transcendental movement, and gives some context to his life. He also does an excellent job starting chapters. The sentences that begin each one grab the reader, and keep him interested. I think they are the best chapter beginnings I have ever read of any nonfiction book. Still after reading I didn't really get a sense of a new Thoreau, or the real Thoreau. The only way to do that is to read Walden many times and his essays, particularly the one on John Brown, the abolitionist. Then we see who this passionate man really is.
I wish the writer had changed the title of this book, because it is a great book for those who don't know much about him. I just felt the title was misleading to those who do.

I almost wonder if this book is intended to be an example of the type of paradoxical humor Thoreau enjoyed, given that it seems to be completely unnecessary with no imaginable audience. There is so much which annoys me on one early page defining the book that I'm going to concentrate on those matters to make my point.

The author tells us the book may offer little new to Thoreau experts. I'd never label myself an expert but I have a few dozen books by or about Thoreau and have attended several of the annual meetings of the Thoreau Society he refers to. (I've also made the walk many times from downtown Concord to Walden Pond and it's nowhere near as traumatic as he makes it out to be.) I think it's reasonable to assume that the audience for books about Thoreau is primarily made up of people who know quite a bit about him already. If you read Walden in school and thought Thoreau was a jerk, are you likely to buy a book which intends to prove you wrong? So he's telling most of his paying audience he has little to offer them.

He tells us the book is not a biography of Thoreau. Perhaps he means it's not a scholarly biography or not solely a biography, but the majority of the book is definitely a biography. He seems to think that being a freelance writer gives him some understanding of Thoreau. Sorry, come back in 150 years when your work is considered among the most important in American literature and I'll think you have something meaningful in common. He tells us he will not dwell on Thoreau's work and can't interpret Walden for us. Won't that make it rather difficult to explain the book's subtitle: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant?

The other potential audience for a book like this would be people who are just becoming aware of Thoreau and enjoy his work. For them, there are many better books than this one, many of which are mentioned in this book's Notes.

Want a better biography? Walter Harding's The Days of Henry Thoreau or Robert Richardson's Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind. Local history? Walden Pond: A History by Barksdale Maynard. Want to know what Thoreau really meant? There have been dozens of books offering interpretations of that, but mostly I'd suggest that if you want to know the Thoreau you don't know, you should read Thoreau. There are several annotated editions of Walden (Walter Harding's is my favorite), and a wide variety of books focusing on the journals by theme or date or editor's preference as well as the relatively complete journal in two large volumes, and a new scholarly edition underway. All Thoreau's other books and essays are also in print--decide for yourself what he meant.

"The Thoreau You Don't Know" by Robert Sullivan is a captivating biography of Henry David Thoreau. Mr. Sullivan debunks Ralph Waldo Emerson's characterization of Thoreau as a mere 'hermit' to reveal a socially-conscious man who was integrally connected with his local community as much as he was intimately familiar with the natural world. This accessible, entertaining and thought-provoking book succeeds by demonstrating how Thoreau provides a framework through which we might better understand how nature, economy and people are interconnected.

Mr. Sullivan tells us about the Thoreau family's deep roots in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts. Henry David's grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War and the family embodied a progressive set of values as demonstrated by the assistance they provided to escaped slaves, participation in numerous civic actitivies, and dedication to higher education including college degrees for both of the family's daughters as well as a successful Harvard education for Hendry David. As the Thoreau's struggled with the country's rapid transformation to an industrialzed market economy, the author notes that Henry David's ingenuity at engineering proved critical in allowing the family's pencil manufacturing business to endure during a time of extreme economic hardship.

In fact, Mr. Sullivan shows us how Thoreau was nearly Renaissance-like in his demonstrated skill as surveyor, gardener, teacher, engineer, humanitarian, musician and public speaker. Of course, it is Thoreau's thoughts and actions that survive in the form of his influential writings about Walden pond and civil disobedience that have inspired millions from the environmental movement to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. According to Mr. Sullivan, Thoreau's intellectual development and publishing ambitions benefited from his close friendship with Emerson (who also happened to live in Concord) and a number of others associated with the Transcendentalist movement, including the feminist Margaret Fuller, as well as interactions with other giants of the time such as Horace Greeley and Walt Whitman. Channeling what he learned from his remarkable life experiences into his writing, Thoreau articulated a highly original critique of the market economy and materialism that blended elements of philosophy, environmental science, social satire and humor in a manner that continues to resonate with audiences today.

A gifted writer himself, Mr. Sullivan skillfully uses modern day references to compare and contrast the issues of Thoreau's time with our own. Documenting his own visit to Walden pond, Mr. Sullivan deploys a Thoreau-like methodology of seeing and documenting his experience, musing on diverse but interrelated topics such as aggressive driving to global warming, pollution, biodiversity, and other issues. In this subtle but highly effective manner, the author reinforces Thoreau's relevancy to us today.

I highly recommend this outstanding book to everyone.