Customer Reviews

Walden

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First things first: if you are reading this review, it is probably because you are considering not just Walden, but Walden on audio. Does it work in that medium?

Have no fear: not only does Walden not LOSE something by being read, it probably gains something from Mel Foster's excellent performance. My first experience with his reading was the production of William Bernstein's A Splendid Exchange, and it was disappointing -- flat and lifeless. But he did a fine job with James Kugel's How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, and this is terrific, too; I'll assume the mediocre job with the Bernstein was the producer's fault.

Now, to the book. So much has been written about it, both on Amazon and elsewhere, that there is little more to say. But I will say this: if you read it in college, or if, like me, you merely PRETENDED to read it in college, pick it up again later in life. It is worth reading, and studying, and savoring.

Walden is thought of as the urtext of nature writing, particularly American nature writing, but that really understates the matter -- thus, my assessment of it as an "underrated" classic. It is really so much more: an essay on the nature and purpose of human existence, an exploration of human nature itself, and an example of how we can see the sacred in the mundane. Indeed, one could argue that Thoreau was not so much writing about nature, but using nature as a way of seeing the supernatural -- looking THROUGH nature to grasp the reality of the unseen.

And forget any notion you may have had about Thoreau, the dreamer: this is actually a very practical man, who strives hard to show that what he is doing can be a model for what all people should do. Not that they should go live in a cabin, but rather that they can and should seek their own unique path of existence. (Thus, the different drummer). It is no accident that the first and longest chapter is entitled "Economy": Thoreau wants to demonstrate that following a different IS possible if we prepare ourselves. If he is not fully convincing that anyone can do anything they want and make it stick, he is, in my view, unanswerable in his assertion that we cannot and must not be satisfied with what we are given, or what tradition or even our own habits tell us what we "should" do. If for nothing else, Walden is must-reading for anyone, young or old, religious or atheist, American or citizen of any nation. Or even no nation.