Customer Reviews

Walden; Or, Life in the Woods (Dover Thrift Editions)

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I had not read this growing up but wish I had. This is such a wonderful book. There are not many pictures in here - just a hand drawn map in one part of the book. Its excerpts from Thoreau's journal over the two year period when he lived on Walden's pond. He did not live like a recluse (he went in to Concord almost every day) so its not a book about living alone per se. Its more about reflecting on life, considering why one "is" and recognizing the beauty and mystery of nature around us every day, everywhere. Thoreau talks of regular daily things too like what it costs him to farm, or having cider, or building a chimney. The writing style is conversational, open, honest. He doesn't try to get tricky with words, he just tells it like he sees it. It's so beautiful. For anyone (like me) who indeed sees nature as their "religion" or sees the Great Spirit in every leaf, tree and bug, this book will be adored. So many wonderful messages, thoughts, woven throughout this book. Its an incredible work.

Read it when you are eighteen, and it will fire your imagination with the possibility of excellence.

Read it again at thirty-five, and it will break your heart.

Read it at fifty, and it will bring you to peace.

Don't overlook its less famous predecessor, A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS (the book he actually wrote while living at the pond). The seeds of what make WALDEN great are to be found there.

At the age of 50, I, like many adults struggled with the meaning of what I had been doing for the past 50 years. Most of it spent in pursuit of my generation thought of as the "American" dream. Thoreau, in the classic work, answers many of those questions. Less is actually more. No review can do justice to this work; it must be read, and preferably in some wilderness location, away from the bustle of "city life". ENJOY!!

Henry David Thoreau is more to me than a neighbor. His book is more to me than a classic.
"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity," Thoreau states. . .
. . .and in such powerful, clear, and memorable language tries throughout the book to awaken us.
"Simplify, simplify," he restates. . .
. . .and encourages us to live--as he tried--honestly and sincerely.
The five words quoted summarize "Walden", but it should not be summarized: it should be read, and reread. . .and understood. . .and practiced.
What is Thoreau; what is Walden to me? The four-word title of this review was my original, complete review, submitted--and rejected--over 20 times.
Simply:
My god; my bible

Thoreau went into the Concord woods "to live deliberately" and to try to approach in practice his excellent motto--multum in parvo--much in little. Setting off to transact some business as simply as possible, Thoreau began his famous experiment a happy man. Importantly, he concluded it 26 months later in the same convivial state. After proving to himself it could be done, he saw no point in continuing his experiment in such extreme fashion, becoming once again "a sojourner in civilized life."

Thoreau was certainly not alone in the woods. Apart from the many visitors he welcomed, he took frequent trips "into town," or met woodchoppers and ice cutters during his marathon sojourns through the fields and forests surrounding his wooden castle. While most men, as he famously said, "led lives of quiet desperation," Thoreau seemed to soak up the life and energy of every waking hour, giving him an inexhaustible supply of earthly happiness. There was nothing quiet or desperate about Thoreau.

Classically-educated Thoreau was patently devoted to the writings of ancient authors, but to him the words and pages written by Nature were far more interesting and pleasing than histories in Latin or 2500 year-old Greek sagacity. In fact, Thoreau read very little during a good portion of his Walden experiment. He preferred sometimes just to sit on his doorstep from morning to noon, steeped in the sights and sounds of the abundant nature surrounding him. Of course he also wrote. But the Walden we read today is not simply a collection of his raw, day-to-day diary reflections. In fact, it wasn�ft until a few years later that he expanded and painstakingly polished the rough journal entries he made during his stay in the woods. Whatever the case, the writing in Walden is brilliant throughout. Foremost, Thoreau was a writer�ca profoundly masterful one at that.

People read his Walden for a variety of reasons. I read it because it speaks with an immortal voice...and every word, phrase and sentence resounds with transcendent clarity. This simple little book is so full of hope, wisdom and inspiration that one can read it a thousand times and each time discover a new kernel of brilliance or vision.

During his lifetime, traditional success would never be his. But you would have had to argue with him over the definition of success. "The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind," the author so wisely said. It is precisely because of such profundity that his "success" is guaranteed for as long as people still read good books.

"Follow your genius closely enough and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour." --H.D.T.

Reading Walden is like visiting the Grand Canyon or standing at the shores of the Meditteranean...part awe at witnessing the grandeur of such a thing and part studied concentration to ensure it will remain in your memory.

For the purposes of this review, I would offer two examples:

In the first, Thoreau is attempting to demonstrate the futility of acquisitation. To make his point, he likens the burden of property ownership with the burden an ant endures while carrying a morsel. Like the ant we are blinded to the unnecessary weight of our possession.

Unlike the Buddha, Thoreau shows by example that existence is suffering even when caused by the fulfillment of desire.

In the second example, Thoreau gives us vision and asks that the word go out to every John or Johnathan that "there is more light to day than dawn. The sun is but a morningstar!"

How could I -- a mere reviewer -- follow this up? I can't. Thoreau preached self reliance so I would offer the same: read Walden for yourself that you may better appreciate its wonders.

I needed an encyclopedia, a dictionary, and a reader's guide to get through this book. It's by no means light reading, Thoreau uses a lot of big words, metaphors, and references a lot of obscure people and places. Though arduous to read, this helped to expand my vocabulary and knowledge as well while reading. Even though it is so difficult to read, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. He had an amazing perspective on life and some of his writing just made me gasp in amazement. It's worth reading, my advice would be to not get discouraged if you don't understand everything he writes and says.

Anyone who has ever been stirred by discontent or haunted by life's unanswered questions or just intrigued by possibility, hear Walden's message. "No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof." Thoreau offers no proof, but merely sought himself, and challenges us rethink every assumption, habit, and doctrine. This concept, along with so much about Thoreau, resounds within me. As with no other writer, I can relate with him on a personal level. I, too, have had revelations in amidst simplicity and nature. Time and time again, I emerge from a time in the woods-be it two weeks backpacking in the smoky mountains or an afternoon jog beside four mile creek-only to find myself irrevocably changed. The seemingly impervious logic that formerly laid behind affections preferences, habits, hobbies, choices, even my lifestyle, had vaporized. The sun shines more brightly-and every aspect of life is illuminated differently. It can be an alarming but incredibly valuable experience, a free one as long as nature is preserved, and one that I would not trade for anything. All men would view and their time differently if only they became acquainted with nature, where time does not exist. "At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again." The choice, in so many ways, is yours.

Henry David Thoreau's _Walden_ is an account of a young man's sojourn in the New England woods, a critique of modern society (in the 1840s), and a call to action to vegetarians, libertarians, and other free thinkers. Thoreau's account is highly idiosyncratic and obscure. To be honest, it is a chore to read it through to the end. But Thoreau is wise on some subjects and, even better, he is funny. He is also very quotable, as this review demonstrates excessively.

Thoreau begins _Walden_ with a scathing depiction of the senseless, directionless activity of modern life:

"Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them."

And:

"Men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before."

Instead of working harder to produce more, Thoreau decides to want less, and leaves corrupt society behind to live at Walden Pond. There, he takes refuge in naturalism. He plants a crop of beans, he takes long walks, he observes the animals that share his woods, and he engages in some amateurish scientific speculation. Thoreau is not a hermit: he often visits the village of Concord, Massachusetts, and enjoys visiting with infrequent visitors at Walden Pond. But he finds that a little bit of society can go a long way:

"We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. ... We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. ... It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live."

One of my favorite passages in the book describes the author as he leaves behind the brightly lit village and walks home through the woods alone to his cabin:

"It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark and tempestuous, and set sail from some bright village parlor or lecture room, with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods, having made all tight without and withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. I had many a genial thought by the cabin fire "as I sailed." I was never cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I encountered some severe storms. It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest night."

After a minute description of his life at Walden, extending over the bulk of the book, Thoreau suddenly tires of that part of the narrative and decides to fast forward a bit in what I think is the funniest paragraph in the book:

"Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847."

In the last part of the book, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," Thoreau expresses a radical libertarianism:

"I heartily accept the motto, -- 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, -- 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."

An opponent of the war with Mexico and the institution of slavery, Thoreau decides to do something about it, and lands in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax. In life as in politics, Thoreau advocates a life of deliberation followed by action:

"There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. ... To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically."

Strangely surprising how pertinent many of Thoreau's perceptions, opinions and insights on habits and values are to modern day society and culture. And impressive how vehemently he professes these views in some sections. No sugar coating here. This is raw stuff, presented with language and skill we've lost over the years.

My favorite quote: "One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels"

Thoreau is inspired and inspiring.