Walden; or, Life in the Woods

I vacillated as I read this. I was often engrossed in Thoreau's twin urges—to simplicity, and to presence in each moment within nature. But I was repelled by his twin delusions—that the poorer a person is, the happier he must be, and that Thoreau himself was aware of the One True Way to live. He spends an awful lot of time disparaging the common actions & manners of virtually every human being other than himself. And over & over again he valorizes poverty, in a way that makes one doubt he's ever actually experienced it.

But after all, those are mostly just faults in the author's voice, and they're more than outweighed by the moments of clarity and presence that suffuse the book. I remembered a lot of the quotes, of course—"In show more wildness is the preservation of the world", "If you have built castles in the air...", "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer", etc.—but to come across them again in context was to encounter them as new. There's a richness and texture to Thoreau's philosophy that's really quite gorgeous. I was glad to spend time there. show less

I'm a bit ambivalent on this one. Though I really liked pieces and I think Thoreau has a great writing style, I did also find it rather lengthy at times. The descriptions of the environment of Walden pond are beautiful, but they can become a bit much, for instance when he writes several times, multiple pages about how clear the water in the pond is...

Though the novel has been an important inspiration for some philosophers, and I appreciate it's importance and the novelty of Thoreau's ideas at the time the book was written, I have to say I don't find his ideas very convincing.
I think Thoreau doesn't realise that he might live a 'primitive' life quite easily when he has a civilized world surrounding him, but that this would not be show more possible if everybody would follow the lifestyle he promotes. For instance, he hires oxen and a plough to plough his fields, he borrows tools, he gets his clothing from the village... If everybody would live like he does though, these things wouldn't be possible.
Also, he feels that poor people should be happy to live a simple life, but he doesn't seem to understand that poverty means hardship and despair, and that a simple life isn't much fun when you're starving. Likewise, he doesn't take into account that some people have wives and children they need to provide for.
Besides, Thoreau comes across as an incredibly arrogant and patronizing man, who seems to think he is the only person whose intellect is advanced enough to see the truth and to really understand the world. He just looks down upon everybody, and I found this really annoying and insulting.

The copy I have also contained the essay 'Civil Disobedience', which leaves me with the same feeling.
It's rather easy to boast of not paying your taxes, if you don't actually need to spend time in jail for it because your family pays up for you. And it's also rather easy to say you don't need the state and are therefore not going to pay, if you can benefit from the state by living in it, even without paying. I am presuming that Thoreau does appreciate having roads and railroads, a police force and firemen, and all other commodities the State provides; if everybody would act the way he does, then all these things would disappear, and I wonder if that really is what he wants... show less

We all know that Walden is the story of Thoreau’s life in a cabin he built on the shores of Walden Pond, but it is also about much more. The shores of that pond expand, through his questioning mind, to touch the entire cosmos.
The opening chapter seemed calculated to be offensive, like the approach of one who has often been rejected and must test you fist by surliness to see if you’ll really be a friend. Once I got past that, I enjoyed the book.
Thoreau exults in how abundant a life he finds in simplicity. At times, he seems to exalt poverty as a superior form of life but draws back by recognizing that few of the poor in his acquaintance, if any, recognize the beatitude of their situation.
The concluding chapter, to me, echoes passages show more from Koheleth. The setting of one may be a palace, the other a cabin, but both ended in the same neighborhood. As Thoreau remarked, the sunset reflected just as brightly in both their windows.
It’s relevant to the lessons this book conveys that Thoreau left the cabin and moved back to town after two years. One can learn much by living on the edge of a pond, but there is more to life than that. show less

We all know that Walden is the story of Thoreau’s life in a cabin he built on the shores of Walden Pond, but it is also about much more. The shores of that pond expand, through his questioning mind, to touch the entire cosmos.
The opening chapter seemed calculated to be offensive, like the approach of one who has often been rejected and must test you first by surliness to see if you’ll really be a friend. Once I got past that, I enjoyed the book.
Thoreau exults in how abundant a life he finds in simplicity. At times, he seems to exalt poverty as a superior form of life but draws back by recognizing that few of the poor in his acquaintance, if any, recognize the beatitude of their situation.
The concluding chapter, to me, echoes show more passages from Koheleth. The setting of one may be a palace, the other a cabin, but both ended in the same neighborhood. As Thoreau remarked, the sunset reflected just as brightly in both their windows.
It’s relevant to the lessons this book conveys that Thoreau left the cabin and moved back to town after two years. One can learn much by living on the edge of a pond, but there is more to life than that. show less

Readers eager to criticize Thoreau for his hypocrisies miss the wisdom in Walden, for the ideals articulated in the book transcend the man. He asks us a timeless question: why do the mass of men so unthinkingly accept the life script dictated by their time and place? He challenges us, often with an intentionally provocative tone, to contemplate that which we are ideologically opposed but functionally agreeable to, so that we might improve upon our own lived integrity.

In another time and if in the same place, Henry David Thoreau would have been a great family friend. So much of what he addresses in Walden resonates deeply with my dad and I. We frequently discuss the bizarre inconsistencies and illogical manners of much of society, speculate hows and whys as well as alternatives, and enjoy extensive hours sitting in our silence among the sounds of wild critters and the weather. Walden has given me ideas for how to get the deluge of information in my head into a pleasant and intellectual format in the physical world. That is what this book is: Thoreau writing his contemplations on human behavior and resident natural history.

Why are philanthropists idolized more than other productive endeavors? After show more all, a Newfoundland dog can save you from your troubles if you are drowning or freezing.

Why dedicate years of monetary savings to take a train to your chosen destination when you can walk there without the years of savings, and meanwhile partake in the idiosyncrasies of the world along the journey?

Why stay locked in your house on a deep, snowy day when you have an appointment with a beech tree?

Thoreau brings up both "big" things and "little" things that mainstream society either avoids addressing or regards worthless because it does not add to a human's prestige or pays the bills.

If you are the sort that never floated with the stream but instead investigated other shores or the depth of the river, this book will likely intrigue and flatter your mind. show less

I received this from Early Reviewers, and it's taken me months to read and review. [Walden] is a favorite book of mine, always five stars, but it takes a while to read, because I have to stop to think every few pages, sometimes every few paragraphs.

I really enjoy Thoreau's prose, and his thinking. For example:

"One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches show more the ear of the hearer, else it may plough out again through the side of his head. Also our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the interval.

I was excited to have this copy, because I thought that the introduction and the annotations by McKibben would enhance my reading. The introduction was interesting, and I think it did change the way I read the book. Usually I read the book as a personal manifesto, and thing mostly of how it applies to me individually, With McKibben's introduction, I thought of the book as more of a statement about our national character, and was able to put the book in a different context, for example thinking of the small house movement today as an outgrowth of Thoreau's philosophy. Also, this made me see that Thoreau was brilliant, but also a bit of a crank, which made him more interesting.

The annotations, however, were a disappointment. They were random, and short, and did not really add to my experience. show less