The Thoreau you don't know : what the prophet of environmentalism really meant /

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Robert Sullivan, the New York Times bestselling author of Rats and Cross Country, delivers a revolutionary reconsideration of Henry David Thoreau for modern readers of the seminal transcendentalist. Dispelling common notions of Thoreau as a lonely eccentric cloistered at Walden Pond, Sullivan (whom the New York Times Book Review calls "an urban Thoreau") paints a dynamic picture of Thoreau as the naturalist who founded our American ideal of "the Great Outdoors;" the rugged individual who honed friendships with Ralph Waldo Emerson and other writers; and the political activist who inspired Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and other influential leaders of progressive change. You know Thoreau is one of America's legendary writers...but the Thoreau you don't know may be one of America's greatest heroes.

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The Thoreau You Don't Know What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant Chapter One The Thoreau You Don't Know I'd like to introduce the Thoreau you don't know, or don't necessarily know, or know but perhaps never hear people talking about when people talk about Thoreau. People talk a lot about Thoreau in America--they reference him in these days of ecological awareness, in these green times, in times when, as people all along the political spectrum agree, we care about the earth, the wilderness, what's wild. But when we talk about Thoreau, we talk about a particular Thoreau who I would suggest has more to do with us than Thoreau. The Thoreau we already know is, for instance, not here. He's out, away, off in the woods most likely, on the shore of that lonely little pond or ascending a faraway mountain. He's busy getting more in touch with the natural world. He's not in town with us, that's for sure. The Thoreau we know doesn't really go to town. He's managed to separate himself from the hustle, the rat race--or at least to say that he has. People wonder, after all. They always have. People don't completely trust this Thoreau. They wonder if he's coming clean, if he really does spend all his time out at the cabin. People wonder if he wasn't cheating somehow, ordering food in or the nineteenth-century equivalent. People wonder especially today, when there is all this pressure on us to be cool to the environment, when there is a lot of pressure to be Thoreau. Whether or not you buy his story, the Thoreau we know is a secular priest of solitude who lives quietly and alone and, frankly, prefers it that way. That Thoreau lives--and this is perhaps the most significant thing about the Thoreau we know--in nature, which is not like the place where the rest of us live. Thoreau's nature is a special, separate place, a place untouched by humans, except, of course, by Thoreau. The mere existence of the Thoreau we know stakes out the boundaries of this extraordinary place in our mind's eye, and in the eye of society. That Thoreau lives there makes him "inestimably priggish and tiresome," to quote a cultural critic. In his own day, the New York Times described Thoreau as living in a "cold and selfish isolation from human cares and interests." James Russell Lowell, editor of the Atlantic Monthly when Thoreau was trying to get published, related him to Diogenes the Cynic, who lived on the streets of Athens in an open barrel, like a dog: "His shanty-life was a mere impossibility, so far as his own conception of it goes, as an entire independency of mankind. The tub of Diogenes had a sounder bottom." And yet as much as we chide him for being there, we don't necessarily want Thoreau to come home from the woods. Our relationship with him is symbiotic; the Thoreau we know, as difficult as he can be to deal with, helps us to live our daily not-so-strict lives, our less-intentioned existence. It's good to know the idea of him is still alive, that he is off in that special place, even if we don't spend much time in nature ourselves or haven't seen it since our last vacation, since we took a break from our personal everyday. The Thoreau we know is a man of principle, steady, unbending, even when he applies himself to issues that, frankly, don't seem to have anything to do with nature or the environment, such as war. Indeed, he is the man who went to jail for his principles, who was carted off to prison for not paying taxes because he did not believe in an American military campaign, because he thought our war against Mexico was illegal, which it was. It might be argued, in fact, that we rely on his moral fiber--count on it, even--to live the lives we live. As citizens of everyday life, we maintain a measured and sensible flexibility, as opposed to Henry David Thoreau. We live in the real world, as opposed to a cabin off in the woods; in the real world, things happen, people have to be places, bills have to be paid, and eggs have to be broken. In a way, his intransigence allows for our flexibility. We can, in good or at least better conscience, bend in the winds of everyday practicality, precisely because of the trunk-like rigidity of Thoreau, the single-minded nature boy. He holds the environment sacrosanct. Indeed, he is "the father of environmentalism," as Edward O. Wilson, the scientist and naturalist, has called him. He worships nature, monk-like, while we carry on at home, ministering to the demands of the nonnatural world. He tends the pure garden of Mother Earth, to be poetic about it, while we trudge through the fields of the mundane. There's even a hint of jealousy: while he gets to live in a cabin in the woods, we stay at home and go to work. We have to make a living. Though when our lives permit, we eventually turn and appreciate what he has done, who Thoreau is, and what we know he stands for (whether we have read a lot of his work or not). We behold the pure majesty of nature, we camp or hike or hotel in all its glory, then we get back into the car and go home. The Thoreau You Don't Know What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant . Copyright © by Robert Sullivan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant by Robert Sullivan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

*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.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2009 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

"What if the Thoreau you think of as a refuge-seeking mystic," asks literary journalist Sullivan, "is a humorist with the eye of a social satirist?" Readers of his previous volumes on whaling, rats and road trips (Cross Country, 2006, etc.) may be surprised by his latest book. Sullivan did not spend a week on the Concord and Merrimack or journey to the Maine woods or Cape Cod; he did not even go to Walden Pond until the final (dazzling) chapter. His text focuses instead on reading, thinking and writing, with Sullivan's normally remarkable "I" regrettably concealed in a thicket of scholarly diction and convention. All the trappings of traditional academic volumes are here: thick block quotations, lengthy discursive and/or digressive footnotes, cavils with previous Thoreauvians, textual exegeses and dense passages on Transcendentalism, Fourierism, Swedenborgianism. Most chapters do feature some of Sullivan's familiar touches, including detours, often more engaging than his thoroughfare, on the economy of 19th-century Concord, bean growing, the shipwreck that killed Margaret Fuller and utopian communities. Inviting us to imagine Henry David Thoreau (181762) at various pivotal or quotidian moments, the author offers thoughts both novel and illuminating. His research is prodigious, though the book seems to have been written to impress academics rather than to attract general readers. Nonetheless, this Thoreau is a more interesting and complex fellow than the pervasive tree-hugging, hermitical caricature. He could be a jerk, but he was manifestly not a loafer. Sullivan spotlights Thoreau's work ethic, his business sense, his willingness to help others, his abolitionist sympathies, his belief that nature was all-encompassing and his insistence that change begins within, then ripples outward. If this is the Thoreau you don't know, it's also a Sullivan you don't expect. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.