The Sages of Concord: 100 REFLECTIONS" The Sages of Concord #35

Friday, May 12, 2017

100 REFLECTIONS" The Sages of Concord #35

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum

POND SCUM

POND SCUM. Yes, you read that right. She is referring to Thoreau as pond scum. (click on the title to see the article) Granted, Scultz wrote the article and probably didn't come up with the Title. But whoever did come up with "Pond Scum" was surely reflecting the tone of her article. I recommend reading it, if only to familiarize yourself with some of the attitudes that many people, who only skim the surface of Walden, come away with. "Who did his laundry?"; "He didn't really live in the wilderness"; "He was a hermit who hated people and people hated him."

Donovan Hohn has a great rebuttal to this essay entitled, "Everybody Hates Henry" in The New Republic (Oct. 21, 2015):

"Of the many charges her indictment levels against Thoreau, the one Schulz gives greatest weight is the charge of Puritanical misanthropy. “Food, drink, friends, family, community, tradition, most work, most education, most conversation: all this he dismissed as outside the real business of living,” she writes. Biographically, she is mistaken on pretty much every count."

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from WALDEN

I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

H.D. Thoreau