He might be alone on this one.

I think that this chapter, in a way, is the most personal so far. (Warning: I read it over a week ago and just skimmed it again now, so I hope I'm recalling this accurately.) But when I was reading "Solitude" I found myself agreeing with Thoreau at points and at other times not being so sure.

I love being alone sometimes, too. The peace and quiet of being by oneself is nonpareil, especially on a walk in the woods on a fall day or through a city's streets during a nighttime snowfall. But for myself, I don't know if I can give solitude the kind of preference that Thoreau seems to attribute to it. While reading and nodding throughout, I couldn't get rid of the memory in the back of my mind of my trip to Corsica during my year in France. I went there alone and had intended to stay for 10 days, but because I was there before the regular tourist season began, there were very few other people on the road and by day 6, I was so lonely traveling around that I decided to cut my trip short and head back to Dijon. With that memory in mind, I take "Solitude" almost to be an admonition. I agree to much - in an academic sense - with what Thoreau wrote in this chapter that I being to feel like cutting my trip short was the expression of a personal failing of mine. And maybe it was. I wonder if I were in a similar situation today, if I would react in the same way.

But then again, who is to say what proportion of solitude and company is ideal? I remember once listening to one of the drivers at the tour company I worked for last summer talking about how when he decided to move to Alaska, he chose to live in a small town called Girdwood about 40 minutes from Anchorage. He didn't think of much people of moved to Anchorage, believing that people who came to Alaska to live in that city had "missed the point." My immediate reaction was to think about all the people living in the wilderness of the state with literally hundreds of miles between them and the next person and I wondered if they might not have the same opinion of people who move to Girdwood.

So, in light of all our talk about Thoreau's exaggeration for the purpose of getting his readers' attention, should we assume he's playing up his love of solitude? From having read the first few pages of the next chapter, I wonder. Then again, maybe he's being entirely sincere.

"Society is commonly too cheap." Or maybe he just didn't like his friends that much.

I'm so lazy/ uneducated - justin

"Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study the classics; in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be." (p.95, in my copy)

Me, in response: "Woops."

Honestly, I don't disagree with this but the idea of learning Latin from scratch, now, seems impractical. I may be screwed on this one.

"The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers...Even the college-bred and so called liberally educated men here and elswehre have really little or no acquaintance with the English classics."(p. 100)

Here he calls us out more directly. For my part anyway, he is completely accurate. I don't really know the English classics that well, and only have a vague idea of how and when they tie into the history of the western world. Reading this criticism motivates me. I feel like starting our book club (for nerds) anew, from the very beginning. What if we put together an outline of the history of western thought and literature through our book club? I'm game. What the hell else do we have to do with ourselves?

Incidentally I am starting to think Thoreau was either an insanely hardworking scholar, or had no life to speak of, or a bit of both. Did he ever marry? If not that'd explain a bit.

"Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet." (p. 101)

Ok so now he calls out the professors.

The general idea in "reading" seems to me to be: Don't waste time on books that Thoreau thinks are garbage(didn't provide a whole lot of guidelines here), and if you are going to try and be a thinker and a scholar, then don't half ass it. Read everything (of value) !!

Method to the Madness?

He definitely rants. Are we supposed to have some underlying fabric of a philosophy to fit these rants into? I don't have the book in front of me right now, but I'm sure he is jumping around, expecting us to be able to jump with him. Either that, or his bits of wisdom are intended to stand on their own, and they really shouldn't be presented as a single book.

But then, as you said, he is obviously well educated. So, what is he doing? At one point in "Uncommon Learning" he says conventional schools force learning - which in his mind is represented by a meandering brook- into a rigidly carved, straight trench through the countryside. So, is Economy and the second chapter his expression of the meandering brook?

I do like that Thoreau feels that how he has to say what he has to say is as meaningful as the explicit arguments he makes. I'm trying to immerse myself in his half-crazed hobo trance just to see if I can mentally go some of the places he is going here. Actually, you know what, the next time I read a chapter of his I'm going to go out into the woods to read it. I'm going to be cheesey like that.


Side Note* Imagine how kids would respond to Thoreau walking into their classroom, and then leading them into the countryside for a lesson.

What the hell is he talking about?

Ok, the section where he's talking about the sun coming into his home because he has no curtains, and then starts rambling about the Greek myth about Phaeton... I feel like I'm listening to a crazy homeless guy who obviously was once put together enough to educate himself rant and rave at a mailbox. We're going to need to talk about this part.

Quote

This isn't anything particularly groundbreaking, but lest I forget: I really like the way Thoreau wraps up his little anecdote - which follows his diatribe about the evils of excessive and unnecessary property or "burdens," as he considers them - about turning down a mat that a local woman offered to him by saying, "It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil."

Good stuff.

What am I missing?

Why does someone who is so explicitly trying to break with tradition use SO MANY unnecessary allusions in his writing to some of the most traditional writings out there (i.e. the Bible, Shakespeare, &c.)?

A Thoreau reading of Walden

Ok, this is our book club blog! For the moment I think we've pretty well discussed our ideas and impressions from the first few pages. I'm going to keep reading until I get to the section with the itemized lists and then we'll reconvene to discuss some more.