The Art of Manliness - What People Get Wrong About Walden

00:00:00.000 the art of manliness podcast. The two years, two months and two days Henry David Thoreau

00:00:14.180 spent at Walden Pond represent one of the most well-known experiences in American literary

00:00:18.460 and philosophical history. Thoreau's time at Walden has become something of a legend,

00:00:22.880 one that is alternately lionized and criticized. Yet though many people know of Thoreau's

00:00:27.100 experience at Walden and the book he wrote about it, far fewer really understand its whys,

00:00:31.640 what's and how's. My guest, who's dedicated his career to studying Thoreau, will impact the

00:00:36.600 oftenest nuances and common misconceptions about Walden. His name is Jeffrey S. Kramer and he's

00:00:41.520 the curator of collections at the Walden Woods Project, as well as the author and editor of

00:00:45.540 numerous books about Thoreau, including Walden, a fully annotated edition. Today on the show,

00:00:50.460 Jeffrey explains the reason Thoreau went to Walden, which wasn't originally to write about the

00:00:54.060 experience and which ended up evolving over time. We discuss what Walden Pond was like,

00:00:58.640 the dimensions and furnishings of the house Thoreau built on its shores, and how he spent his

00:01:02.400 days there. Jeffrey explains why Thoreau left Walden, how he was less attached to the experience

00:01:06.520 than we commonly assume, and how the significance of the experience came less from living it and more

00:01:10.960 from writing about it. We then discuss how Walden the book became a classic despite an initially slow

00:01:15.640 start, before turning to what Jeffrey thinks of the common criticisms of it and the popular impulse

00:01:20.220 to tear Thoreau down. We end our conversation with what we moderns can learn from Thoreau's

00:01:24.520 experiment with living deliberately. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is

00:01:28.920 slash Walden. All right, Jeffrey Kramer, welcome to the show. Thank you, Brett. I'm happy to be here.

00:01:52.460 So I think everyone, particularly in the United States, if you went to high school, you probably

00:01:56.260 read Walden. I remember, I think it was like 11th grade was when we did American literature

00:02:01.100 or 10th grade, or even if you didn't read it in high school, you might've picked it up and it

00:02:06.180 really resonated with you because you're in that period of your life. You're trying to

00:02:09.800 become an individual and figure out who you are. And there's something about Walden that speaks to

00:02:14.560 that. So I hope we can dig into this, into Walden. But before we do, let's go do like a thumbnail

00:02:19.440 sketch of Henry David Thoreau before his Walden project. When and where was he born? What was his

00:02:25.600 upbringing education like? And you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. So I mean, he's born in Concord,

00:02:31.180 July 12th, 1817. We don't know a lot of specific things about his childhood. We only know a few

00:02:37.640 things, but he did visit Walden for the first time when he was about four or five. His family

00:02:42.640 consisted of his parents, Cynthia and John, his older siblings, Helen, and also John, and his younger

00:02:49.020 sister, Sophia. He attended Concord Academy, which is not the same one that's there today.

00:02:53.880 And as did his brother, John, and they studied things like geography, history, science, but also

00:02:59.420 languages, French, Latin, Greek. And then he attended Harvard, graduating in 1837. He had taken a

00:03:07.020 boat trip in 1838 with his brother, John, from Concord, Mass to Concord, New Hampshire, which became

00:03:13.140 the basis of his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. And he also lived in the Emerson

00:03:17.980 household for a while as Emerson's handyman of sorts, helping out in various ways, but also being

00:03:23.520 mentored by Emerson as a writer and helping Emerson with the editing of the transcendental journal,

00:03:28.620 The Dial. Oh yeah, he also fell in love and proposed marriage at that time. And yeah, he had

00:03:34.980 quite a busy time prior to the Walden experiment. And after college, didn't he have a period where

00:03:40.920 he did some teaching as well? He did. So when he graduated, that was going to be his career path

00:03:46.240 to be a teacher. And he did teach in the Concord Public School for a short time, but he left that.

00:03:51.880 He didn't like the idea of having to flog the children as a method of teaching them. And so

00:03:57.040 he quit. And he and his brother, John, started a school, which eventually moved into what was

00:04:01.240 the Concord Academy. And so he did have, I guess you'd call it a traditional career path. He graduated

00:04:07.180 college. He was starting a school. He was teaching. He actually, as I said, had fallen in love and

00:04:13.460 proposed marriage. That didn't work out for various reasons. But then John got sick and they closed the

00:04:18.720 school. And then eventually John died for a completely different reason. He had cut himself

00:04:23.220 shaving and got locked. John died. And that pretty much put an end to Thoreau as a teacher.

00:04:30.300 And how did his death, I mean, besides ending his teaching career, but how did it impact him

00:04:34.420 personally?

00:04:35.140 Yeah. He and John were very, very close brothers. And that death was extremely difficult for Thoreau to

00:04:43.860 get beyond. You know, it was hard for him. People tell stories of mentioning John in passing to Thoreau

00:04:51.960 and tears would come to his eyes. So it was something that affected him deeply, more than I think people

00:04:58.260 tend to realize. And his going to Walden Pond, which we'll talk about, I think shortly, was in part to write

00:05:07.140 a book about John. It was a way of working through that grief. And to write his book, A Week on the Concord

00:05:13.160 of Merrimack Rivers, about this boat trip that he had taken with John, was a way of sort of working through

00:05:19.520 things. And so going to Walden was in part to write that book.

00:05:24.020 So he's a teacher. He was doing some writing as well. When do we know that he's decided,

00:05:30.220 like, I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to try this Walden experiment. Do we have an idea when

00:05:33.560 that happened?

00:05:35.080 We don't. So, you know, the interesting thing about Thoreau, which I think a lot of people don't

00:05:42.620 tend to realize, is that the narrator in most of his works, whether it's Walden or Civil

00:05:51.620 Disobedience, Katahdin, it's sort of a persona. It's not exactly Henry David Thoreau. It's not

00:05:59.200 the Henry David Thoreau that walked around Concord. So despite the fact that we read Walden,

00:06:04.300 almost his autobiography, it's not. It's creative nonfiction. It's something he worked on. So he went

00:06:10.700 to Walden, really, as he said, to conduct some private business. And that was to write the book

00:06:15.060 about John. And while he was there, people started asking him questions. You know, Henry,

00:06:22.320 what are you doing? If you think about it, Walden Pond or Walden Woods was marginal land. It was land

00:06:28.400 that wasn't good for farming. It wasn't good for much. So it's where people lived who were not 0.99

00:06:34.140 sort of welcome in Concord society. It's where freed and slave people had lived. It's where the Irish 0.95

00:06:40.900 lived who were there building the railroad, but really weren't part of Concord society. It's where

00:06:46.300 what they called lurkers. I love that word, kind of 19th century work. Lurkers lived in the woods.

00:06:52.640 Alcoholics, just people who were not part of the normal mid-19th century Concord society.

00:06:59.320 So there you have Henry David Thoreau, college graduate, former teacher from a respectable family

00:07:05.820 going off and living in this place where you would not normally expect somebody like that to live.

00:07:10.900 And so people started saying like, Henry, what are you doing? And he started giving a lecture

00:07:16.000 called A History of Myself in part to explain what he was doing. And in that lecture and in thinking

00:07:23.920 about what he was doing, it evolved over time into the book Walden. So I don't think he actually

00:07:29.660 started out to do what we think of him as doing at Walden Pond.

00:07:36.120 Okay. So he went to Walden. He had no intention of writing a book about his experience. He went

00:07:41.220 there to write another book. It was because people were asking him what you're doing. Like, well,

00:07:46.580 maybe this could be a book.

00:07:49.080 Right. I mean, he started thinking about what was he actually doing out there? What was he

00:07:53.720 trying to do while he was living there besides writing the book?

00:07:57.260 And yeah, I think something people need to understand about Concord life. Like, as you said,

00:08:02.040 Walden Pond wasn't great land. People that were there were sort of the outcast.

00:08:05.120 Because Concord at the time was very community-based. Most people lived with somebody.

00:08:10.280 Yes.

00:08:10.480 And you were kind of a weirdo if you decided to live by yourself.

00:08:15.080 Yeah. I mean, family was important, being part member of a church, all that community sense

00:08:21.760 was extremely important. And Theron was very close to his family. It wasn't like he was in

00:08:26.980 any way estranged. He was very, very close to his family, loved his family dearly. And so it was odd

00:08:32.360 to kind of pick up and go off. I mean, people did that. I mean, he had a friend who had done that

00:08:36.680 a couple of years previous. But to kind of go off for a long period of time where you're living in

00:08:41.980 the woods was a bit odd.

00:08:44.460 Well, tell us more about the spot he decided to build his cabin alongside Walden Pond. So you said,

00:08:48.640 not great land. People in the area, they were freed blacks, the Irish, just sort of the outcasts of 1.00

00:08:54.720 society. Tell us more about that area.

00:08:56.860 Yeah. I mean, it's a lovely pond. It's a kettle pond. It's quite beautiful. Is it the most exquisite

00:09:03.260 pond ever? Is it the most beautiful place on earth? No, it's a lovely pond. It has become more

00:09:10.700 lovely or more beautiful in the eyes of people who look at it through Thoreau's eyes, who come to it

00:09:15.860 because it's Walden Pond that he wrote about. But it's a fairly ordinary pond, I'd have to say. He was

00:09:22.760 living on Emerson's land. Emerson had some woodlots there. And Thoreau got permission from Emerson to

00:09:29.000 build a house there in which he could write, sort of as a writer's retreat, basically. And he did not

00:09:34.960 live for free off of Emerson's land. I just want to sort of clear up the ideas that Thoreau may have

00:09:40.060 been living off of people. That's actually not true. He worked for Emerson. He did manual labor for

00:09:45.600 Emerson. He did things like help plant pine trees in Emerson's woodlots. He did various things to help

00:09:50.360 out the Emerson's. So it was a bartering for permission to live there. And he built himself

00:09:55.800 this house. And I want to say it's a house, not a cabin or a shack or a shanty, which is how a lot 0.99

00:10:02.060 of people refer to it. It was a place he was planning on living for a while and establishing

00:10:06.100 himself for a while. And it's interesting that he had the front door of the house situated in a way

00:10:12.900 that would allow him to see the sunrise most mornings when he opened the door. But the most beautiful

00:10:19.500 part about the whole move to Walton Pond is that he moved on July 4th, which in most people's mind is

00:10:26.980 Independence Day. He is trying to strike out some kind of independence from his existence as it was.

00:10:34.360 But he went to write a book about his brother John, who he's thinking about often. And John's birthday is

00:10:41.320 July 5th, which means that in moving to Walton Pond on July 4th, his very first day of his new life at

00:10:50.540 Walton Pond is his brother John's birthday. And that's kind of a beautiful, has a beautiful symmetry

00:10:56.040 to it.

00:10:56.780 That's interesting. I didn't know that. So, I mean, in Thoreau's mind, in his, in like, you know,

00:11:00.800 we're talking about Thoreau himself, right? The real Thoreau. He went there for his brother's birthday.

00:11:05.460 I mean, that's probably what's going on. But then afterwards, when Thoreau was writing Walton,

00:11:10.300 did he make a significance that he moved in on July 4th?

00:11:15.480 Yeah. I mean, there are, there are things that he is saying in the book that are, I think are also

00:11:22.960 true. I mean, it was an Independence Day of sorts. He went to live deliberately. There are things that

00:11:27.820 he says in the book that I think are absolutely true, but they also become true through the writing

00:11:35.200 of the book. It's a process in which he's thinking about his life.

00:11:40.120 So I want to talk more a little bit about Walton, the physical aspect of it. Was it far away from

00:11:44.340 Concord or was it pretty close?

00:11:46.760 It was, it was very close. I believe it's about a mile or half a mile from town. He could walk into

00:11:52.220 town on the railroad tracks if he wanted to go that way. It's an easy walk. And he would walk into

00:11:58.240 town almost every day to go to the post office, to get the newspaper, to visit friends and family.

00:12:03.940 People would visit him at the pond. It was not secluded. It was not a wilderness area far away

00:12:12.120 from humanity. In fact, the Irish who were building the railroad lived at the time he was there on the

00:12:17.860 other side of the railroad tracks, which means he could literally hear the Irish workers who lived

00:12:24.020 there from his, his own house. He was that close to other people. So not some kind of go off into the

00:12:31.380 wilderness and not come back for two years. It wasn't that kind of experience, but it was far

00:12:35.300 enough away where he could be alone. Yes, absolutely. So talk about more at this house,

00:12:40.980 like how, what were its dimensions? How big was it? What were its furnishings? And why do you think

00:12:45.760 Thoreau, you know, he's in the, in Walden, he spends a lot of time like doing the calculations,

00:12:50.520 like on the cost of my house, like what was going on there? Why did he do that?

00:12:54.300 I think in part, because he wants people to know that it was real, that it's, it's actually, he did

00:13:00.320 build a house. This is what it costs. This is what, what he did. And I think it hits home that what he

00:13:06.960 was doing was an actual real life choice that he was making at the time. The house itself was about

00:13:14.160 10 by 15 feet. For comparison, you might want to realize that most single dorm rooms are less than

00:13:19.980 that. So when people come to the pond, to Weldon Pond, and they stand in the replica that is there,

00:13:26.420 I think they're often surprised at the size of it, because it feels bigger than they imagined it to be.

00:13:32.000 The house had a root cellar, a garret, a closet, a brick fireplace. For furnishings, he had a bed,

00:13:38.820 a table, desk, three chairs, as he said, three chairs, one for solitude, two for friendship,

00:13:44.780 three for society. He had a small mirror, a pair of tongs and andirons, and for cooking,

00:13:49.620 dining. He had a kettle, skillet, frying pan, a dipper, washbowl, two knives and forks,

00:13:55.800 three plates, one cup, and one spoon. He also had an oil lamp and a jug for oil and a jug for

00:14:01.340 molasses. Before the second winter, he also added a small cooking stove. And so if you think about

00:14:07.240 those kinds of furnishings and the things he had, that's a pretty comfortable existence for somebody.

00:14:13.540 Okay, so after he builds the cabin, like what was the typical day like for Thoreau at Weldon?

00:14:17.380 What did he, how did he spend his time? Yeah. Well, one of the first things he did

00:14:21.940 was he had a morning bath. So he loved to go out into the pond. He said that he was inclined to

00:14:28.340 think bathing almost one of the necessaries of life. But he says it's also surprising how

00:14:32.340 indifferent some are to it. If you think about it, like books of hygiene from the 19th century

00:14:36.940 indicated that bathing for cleanliness had not yet become a practice. It was clear that people weren't

00:14:41.440 bathing to be clean. So his was more of a spiritual practice. In fact, there's a story he tells in his

00:14:47.500 journal about a farmer, Minot, who he was talking to. And he said he was thinking of bathing after he

00:14:55.280 was done with his hoeing. And he doesn't mean his hoeing for the day. He actually means his hoeing 0.95

00:14:58.960 for the growing for the entire season. So Minot was going to bathe after he did his hoeing and 1.00

00:15:04.920 taking some soap and going down to Walden and having himself a bath. But something had occurred to

00:15:10.000 prevent it. And Minot said that he'll just go unwashed until the next harvesting. So, I mean,

00:15:15.060 you're talking about farmers who haven't bathed for over a year. So Thoreau was doing something a

00:15:18.980 bit unique, but it was definitely a more of a spiritual exercise than anything. He would work

00:15:24.200 in his bean field doing some hoeing or other work, sometimes followed by another bath. He confessed 0.80

00:15:29.460 that sometimes he would sit in his doorway from sunrise till noon in some sort of reverie, just thinking

00:15:35.340 about things. The afternoon was then free in which he could explore the natural world around him or

00:15:41.480 walk into town, visit friends and family in town or at Walden and also to read and to write. So he

00:15:47.300 spent many hours not only exploring the world around him, but many hours thinking about it, reading about

00:15:53.000 it and writing about it. Well, I want to talk about the reading aspect. Let's talk about the bean

00:15:57.320 field because he has a whole chapter dedicated to the bean field. Why did he decide to grow beans?

00:16:02.440 Because from my understanding, beans weren't a very profitable crop.

00:16:08.880 Yeah. That is a question that comes up a lot. And Thoreau himself didn't particularly like beans.

00:16:15.420 So it's kind of an interesting thing. And he did it sort of as a cash crop, but as you say,

00:16:20.300 it's not very profitable. I think it plays on a pun. And that is in the idea that a person doesn't

00:16:27.860 know beans. There's a New England phrase. I don't know if it's all over if everybody uses it, but

00:16:32.580 they don't know beans about nothing. They don't know beans about this. They don't know beans about

00:16:36.400 that. And I think just the idea of saying, I want to know beans means I want to know things. I want

00:16:43.200 to understand things. I want to be able to grasp things. So yes, he did grow beans. And yes, he had

00:16:48.040 a field where he grew various crops, but I don't think that's the reason for it being involved. And

00:16:54.360 I think the reason is really to talk about that idea of wanting to know things, to know beans.

00:16:59.780 And I also think he picked beans because they didn't require a lot of work. He had other stuff.

00:17:06.620 He was more important things to think about besides food.

00:17:09.480 Absolutely.

00:17:09.960 Food. Yeah. And also, I think it was sort of a, kind of a, he was being a, what's the word? A rebel,

00:17:17.140 right? Because at the time, this agriculture was really picking up in Concord. All the scientific

00:17:20.980 methods about how to get the most yield. And Thoreau, you know, in his section about growing

00:17:26.100 beans, he'd just say, ah, you know, I'd sprinkle them around and I'd hoe around a little bit. 0.99

00:17:30.460 That's it. I think he's kind of like putting a thumb in the eye of those guys.

00:17:34.540 Yeah. And in the second year, there was a frost that killed a lot of things. And so

00:17:38.700 it's not that he's that upset about it. It's not like it was his livelihood.

00:17:42.620 So you mentioned the reading. Thoreau said he had this whole chapter about reading the great books.

00:17:47.480 So we're talking Homer and Aristotle and even the Bhagavad Gita. But he even admitted, well,

00:17:53.800 when I first got there, I was hoping to read a lot, but I didn't read as much as I wanted.

00:17:57.480 What happened there?

00:17:59.120 He was just, he was busy. Not just busy finishing up his house, which did take time. And

00:18:03.800 as well as the bean field. It's interesting. People think of him as

00:18:08.220 being off in the woods and not really doing anything, but his job, his reason for being,

00:18:15.560 the things he did was studying nature, exploring, thinking, writing. Those are his tasks.

00:18:24.400 So I think he didn't have enough time for actual reading because he was so busy doing other things,

00:18:29.280 writing in his journal and exploring the area.

00:18:32.300 So you said that he went there to write this book about him and his brother. Did he write that book

00:18:37.980 while he was in Walden? Did that happen?

00:18:39.760 He did. Yeah. So while he was at Walden, he wrote two drafts of his first book. He also wrote drafts

00:18:45.940 of Walden. So Walden in its first iteration was written at Walden Pond, even though the later

00:18:52.220 versions of it were written after he was back in Concord. And he also wrote the essay Katahdin from

00:18:57.880 the book, The Main Woods, and probably some kind of draft or note on civil disobedience because he was

00:19:04.200 also arrested and put in jail while he was there. So there was a lot going on in those two years,

00:19:09.380 a lot of writing.

00:19:10.780 Well, see, I don't think a lot of people know that. I think a lot of people think he just kind

00:19:13.700 of hung out and looked at nature, but he was productive. Let's talk about the nature because

00:19:17.960 a lot of the book is just about his observations of nature. What was going on there? Was he trying

00:19:24.000 to be scientific? Was he trying to contribute to what nature is and what it's like, or was it

00:19:30.300 something else going on? I think there's something else going on. I mean, people use his observations

00:19:35.440 now to talk about global warming and to show how things have changed. And so his observations being

00:19:41.080 very precise are very helpful now, but I don't think that was his purpose. I think his purpose

00:19:46.480 was to try to understand the world we're in. If you think about nature as a gift, a gift from God,

00:19:56.180 the natural world as a gift. It's a holy place. It's sacred. And to spend time out in nature,

00:20:04.600 trying to understand this world we are blessed to be in was equivalent to anybody else going to

00:20:11.460 church. It was a way that he worshipped God, worshipped the world we live in, worshipped the

00:20:18.000 greater things around us. So there's that. But there also is trying to understand literally about

00:20:24.640 why does this plant grow here and not there? Why, when you cut down trees in a field,

00:20:31.320 does a different kind of tree grow? Why or when does the ice break up on Walden Pond? And what

00:20:36.640 does that mean? So he is conducting his own kind of somewhat scientific experiments to try to

00:20:43.060 understand things also at the time. Yeah. One of my favorite ones is he tries to figure out how deep

00:20:46.960 Walden Pond is, goes on the ice. And he drops a hammer down there and he's able to fish it up

00:20:52.440 somehow with a rope. Yeah. So he would have a rope that would have knots in it that would tell

00:20:57.280 him how deep it is. And he'd put a weight, usually I think a rock, so that you can tell when you are

00:21:02.660 plumbing the death by putting the rope with a rock, you can tell lowering it down when it hits the

00:21:07.680 bottom because there's a give to the rope. So in doing that, he could very accurately measure

00:21:12.440 Walden Pond. So his measurements that he made in all different directions across the pond,

00:21:17.380 when they've been tested by today's method are extremely accurate.

00:21:22.340 So you mentioned he, besides writing his book, besides, you know, working on his beans marginally,

00:21:27.160 besides the nature observation, he spent time writing in his journal.

00:21:31.940 Yeah.

00:21:32.280 When did he start keeping a journal? Was it like right when it seemed to be moved in and

00:21:35.420 what was his journaling practice like in general?

00:21:37.600 It was before that. So it's literally on October 22nd, 1837. That's when he made his first

00:21:44.140 journal entry. So he had been living off and on in the Emerson house, but of course,

00:21:49.040 visiting with Emerson a lot. And, and they would have lots of discussions. And it's interesting

00:21:54.460 that Emerson wrote in his journal on the next day, October 22nd, that he was trying to think

00:22:00.080 of people who kept journals and he could only name the French essayist Montaigne, his neighbor,

00:22:05.600 Bronson Alcott, his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, and himself. And he said in his journal, besides

00:22:10.360 these, I did not last night think of another, but it's clear that he's having this discussion

00:22:14.740 with Thoreau. And so he then asked Thoreau, what are you doing now? Do you keep a journal?

00:22:21.920 And so Thoreau made his very first entry that day in response to Emerson's question.

00:22:27.700 And then he was writing in it for most of his life until he got too weak and ill in later months

00:22:33.620 to actually write in it. But he wrote in it almost every day.

00:22:37.340 What did he write about?

00:22:37.960 Everything. So as he said in, at one point, he said, my journal is that of me, which would

00:22:45.280 else spill over and run to waste. So it's a, it's a place to put his thoughts. It's a place to

00:22:50.940 practice his writing, to rewrite things, to edit, to think about things. It was a, in some ways,

00:22:57.980 a storehouse for information, for thoughts. But, you know, the journal is kind of interesting

00:23:02.860 thing that people look at as almost like a diary, which it's not. I mean, there's a difference

00:23:09.000 between, you know, a diary and journals, but in some ways that's more of an academic difference

00:23:14.880 than how Thoreau might've looked at it. But people look at the journal as almost as his

00:23:20.940 first response. He's going out in nature, he's doing this or that, something happens,

00:23:24.900 let me write my journal. But often he was writing in a field notebook, just a cheaper notebook in

00:23:29.520 which he could jot down notes while he's out in the woods. He's not carrying his journal around

00:23:33.660 with him in the woods. And that's where he's writing his first thoughts. And then he would

00:23:37.500 transcribe those entries into his journal, but not always right away. Sometimes it would be that day

00:23:44.720 or that evening. Sometimes it might not be for a day or two. And Thoreau's a writer. So obviously he's

00:23:50.420 going to take the ideas that he put down in one form in the field notebook. And as he's writing

00:23:56.080 into his journal, he's already sort of editing and creating and rewriting as things go. So the

00:24:01.180 journal's often, in many cases, a second idea, second pass on things, not always. And so that

00:24:07.280 writing process would be a place where he would put all of his thoughts into those journals. But when

00:24:12.420 he wants to give a lecture, he would go through the journal and call out ideas that worked together

00:24:19.880 to create a lecture and eventually an essay, eventually an essay that might end up in a book.

00:24:25.340 But there are places where he is, he will write something and then he will rewrite it the next day

00:24:30.780 or several days later. There's, I once sort of tracked down the whole different drummer passage

00:24:37.820 that's so well known about Thoreau. And you can see him perfecting this over a period literally of

00:24:43.940 years where he's tossing the idea around and then he writes something and he rewrites it three months

00:24:49.020 later or six months later before he gets it just right to make that such a quotable phrase.

00:24:55.340 Now that process sounds a lot like what writers do today. You know, like some guy has a tweet

00:24:59.820 and they'll take that tweet and then they turn into a blog post. And then it might take that blog

00:25:04.500 post and it turned into a lecture or like a TED talk or whatever. And then that TED talk turns into

00:25:08.440 an article for the Atlantic Monthly or the New York Times. And then they get a book deal.

00:25:12.460 Yeah. And it's, it is exactly that same process. It's, it's taking that idea and using it in various

00:25:19.000 forms and adjusting it to the next level per se and, and seeing what you could do with it.

00:25:25.260 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:25:31.960 And now back to the show. So when did Thoreau decide to leave Walden Pond?

00:25:38.220 Well, he left on September 6th, 1847. And he left for, you know, actually a very mundane

00:25:44.900 reason. And that was that Emerson was going away on a lecture tour to Europe and Mrs. Emerson,

00:25:51.800 Lydia, and wanted somebody to take care of her and the house children while Emerson was gone.

00:25:57.680 And Thoreau had lived in the household before. He was very close to the family. The children loved him.

00:26:02.460 So it made, made perfect sense. So he went.

00:26:04.880 So how long did he stay at Walden?

00:26:07.260 He was there for two years, two months, two days, kind of a beautifully symmetrical number that has

00:26:13.200 absolutely no significance that anybody's ever figured out. But the, you know, it's interesting

00:26:18.160 when we think about when he was at the pond or when he left the pond. So people sort of almost

00:26:28.100 conflate the name Thoreau and the name Walden together. I mean, you can almost, it's almost difficult

00:26:33.400 for people to take the name Thoreau away from Walden or Walden away from Thoreau. They're so

00:26:38.940 joined at the hip, so to speak, as if it was something that Thoreau could not live without

00:26:44.720 being at Walden Pond. But there's an interesting thing, and it's not in any biography ever. And I

00:26:49.680 actually have no idea why biographers sort of either don't see this point or refuse to see this point.

00:26:55.920 So as I said, Emerson was going away on a lecture tour to Europe and asked Thoreau if he would come

00:27:03.040 take care of the family. And Thoreau, of course, is going to say yes. He would absolutely do that

00:27:08.100 for his friend. But Emerson wasn't leaving for almost five weeks when he asked Thoreau. And Thoreau

00:27:14.260 did something that is so significant. It was when I first realized it, it just kind of floored me.

00:27:20.880 He packed his bags and moved to the Emerson house. He could have actually stayed at Walden for about

00:27:26.360 four, four and a half more weeks than he did. And so you have to ask yourself the question,

00:27:32.440 if being at Walden Pond was so important to him, so significant, so something he couldn't do without,

00:27:42.560 he would not have moved to Emerson's house until the day Emerson was getting on the coach or the train

00:27:47.420 to go to Boston to get the boat to Europe. But he packed his bags and left. And the reason for

00:27:53.420 that, I think, is that because, as I said, we tend to equate the things he writes with autobiography,

00:27:59.380 but they're not. And so it is actually, I think, the writing process in which we are meeting the

00:28:09.240 Thoreau that we know through his books.

00:28:12.040 Yeah, so personally, he was probably ready to move on.

00:28:14.100 Right. Absolutely.

00:28:16.260 Well, he said this about ending his Walden experiment. He said,

00:28:20.180 I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several

00:28:25.340 more lives to live. I cannot spare any more time for that one.

00:28:29.800 Absolutely. You know, and it's so that the 26 months he spent at the pond, I don't think they

00:28:35.980 were life-defining moments in the same way that, you know, the various other things he did,

00:28:40.160 including the night in jail or other things, were not life-defining moments. They are moments that

00:28:46.780 inspired him to ask questions about his life or life in general and things that he would then write

00:28:56.520 about. And in that writing process, that's when Henry David Thoreau becomes Thoreau.

00:29:01.900 So when did he decide to write Walden? So you mentioned as soon as he went out there,

00:29:05.840 he started getting asked questions, did this lecture about an autobiography for myself.

00:29:09.800 How far into the experiment did you say, I got to start writing a book about this experiment?

00:29:14.360 Yeah, I mean, it's a little unclear because nothing's dated, you know? So, I mean, there are

00:29:19.680 manuscripts in there. We have the various drafts of Walden, but it's not clear exactly when those

00:29:24.880 started. But I would say pretty immediately into the experience when people are starting to say,

00:29:29.920 hey, what are you doing there, Henry? He started thinking about what did it mean to be there.

00:29:35.560 And then how long did it take to write that first draft of the book?

00:29:38.440 Well, he wrote it while he was at Walden, so definitely within a year or two of being there,

00:29:43.420 because he was only there for two years. You know, and then the rest of it took,

00:29:46.800 I mean, there were seven drafts, so basically nine years to write the book that we know as Walden.

00:29:51.920 Yeah, and you said in one of your other books, Solid Seasons, which is about the friendship of

00:29:56.840 Thoreau and Emerson. Going back to this idea, you said that the writing of Walden,

00:30:01.500 not the actual visit to Walden, though living at Walden, was more significant. You said two years

00:30:06.140 at Walden Pond were not in the end as momentous and as transformative as the writing about those

00:30:11.460 events. I mean, I want to flesh this idea. I mean, so like, what do you think was going on

00:30:15.800 in Thoreau's head? So you said there's like Thoreau the person, but the Thoreau we're seeing in

00:30:20.640 Walden is not, it's like creative nonfiction. Right.

00:30:25.380 So what, I mean, was he trying to do, like, was he trying to take transcendental ideas that he was

00:30:30.540 kind of baking in, stewing in, and superimposing that on his Walden experience, or was something

00:30:36.460 else going on? I think there's some of that. I think it's, so there's, this is a hard one to

00:30:44.200 actually say out loud to people, but there's very little that Thoreau did that was original.

00:30:49.880 So, you know, we can't think of somebody going off to live in the woods without thinking of

00:30:54.440 Thoreau. We can't think of somebody performing an act of civil disobedience and going to jail for

00:30:59.960 the things they believe in without thinking of Thoreau. But all those things have been done before

00:31:03.680 by many people. It's in the writing of those experiences that he turns it into something,

00:31:09.060 not just personal to himself, but universal, that at that point, we cannot think of that experience

00:31:16.120 without thinking of it as Thoreau. So, you know, when you look at, for instance, Walden,

00:31:22.940 when the book was first published, it was called Walden or Life in the Woods. And he left very clear

00:31:30.500 instructions before he died that that subtitle should be stricken off. The book should no longer

00:31:35.980 be called Walden or Life in the Woods. It should just be called Walden. And I think, I mean, he never

00:31:41.920 states why he did that, but I think the reason is because people were confusing what the book was

00:31:48.180 about. And so when I teach Walden to students or anyone, I don't talk about Walden as a book about

00:31:56.060 a man living in the woods. I just talk about it as a book about a man living in which he's asking

00:32:02.500 himself and his readers questions about how do you conduct your life? How do you conduct your life

00:32:07.880 in relation to your government, your church, your society, your family, your friends, everything

00:32:13.100 around you? How do you conduct your life in such a way that you hopefully can get through it without

00:32:18.460 having regrets? And so I think it's important to remember that I think all of his works are works

00:32:27.020 which are questioning how do we live our lives. You know, it's not, I mean, even civil disobedience,

00:32:33.360 it's not just about, you know, his non-payment of taxes or what he was supporting. It is really

00:32:39.260 about how does a person interact with a government, for instance, that you feel is doing something

00:32:45.500 morally reprehensible. What do you do as an individual about it? Walden is the same. What do you do as an

00:32:52.480 individual to make sure your life is on the right path and you're doing the right things?

00:32:57.020 Right. The personal is universal.

00:32:59.220 Yes, exactly.

00:33:00.160 Yeah. So you said it took nine years for him to finish Walden. When it was released,

00:33:05.380 how was it initially received by critics?

00:33:08.320 There are some good reviews. There are some bad reviews. I would say overall, it was not terribly

00:33:13.640 successful. There was an initial run of 2,000 copies, which is, you know, all right. It's not a great

00:33:20.520 number. And it took the rest of Thoreau's life to sell that out. But there were people who loved it

00:33:26.560 and were amazed by it. There was a man in New Bedford, a Quaker named Daniel Rickardson, who

00:33:33.280 started a friendship with Thoreau, started correspondence and a friendship because of

00:33:37.520 that book. So there were a lot of people who liked it. It was well-respected in some literary

00:33:41.820 circles, but not all. And then after Thoreau died, the book at that point had sold out and then went

00:33:46.820 back into print and has remained in print ever since. So it is actually literally one of the few

00:33:52.020 books of American literature that has virtually been in print ever since it came out. And that

00:33:56.560 doesn't happen for most books. They go out of print for periods of time. And that's never happened

00:34:01.360 for Walden. So the interesting thing is that although it didn't have a huge success, you know,

00:34:08.440 he, for instance, when he died or many years after he died, when they were putting together a collected

00:34:14.500 set of his works, he was, for instance, the first American author to have his journals printed in

00:34:20.400 full or what were virtually in full at the time. That didn't happen for other more successful or

00:34:26.420 well-known authors. It wasn't Emerson. It wasn't Hawthorne. It wasn't Melville. It was Henry David

00:34:31.360 III who has journals published in full. So I think he was respected in many ways, but he really wasn't read

00:34:38.200 a lot. And really he wasn't read in colleges and such until the 1940s and 1950s. So for virtually a

00:34:49.000 hundred years after he died, he was really just kind of a footnote to Emerson and the transcendental

00:34:55.820 ideas. People weren't really reading him a lot, but things changed. And now he is, you know, well-read

00:35:02.820 a lot. He's certainly read a lot. Yeah. What happened? What caused his change? This happened to Melville

00:35:07.280 as well. I remember when Moby Dick came out, it wasn't a success, but it wasn't until like the

00:35:10.980 20th century that became this American classic. What happened with Thoreau? Yeah. I mean, in fact,

00:35:15.820 in Melville, when he died was virtually forgotten, which is amazing when you think about it. I think

00:35:20.580 for Thoreau, it was the right things at the right time. So by in the 1940s, people were reading things

00:35:30.600 like civil disobedience and they were literally using it during World War II to be conscientious objectors.

00:35:37.280 You know, the reason people read Thoreau varies a lot. I mean, you have people who

00:35:42.520 love the nature writing. You have people who love the civil disobedient. You have people who love

00:35:48.920 various aspects of the spiritual, whatever it is that people find in Thoreau, and that comes

00:35:53.240 in different periods. So when we get into, for instance, the 1960s, you know, where Thoreau is

00:36:00.100 considered like the original hippie, it's people who are trying to find a more natural way of life.

00:36:05.560 So in a more simple way of life. So of course, Thoreau is going to appeal to them.

00:36:09.540 You have people later who it's all about nature and the descriptions of nature and the understanding

00:36:14.900 of nature. You have various reasons for why people read Thoreau. But I think once people got hold of

00:36:20.120 Thoreau starting in the 1940s and 50s, people didn't stop reading him.

00:36:25.580 So let's talk about some of the criticisms that are levied at Walden. Because Walden's one of those

00:36:28.600 books that people, either they love it. Well, I don't know. Maybe there's a lot of people

00:36:32.680 that are indifferent to it. But people I've talked to, they either love it, they're like,

00:36:36.760 I read that book when I was in high school, and it's like really influenced me. Or there's people

00:36:40.200 who's like, ah, that book, what a phony. I mean, that's one of the criticisms of Thoreau's

00:36:45.620 experiment. It was insufficiently authentic, right? I mean, they say that, well, Thoreau made it sound

00:36:52.500 like he was living this very wild and solitary life when he actually was close to town. He regularly

00:36:57.920 had visitors. And then he, you know, Thoreau, he makes himself out as this paragon of self-sufficiency

00:37:02.920 when his family sometimes fed him and so on and so on. What do you think about that criticism?

00:37:08.020 Yeah. You know, so I think the people who think they know about Thoreau, they really haven't read

00:37:13.940 his works. Or maybe they've read Walden, for instance, but it's a cursory reading. They're not

00:37:18.520 really paying attention. Because they're not getting at what Thoreau wrote. They're only getting

00:37:22.880 some ideas of what they think Thoreau wrote about. Thoreau is really clear everywhere in that book.

00:37:28.340 He is not off in the wilderness. He is not far from town. He talks about walking into town

00:37:32.660 every day or two. He talks about visitors. He talks about visiting people. He is literally not making

00:37:38.760 any of those statements that people levy against him. And so people are coming to Walden with

00:37:45.480 misconceptions that they will not let go of. And every so often, people write articles about Thoreau,

00:37:52.240 and Thoreau being the hypocrite that he is and all that kind of thing. But that's because people 0.97

00:37:56.000 are not reading him carefully. You know, they think of him as some kind of hermit, somebody who

00:38:02.660 went away from society. Not true. Society was always important to him. I mean, being part of a community,

00:38:09.440 being part of Concord, being part of his family. Those were important things. He didn't walk away from

00:38:13.800 anything or try to get away from it. You know, it's kind of interesting. If you think about the time he

00:38:19.280 spent at Walden Pond, the two years, two months, two days, that's 5% of his life. That means that

00:38:26.600 95% of his life Thoreau was spent living in a town, primarily Concord, a short time in New York and

00:38:33.280 in Cambridge. But somehow we ignore this Thoreau who spent his day interacting with family and friends

00:38:40.180 and farmers, strangers, students, employers, audiences, and think only about the time at Walden Pond, 0.93

00:38:48.180 turn him into a hermit, and then call him a hypocrite because he wasn't. I just think people

00:38:54.380 are, they get him wrong. I talk to a lot of students, and for many of them, that idea of

00:39:01.700 living a Thoreau life has to do with separating themselves from society, shutting off their

00:39:07.340 phones maybe, or unplugging their laptops, going off on their own, living in the woods or some

00:39:11.580 equivalent or like Christopher McCandless going off into the wild. And I tell them, no, you've got it all

00:39:17.120 wrong. That is not what it's about. It's just about how to live your life. And I think people

00:39:23.780 who feel that they need to do something Thoreau and in doing that, it is going and building a

00:39:30.720 cabin in the woods or going off somewhere to the mountains or whatever are really missing the

00:39:35.720 point of what the book is about. Yeah. You say it's about living deliberately,

00:39:39.540 right? Not necessarily, not deliberately in the woods, but just living deliberately in general.

00:39:43.720 Absolutely. And people love to tear down iconic figures. I mean, there was an article in the

00:39:50.700 New Yorker several years ago by Katherine Schultz, where she just tears Thoreau down. Several years

00:39:55.460 before that, John Updike had done a similar kind of piece tearing Emerson down. I mean, there's just

00:40:01.020 something about a target. And, you know, it's easy to like fling accusations at writers you don't quite

00:40:10.100 understand. And there are reasons why writers do that because it certainly gets them an audience.

00:40:15.240 We're going to cheer them on. But yeah, I think you're right. I think most people do either love

00:40:18.820 or hate Thoreau. I don't think there's any sort of middle ground with him. I remember giving,

00:40:23.380 I was giving a lecture somewhere and somebody came up to me beforehand and said, oh, you're doing the

00:40:28.600 Thoreau talk later? And I said, yeah. And she said, I hate him. And it's like, oh, well,

00:40:33.440 then don't come. You know, I don't understand why people are so interested in tearing him down.

00:40:41.760 Read Thoreau. If you like him, keep reading him. If you don't like him, put the book down and go

00:40:46.440 somewhere, do something else. But there are people who are strongly vehement about tearing him down

00:40:53.000 and calling him a hypocrite. Yeah. And I think what you've been saying that it wasn't, the actual 0.96

00:40:57.280 Walden experience wasn't that, I mean, he'd like, he left, right? He just, it wasn't, he wasn't attached to

00:41:03.160 it. But I think he saw that it was a symbol for something larger of that whole idea that he

00:41:09.120 wanted. I'm going to, you know, I'm not just going to do whatever my parents did or what,

00:41:12.920 you know, Concord people want me to do. Like, I want to, I want to live life on my terms. That's

00:41:17.960 what, like, Walden is just a symbol of that. Right. Yeah. And it's, you know, I think about the

00:41:25.220 criticisms about him that being like contradictory and all that, but, you know, I actually love that

00:41:31.660 about him. I mean, I, it's part of what attracts me to him as a writer and as a human being,

00:41:36.880 you know, when we have these iconic figures, we sometimes like to make them out of stone and not

00:41:42.280 out of clay. We want them something solid and not really malleable and want to be able to say

00:41:46.820 Thoreau was a, whatever, a blank. And that should be who Thoreau is from the day he was born till the

00:41:51.860 day he died. But, you know, I mean, the fact is Thoreau was the vegetarian who ate meat or the

00:41:56.480 conservationist who surveyed woodlots to be cut down, the pacifist who endorsed violence. I mean,

00:42:01.520 he's the hermit who loved gossip. There's just so much that is not, I don't want to call it 0.68

00:42:07.180 contradictory or even hypocrisy. It is a person who is absolutely willing to question everything

00:42:16.780 about himself all the time and to grow. And it's something that people, I think, have trouble with.

00:42:24.340 No, I totally get that. I mean, I love Thoreau for that reason too, is what he does in Walden,

00:42:28.900 you have these, you know, these things where he's kind of like, you know, ranting about some

00:42:33.180 aspect of life. And it's not that he's like, well, I'm just going to reject that. He's like,

00:42:37.360 well, I'm still going to take part in that. But like, I mean, here's some stuff that I'm just,

00:42:40.360 I, it's not, it's not that great. Maybe I can make it better. So for example, you know,

00:42:45.040 we often think of Thoreau as this, this hermit, this loner, but like you said, he had guests coming

00:42:49.420 in all the time. He had this one instance where he talked about, I had like 20 people in my house.

00:42:53.480 Um, so he loved people, but then he has this thing in this, in the chapter on solitude. I just,

00:42:59.040 I laughed out loud and I read it. He said this society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very

00:43:05.080 short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals

00:43:11.020 three times a day is my favorite part and give each other a new taste of the old musty cheese

00:43:16.760 that we are. And you read that, man, Henry, you're, you're cynical. But I mean, I think all of us

00:43:22.760 experienced that, you know, we, you might, even though you love being around people,

00:43:25.840 there's periods where just like, ah, just these people are annoying me. I need a break.

00:43:32.280 Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, cause he, he did love people, but he, you know,

00:43:36.560 people talked to him as, as if he was, he didn't like people and that's so wrong because he actually

00:43:42.000 loved conversing with people. But what he particularly loved in conversing with anybody is an exchange

00:43:47.900 of ideas. So, you know, he doesn't want to sit around and say, Oh, what'd you have for lunch?

00:43:52.920 You know, it's really, you know, what did you think about while you had your lunch? What,

00:43:56.400 what are your thoughts? And if those thoughts hadn't changed, there's no point in getting together

00:43:59.660 again. You know, he was, he was annoyed when people wanted to come on walks with him and walking

00:44:05.420 in the woods was not for thorough. That was work. He is working when he's walking in the woods.

00:44:12.220 And he said somewhere that, you know, he wouldn't necessarily follow a doctor and watch them,

00:44:17.600 you know, with a patient you, you, cause they're doing their work. But when thorough is out in the

00:44:23.420 woods and doing his work, people just think he's walking in the woods and having a nice time of it.

00:44:28.460 So people would accompany him sometimes. And that was exasperating to him because it was interfering

00:44:32.880 with his, his process. Well, another contradiction I noticed in Walden is, you know, he'd have these

00:44:38.840 rants against industry and business, but at the same time there, he'd had these sections where

00:44:44.060 he would speak admirably of the spiritedness of these new, new England industrialists. And I thought,

00:44:50.920 I mean, I think, I mean, that's what, I think a lot of people have a hard time with individuals who

00:44:54.880 are like that, who won't take sides on things who can see both the good and bad. And that's one of

00:44:59.000 the things I love about thorough. Yeah, me too. And, and people like look at some of the things he said

00:45:04.360 about industry and think he was, you know, some kind of Luddite who did not like progress, but

00:45:08.940 again, that's so absolutely not true. I mean, he was very interested in progress. If you think about

00:45:14.260 it, he was published by some of the greatest publishers of his day who use the greatest and

00:45:19.640 newest techniques for publishing. You know, he used the railroad. I mean, it's the railroad had things

00:45:24.960 that were annoying about it. They were noisy and, and they caused fires and woods were torn down. But on

00:45:29.720 the other hand, that railroad was something that allowed thorough to get from Concord to Cambridge

00:45:36.080 or Boston to use the libraries in a relatively short amount of time. So these were tools to be used.

00:45:41.780 Um, I know there's this passage where he talks about farmers and how they used to set their,

00:45:49.500 their time pieces or watches, clocks, whatever, by the sun and the sun is overhead. It must be noon.

00:45:55.820 But when the train started coming through Concord, they started setting their time pieces by the

00:46:01.440 train, the trains coming through, it must be two o'clock and, and losing that sort of vital connection

00:46:07.720 to the world around them. And so thorough, I think was somebody who admired technology, but did not

00:46:14.040 love it when technology ruled people, you shouldn't set your clock by the train. So, you know, I think

00:46:20.920 about just all of the people today, myself included, how we're tied to our phones, you know, things like

00:46:27.360 that, the, the, the phone buzzes or rings and some kind of message, you know, we got to go see who it

00:46:32.220 is or what they're talking about and not refusing to run just because the bell goes off to use

00:46:39.400 technology as a tool. I mean, people say would, if they were here, wouldn't he have a laptop? And it's

00:46:45.620 like, well, of course he'd have a laptop. He's a writer. What writer doesn't have a laptop?

00:46:49.440 You know, he loved to do research. Think of the, the, you know, how much they would love the idea

00:46:55.180 of going on the internet and finding most of the books he's looking for, you know, right there for

00:47:00.440 him to read. It would be amazing. So, but that would be using the technology and not letting the

00:47:05.740 technology use him. Yeah. That's a common thing he looked at in Walden. Like don't become a tool of

00:47:10.340 your tools. Exactly. Talked about the rails. Like we used to write on the rails, but now the rails

00:47:14.720 write on us. Don't avoid that. Make sure you use this stuff, but don't make sure you're not

00:47:19.580 subjected or like you're, you become a servant to this stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

00:47:24.900 So what principles or inspiration do you think people in the modern world here in the 21st century,

00:47:30.480 whether they live a more wild or more domesticated life, what do you think they can take from Thoreau's

00:47:36.040 Walden experiment? Well, I think certainly the idea about questioning what we're doing,

00:47:41.180 why we're doing it. I think trying to understand, I mean, a lot of what Thoreau is about is trying

00:47:46.540 to understand who he himself is. What does he feel and think about things? There's a quotation

00:47:51.880 that I actually love. It's one of the shortest ones. So I can actually memorize it. And he said,

00:47:57.620 if I am not I, who will be? And I love that because so many of us, whether we're children,

00:48:04.820 students in high school or college or adults, we could be 80 years old and still doing this where we,

00:48:10.520 we sometimes deny or hide who we are because we want to be accepted. We want to be brought into

00:48:18.880 the fold, you know, things like that. And so we spend a lot of our lives not being true to ourselves

00:48:25.940 for various reasons. And I think the thing like that's most inspiration about Thoreau is the idea

00:48:31.900 that you need to be true to yourself and figure out who you are and then be that person. I mean,

00:48:37.120 if you think about how absolutely unique each of us are as individuals, you know, that we should be

00:48:44.580 proud of who we are, what we believe in, what our preferences are, what are, you know, anything

00:48:50.980 about us, it makes us who we are. And that's such a beautiful thing that comes out of Thoreau.

00:48:56.040 So you've been studying the life and writings of Thoreau for decades. I'm curious, in your own life,

00:49:02.140 how has his thoughts and ideas influenced you? And then also like, how has it changed as you've

00:49:07.640 gotten older? Because I think it's interesting. I think a lot of us read Walden when we're

00:49:11.140 17, 18, or early 20s. And it hits different from when you're in your 40s and 50s. So I'm curious,

00:49:18.420 personally, how has that influenced your life? Yeah. In fact, it's one of the things when I talk to

00:49:23.540 high school students and they don't like the book, I say that's absolutely fine, but read it again when

00:49:28.180 you're 30 or read it when you're 50 or 60 because it will be a different book. You know, I mean, it's

00:49:32.320 been really helpful to me in ways that, it's kind of hard to sort of figure out how to phrase it, but

00:49:41.180 it's really taking the ideas that Thoreau has about questioning ourselves and testing them out on me.

00:49:49.820 You know, it's taking the ideas of simplicity, it's taking the ideas of being true to yourself,

00:49:55.400 it's taking the ideas of not harming other people, being good to the world around you,

00:50:01.040 trying to improve the world around you, that you have to take sort of seriously. There's a

00:50:06.100 great quotation, if I can remember it exactly, by the Austrian philosopher Martin Buber. And Buber had

00:50:13.060 said that Thoreau, he addressed his readers in a way that they discovered not only why Thoreau acted as

00:50:19.440 he did, but also the reader, assuming him of course to be honest and dispassionate, would have to act in

00:50:25.360 just such a way whenever the proper occasion arose, provided he was seriously engaged in fulfilling his

00:50:30.660 existence as a human being. And I kind of love that idea that when you read Thoreau, or at least

00:50:36.920 when I read Thoreau, I want to be better than I am. I want to be a better person. I want to do more for

00:50:43.340 my neighbors or the people around me. I want to make the world a better place. And that is what I get out of

00:50:49.140 Thoreau and find most inspiring about him. Because he doesn't really let you off the hook. And I

00:50:56.440 don't want to be let off the hook. I don't want to glide through life, as he said, like his neighbors

00:51:01.540 who are asleep. I want to be awake to what's going on around me and face things, whether it's good or

00:51:08.140 bad, but face them and deal with them in whatever way I can. Well, Jeffrey, this has been a great

00:51:13.340 conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work? So they have a website,

00:51:18.040 www.jeffreyscramer.com. And that's where people can sort of keep tabs on the work I'm doing and

00:51:24.300 where I might be speaking or what I'm publishing these days. And for the work I do for the Walden

00:51:29.660 Witch Project, they can go to www.walden.org and find out about what I'm doing there.

00:51:35.340 Fantastic. Well, Jeffrey Kramer, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:51:37.840 My pleasure. And thank you so much, Brett, for inviting me.

00:51:40.940 My guest today was Jeffrey S. Kramer. He's the curator of collections at the Walden

00:51:44.460 Woods Project Library. He's also the author and editor of several books about Thoreau

00:51:48.480 and Walden, including Walden, a fully annotated edition. You can find more information about

00:51:52.500 his work at his website, jeffreyscramer.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:51:57.160 slash Walden, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:52:07.920 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:52:11.900 at artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:52:16.100 written over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free

00:52:19.700 episodes of the AOM Podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com,

00:52:23.980 sign up, use code MANLESS at checkout for a free month trial. Once you're signed up, download the

00:52:27.920 Stitcher app on Android iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast.

00:52:31.780 And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple

00:52:34.540 Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the

00:52:39.020 show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it.

00:52:41.900 As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind you not

00:52:45.420 to listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - October 12, 2022

What People Get Wrong About Walden

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript