Thoreau Today

Henry David Thoreau in the Literature and Culture of the 21st Century

Questions and Findings by Chris Dodge

August 2008

Michael Gilleland's Laudator Temporis Acti blog, June 28, 2008, quotes the June/July issue of Thoreau Today ("'Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.' Does that sound like Thoreau to you? No. But it's attributed to him in a chapter 4 epigraph to Joelle Jay and Amy Kovarick's Baby on Board: Becoming a Mother Without Losing Yourself—A Guide for Moms-to-Be (AMACOM, 2007). And over 3,000 Google hits, though none (that I could see) with a source cited.") Gilleland notes, "In addition to Baby on Board, the following books attribute the quotation to Thoreau, apparently without bibliographical information

Fine Tuning: Connecting with Your Inner Power

Holistic Assertiveness Skills for Nurses: Empower Yourself (and Others!)

The Kitchen Witch Companion: Simple and Sublime Culinary Magic

Living Big: Embrace Your Passion and Leap Into an Extraordinary Life

Shout from the Rooftops in Your Stilettos

Slow Up: 199 Ways to Calm Your Mind, Relax Your Body and Inspire Your Spirit

Star Babies: Astrology for Babies and Their Parents

Take Back Your Power! The 7 Secret Steps to Your Destiny: Living Your Dreams!

Tapestries: Words of Devotion For The Second Half Of Life

Taste Berries for Teens: Inspirational Short Stories and Encouragement on Life, Love and Friends

Thoughts to Inspire: Daily Messages for Young People

Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing

"This is not a complete list. I can see that there are broad areas of contemporary literature that will forever remain closed to me."

Gilleland also answers a question posed in the June/July Thoreau Today ("Stacey Lawson begins her essay 'What is Faith?' published on Huffington Post, 'Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness."' Did he? Where?"), noting, "Thoreau did say this, or something similar, in a letter to Lydia Emerson's sister, Lucy Jackson Brown (Jan. 25, 1843): 'I do not venture to say anything about your griefs, for it would be unnatural for me to speak as if I grieved with you, when I think I do not. If I were to see you, it might be otherwise. But I know you will pardon the trivialness of this letter; and I only hope — as I know that you have reason to be so — that you are still happier than you are sad, and that you remember that the smallest seed of faith is of more worth than the largest fruit of happiness. I have no doubt that out of S——'s death you sometimes draw sweet consolation, not only for that, but for long-standing griefs, and may find some things made smooth by it, which before were rough.'"

Artist John Porcellino, whose King-Cat Comics has demonstrated a remarkable awareness of everyday wonders (raindrops, sidewalk cracks and caddis fly larvae), has mined Thoreau's Walden, "Civil Disobedience," and "Walking" to create Thoreau at Walden (Hyperion, 2008), a book he calls an impression of Thoreau's experience at Walden Pond and the philosophy "that both brought him to its shores and resulted from his time there." The book combines Porcellino's spare images with Thoreau's words, graphic-novel style. And amazingly, it works, probably since Porcellino's spirit is truly akin to Thoreau's and appreciative of silence and appropriate simplicity. The book is like a visual poem, and some of the best pages have no text at all. The words here, wedded to images, include not just the most famous lines ("different drummer," et al.), but some of the most beautiful ("I rejoice that there are owls") and the effect sometimes is downright heroic, as when Thoreau leaves jail and goes huckleberrying that same day, where glorious fields unfold under the sky, "and then the state was nowhere to be seen."

It should be noted that seven pages at the end of the book are devoted to documenting sources of each line used and to commentary, making this book usefully and even scholarly. It's potentially a door to Thoreau's writings for young readers.

Of this Porcellino-Thoreau mash-up Julie Hanus writes on the Utne Reader website, "John Porcellino, the quirky cartoonist-writer-illustrator behind King Cat Comics, has gone and compacted Walden, Thoreau's magnum opus, into a tidy graphic novel. Presented by the Center for Cartoon Studies and published through Hyperion, Thoreau at Walden is, well, damn cool: Porcellino's simple, straightforward style uncannily complements pared-down text from the transcendental philosopher himself. It's a distillation, yes, but a refreshing, artistic, insightful one—and (in the most pedestrian of reactions) reading it made me want to instantly recommend it to any student ever tempted to grab for those proverbial CliffsNotes, in addition to fans, obviously, of graphic novels, Thoreau, or Porcellino."

Alex Ross's profile of composer John Luther Adams in the May 12, 2008, issue of the New Yorker ("Song of the Earth: A Composer Takes Inspiration from the Arctic") says that Adams lived for a decade "in a rudimentary cabin in the woods outside Fairbanks [Alaska], a mile from the nearest road. 'It was my Thoreau fantasy—cutting wood and carrying water,' he told me."

The Library of Congress CIP summary for Mary E. Pearson's The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Henry Holt, 2008), synopsizes the novel for teens thus: "In the not-too-distant future, where biotechnological advances have made synthetic bodies and brains possible but illegal, a seventeen-year-old girl, recovering from a serious accident and suffering from memory lapses, learns a startling secret about her existence." The book contains references throughout to Thoreau and Walden. The main character, Jenna, confides to the reader, "I'm more than familiar [with Walden]--I could recite it word for word. . . . I'm startled at this revelation myself." A while later she completes a Thoreauvian quote that a boy whispers to her, having leaned close. ("'A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten . . .' He waits expectantly. I lean in closer. He watches my lips, and I let my words trickle out as softly as his. '. . . on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us. . . .' Ethan downs the rest of his milk. 'Two points made.' 'Three,' I say. He raises his eyebrows. 'You're far more versed in Walden than you let on,' I say. And not a dickhead at all, I think to myself."

Later on in the book: "I pick up my copy of Walden, now uploaded word for word into my biochips, but there is still something about opening a real book, the scent that emerges. . . . I wonder about things like the sounds and scents that surrounded Thoreau as he wrote each sentence and paragraph. Turning pages, feeling the paper, I wonder if any trees from Thoreau's forest are still alive. . . ."

In New York's vast Adirondack State Park, one can lodge in a replica of Thoreau's cabin built in 2003. The website describing and depicting the replica looks like the work of someone who decided to jokingly spurn Thoreau's urging to simplify ("CLICK AND GO!"), so it took some digging to find out where the thing is located. The answer: near Jay, New York. How much? "Single or Double occupancy from $425/3days, $850/week," plus 11% "sales/occupancy tax."

A song by singer/songwriter Stew (born Mark Stewart) called "Black Men Ski" includes these lines:

"black men now are students of gay sensibility
we wear ironic t-shirts drenched in code unknown to thee
we get baptized in Walden pond amongst a searing mob
because the cleansing blood of Jesus could not do a thorough job
black men ski
black men ski"

The Disinformation Company, publishers of such books as 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know, released a "favorite books" survey in July based on 1,074 responses to their myspace query. Tops on the list was George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. A separate "nonfiction" list has Walden eighth, after the Tao Te Ching, A People's History of the United States, Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger series, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising, and the Bible. Consider the source, eh?

Thoreau Yesterday

W. B. Yeats said of his poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "When I was a young lad in the town of Sligo I read Thoreau's essays and wanted to live in a hut on an island in Lough Gill called Innisfree." You can hear Yeats say this (and read the poem aloud), on the Poetry Archive website.

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