Henry David Thoreau, "Pond Scum"

     Rarely are myths exploded with as much unapologetic, joyful fury as Kathryn Schulz displays in a  New Yorker piece that methodically dismantles Henry David Thoreau, "Pond Scum" (Oct. 16, 2015).  In her hands, Thoreau is reduced to a self-righteous, insufferable, anti-social hypocrite.  It's a thrill to read.
     Thoreau was canonized, Schulz explains, by generations of Walden readers who either read Walden too selectively, separating out all the well-known passages about living "deliberately" and building "castles in the air," or rhapsodizing over individual passages, like the one on black and red ants.  And we also read him when we are young enough to value appealing half-truths.   "It is true," she concedes, "that Thoreau was an excellent naturalist and an eloquent and prescient voice for the preservation of wild places."  And she also acknowledges his courage as "an outspoken abolitionist" who embraced John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. 
     But that isn't what Walden is about.  It is, in fact, according to Schulz, "less a cornerstone work of environmental literature than the original cabin porn:  a fantasy about rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the entanglements and responsibilities of living among other people."
     Thoreau, we learn, was "self-obsessed," by which Schulz means that he was "narcissistic, fanatical about self-control, adamant that he required nothing beyond himself."  Walden at root reveals a "comprehensive arrogance," especially when it came to recommending a spartan "life in the woods," the book's subtitle.
     Walden Pond, for one thing, was hardly isolated, with a commuter train line running along one side, picnickers overrunning the place in summer, and ice skaters playing on it in the winter.  His family home was a mere twenty-minute walk from his cabin, and he took that walk "several times a week, lured by his mother's cookies or the chance to dine with friends."  And when he wasn't walking home, his mother or sisters would bring him his dinner.  It was hardly as spartan as he made out.
     Does this matter, Schulz asks?  "Begin with false premises and you risk reaching false conclusions.  Begin with falsified premises and you forfeit your authority."  The biggest failing in the book, she says is that it purports to be about how to live, but it says nothing about living with other people:  "Worse than Thoreau's radical self-denial, is his denial of others."
     In all, he was sanctimonious, dour, unbearable, and self-absorbed, not so much deep as "fundamentally adolescent."
      Amen to that.