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The Adventures Of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path To Walden Pond (2014)

by Michael Sims(Favorite Author)

3.77 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1620401959 (ISBN13: 9781620401958)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Bloomsbury USA

review 1: The evolution of the nature-loving iconoclastWith 'The Adventures of Henry Thoreau,' Michael Sims peels away the layers and labels of literary icon and idiosyncratic philosopher to reveal the raw material that developed into the life of Henry Thoreau. Obviously the nonconformist did not spring fully formed into the world or immediately start beating and marching to his unique drum at full volume in his early years. Those early stages of the man's development are often ignored, although the winding path of fortune determined the figure the boy became.The phrasing of the title as 'The Adventures of…' evokes various fictional 19th century narratives of young men coming into a fuller awareness of themselves (even Mark Twain's juvenile protagonists Tom and Huck) or emerging i... morento the world through often circuitous routes. Thoreau did not simply grow up in Concord and suddenly decide to live a more natural life. He always loved the outdoors and explored woods, rivers and that almost mythical pond Walden that called to him from an early age. Thoreau's 'disobedience', civil or otherwise, developed early. He dropped out of Harvard close to graduation; he quit a school teaching job because, after abiding by the expected administering of corporal punishment once, he took a stand against it on principle; he left a job in Staten Island tutoring the nephew of Ralph Waldo Emerson because he felt isolated and removed from nature and the lack of sympathetic kindred spirits like RWE (the brother and his family were poor substitutes).He tried to live a somewhat conventional life. He attended Harvard but dropped out short of graduation, spent time as a teacher and tutor and could always fall back on work in his father's pencil factory. This was no generic factory. His father devised the numbering system for categorizing pencils based on hardness and durability of the lead. I will never again use a No. 2 pencil without thinking of Thoreau.Sims lays out the pattern of events and sees how crucial developments changed the direction of Thoreau's life. He never was the most sociable of humans and, even from childhood, seemed distanced from his friends. He and his brother both loved the same woman, Ellen Sewall, and they both proposed to her independently of one another and were both refused on similar grounds. Neither one of them showed any promise of being prosperous and their affinity with transcendentalism definitely didn't sit well with Ellen's father. His closest relationship was probably with his brother John. They were kindred spirits. They opened a school together, they wandered the woods together and they explored rivers together. When John died (heartbreakingly depicted by Sims), Henry was devastated. He grew even more withdrawn than he usually was and he could hardly look people in the eyes without breaking down for a long time. These developments probably solidified his determination to seek a natural, simpler life with limited human contact.He was always viewed by many of the Concord residents as odd and nonconformist but his accidental setting of a forest fire when his and a friend's campfire quickly grew out of control added the scornful label of 'woods-burner' to their attitudes toward him. Emerson's offer of some of his land rent free on which Thoreau could build a cabin near Walden Pond fulfilled a childhood dream and seemed like a perfect solution. The time at Walden was not spent in total solitude. He had visitors and he left the cabin for trips into town. He even provided the cabin as the site for an abolitionist meeting on one occasion. When Emerson departed on a European lecture tour and asked Thoreau to help look after the family and property, Thoreau took it as a sign to move on to another phase.His determination to seek out more remote wilderness culminated in a trek into Maine with a friend and some guides up the Penobscot River and then to climb to the summit of Ktaan Mountain, a region full of Indian lore and legend. Thoreau embarked by himself farther than his companions but experienced a harsh epiphany when having a closer encounter with the forbidding wild. This area was inhospitable and reminded him that there was a good reason it was uncharted. Despite his isolationist tendencies, he was a member of human society and did not belong in these regions. He spent most of the rest of his life devoting more energy to his writing (the gestation, composition and publication of 'Walden' was eight years, four times the duration of his time living in the cabin) and lecturing.Sims has a very free-flowing, effortless style. He provides just enough background to fill in details without weighing down his narrative with superfluous baggage. The book does contain one unnecessary diversion. Thoreau's relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne is explored in depth (probably even more than his more integral relationship with Emerson) but there is a chapter devoted to an event in which Hawthorne and his boat were enlisted in the search for the body of a woman who drowned herself. This is interesting and illuminates aspects of Hawthorne's character but it seems like an extract from another book, one devoted to Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'adventures' but one that has no bearing on Henry's development.While stating his purpose in the introduction, to present a portrait of the artist as a young man, leading up to the seminal experience at Walden Pond, this nevertheless feels like three fourths of a great biography to me. Sims explores Thoreau's early life in great detail although he stops short of the psychological theorizing in which I've indulged in this review. However, Thoreau's life continued for another twelve years or so after this book ends. He died after the Civil War began. I'm certain that he had further relationships and epiphanies just as worthy of inclusion in a biography that could have been expanded at least another thirty pages or so. Those reservations aside, I consider this biography an excellent place to start for anyone interested in knowing more about the life and character of this unique figure in American history.
review 2: A great biography of Thoreau's earlier years, before his writing reached much of an audience, when he was just young man trying to find his ways through life. It was a fascinating look into the forces that shaped his character. After his Harvard years, like many college grads as many of us were once, he stumbled bleary-eyed from an academic cocoon into the real world, where his ability to compose verse in Latin or write a book in ancient Greek was not deeply appreciated. If he was born in these days, I suppose you would see him in a grungy T-shirt, working in a Subway somewhere, on nights and weekends playing drum in a friend's band that's going nowhere fast. So how did he transform into the man who wrote Walden and others? It's still very much a mystery after you finish the book, but I think it's fine for the origin of genius to remain somewhat mysterious. We can admire a flower's blossom without knowing the inner workings of its biochemistry, and here in this book we get to view, albeit from a distance, the blossoming of a great writer's mind. Sometimes that's reward enough. less

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