The Thoreau You Don't Know by Robert Sullivan: 07/06/09

This just in over the Thoreau You Don't Know's e-transom:

hello friends!
greetings from copenhagen. today, at 7 AM, i saw two people asleep in a tent, which they had set up literally on the platform of the central train station! wow. this is a great idea. i am going to go camping in the train stations of the world. it looked like this: http://bit.ly/myKfQ
if you know people in copenhagen, or malmo sweden, i'm playing in copenhagen tomorrow Tuesday at 9 PM at Huset, and wednesday in Malmo somewhere i forget at 7 PM.

NEWS

1. I made two videos of a new song. you can see them here. Video A is necessary for comprehending the full implications of
Video B, but Video B is way more amazing.

Video A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm7Qc57EQjY

Video B: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCHk8BYllOQ

2. There is an amazing honkytonk band called the Sweetback Sisters. This band includes one Stefan Amidon on drums and some singing. They have a KILLER new record out. You must buy it. Order a hard copy:
http://www.thesweetbacksisters.com/
Or download it from iTunes:
http://bit.ly/d9gdl

okay bye!
sam
vimeo.com/samamidon

We wish we got more postcards featuring people camping in train stations. As it is, we will make do with this one.

Reasons that Thoreau is maybe more applicable to these troubling times than you may imagine

¶ He was living not in a peaceful time where he could just sit there and look at a pond but at a time of financial crisis, panics, even, when unemployment was first being recognized as a crisis, when people began to think that the economic system was broken—to wit, there were unemployed workers often living at Walden Pond.
¶ He was not just writing about butterflies (though he uses one to excellent, redemptive effect at Walden's end) but about how work was taking over our lives, how play was disappearing, how things like conversation were disappearing, along with sympathy, empathy and gratitude.
¶ He was very interested in gadgets, being an engineer himself--no technophobe--and living at a time of intense technological excitement.
¶ He was big on tunes, as in music, as in having a playlist, though in those days it was called a repertoire—he played a mean flute.

A Review

A mischievous reporter on the universe, Sullivan has found beauty in a notorious swamp in The Meadowlands (1998) and wisdom in an alley in Rats (2004). In his latest slyly philosophical inquiry, he endeavors to free Henry David Thoreau from his calcified reputation as a cantankerous hermit and nature worshipper. Sounding like your favorite teacher who manages to make history fun and relevant, Sullivan vibrantly portrays the sage of Walden as a geeky, curious, compassionate fellow of high intelligence and deep feelings who loved company, music, and long walks. An exceptional writer mad for puns, Thoreau
was also a bold social critic and—the crux of Sullivan’s stimulating argument—a brilliant, tongue-incheek
humorist. Sullivan, himself plenty saucy, also elucidates Thoreau’s radical focus on “man’s
interaction with nature.” In command of a great diversity of fascinating material, Sullivan succinctly illuminates the striking parallels between Thoreau’s time and ours—foreclosures, lost jobs, and rapid technological change. Thoreau remains vital and valuable because of his acute observations, wit, and lyricism and his recognition that the “force of life is everywhere,” a perception even more essential now that the consequences of the societal choices Thoreau prophetically critiqued have reached staggering proportions.--Donna Seaman, in Booklist

More from the publisher:
Henry David Thoreau is one of those authors that readers think you know, even if they don’t. He’s the solitary curmudgeon with the shack out in the woods, the mystic worshipping solemnly in the quiet church of nature. He’s our national Natural Man, the prophet of environmentalism. But here Robert Sullivan—who himself has been called an “urban Thoreau” (New York Times Book Review) presents the Thoreau you don’t know: the activist, the organizer, the gregarious adventurer, the guy who likes to go camping with friends (even if they sometimes accidentally burn the woods down). Sullivan argues that Walden was a book intended to revive America, a communal work forever pigeonholed as a reclusive one, and that this misreading is at the heart of our troubled relationship with the environment today. Sullivan shows us not a lonely eccentric but a man in his growing village, a man who danced and sang, who worked throughout his short life at the family pencil-making business, and moved into his parents’ house after leaving Walden Pond, but always paid his father rent. Passionate yet whimsical, The Thoreau You Don’t Know asks us to re-examine our everyday relationship with the natural world, and one another.

The Thoreau You Don't Know by Robert Sullivan

When You Are Too Tired to Blog You Just Show Off a Postcard Which Contains a Photo Containing the Wild Where It's Not Necessarily Expected!

Blog Archive