The Thoreau You Don't Know by Robert Sullivan: September 2011

A Greek in a Dark Pool, or Dublin

I wish I could see Katie Holten's new public art work on the streets of Dublin, Ireland.

Let Them Eat Only Organic Snacks!

Frank Bruni's column on famous chefs' food fights, gets at the things often unsaid about fancy foods, such as this:

A great deal of American obesity is attributable to the dearth of
healthy food that’s affordable and convenient in low- and even
middle-income neighborhoods, and changing that requires a magnitude of
public intervention and private munificence that are unlikely in such
pinched times.

and this:

But these preferences reflect privileges and don’t entitle me,
Bourdain or anyone else who trots the globe and visits ambitious
restaurants — the most casual of which can cost $50 a person and
entail hourlong waits — to look down on food lovers without the
resources, opportunity or inclination for that.

Matthew Sharpe Takes it Home

The week that was Matthew Sharpe's week bloggin' at Powell's wrapped up today, Friday.

Matthew Sharpe's Powell's Expedition

The Echo Maker is the title of Sharpe's first Powell's guest blog post, one of a week's worth of posts and posts. Take heed!

I find this humbling: the possibility that always and everywhere, our understanding of the world and of each other and of ourselves is at best a fairly attuned and nuanced fiction.

Dave in Meadowlands!

Meadowlands aficionados will be excited to know that my friend Dave is in and out of the Meadowlands today—to wit:

Just as the red maples lead the chorus of turning leaves as they set south from Nova Scotia and Maine, slowly setting fire to the woods in the Middle Atlantic states--set fire figuratively speaking, of course, as we have surely had our share of floods and fires and quakes of late--so the music scene in Reykjavik leads the way, in some instances, when it comes to music in New York. A place that the staff of the TYDK has long dreamed of visiting and yet never actually has is Reykjavik, which was recent host, apparently, to The Murphy Beds. The Beds, as they are sometimes known, are normally a four-member ensemble, making this Icelandic permutation a kind of twin Beds thing. Góða nótt og dreymi þig vel! Via reykjavik.com.

More Icelandic saga:

More Murphy Beds:

Broken

A friend of the TYDK—N.D., the cousin of one of the unicyclists here—sent over this below, and we are all very grateful:

And Yet

Right! Nothing you do matters!

You reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season grapes. You do all the right things.
Good.
Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action.

This is the kind of thing people love to read, a relief. And yet, it is, we here at the TYDK would argue, short-sighted, a view of the trees that purports to be a view of the forest. It has put us in mind of this, which is where this post takes its title, "And Yet."

Available now from Robert Sullivan, the New York Times best selling author, and published by Harper. A description from the publisher:

What if Henry David Thoreau—America’s pioneering nature lover, the man who famously lived in a little house of his own construction—was actually pro-city rather than just a monkish introvert who wanted to be left alone in the woods? What if the man we think of as so serious and introspective was really a joker, a bit of clown, a kind of stand-up comic in his day? And what if the fact that he often went home to his family or into town for supper didn’t show him to be a cheater or a fraud as far as self-reliance goes? What if spending time with his friends and family—i.e., community—was his point all along?

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