Is Walden really Walden?

This week’s challenge was to read Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau. I have to admit that I only got through half of it, but I do plan on carrying on with it throughout this week, particularly as I go into the woods to stay in a cabin with Dan to celebrate my birthday and our third anniversary. What slowed me up mostly was that the language is dated, and the date is 1854. This caused my eyelids to immediately droop as I started to read words I’d never heard, odd spellings, and odd (to me) arrangements of sentences. For example:

“Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect.  But they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them.  Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a woman’s dress, at least, is never done.”

What also slowed me up was that I was expecting this to be his journal of daily activity of his time in the woods, but instead, he started with a (too) long rant about the necessities of life. Some of this was quite funny, particularly the part about clothing (see above) and how “we” are so ridiculous about it (which we are, but were we in 1854?). But then there was the long discussion of why we need shelter and what sorts of food we need, etc. I could have lived without it. But, on the topic of food, he scoffed at a farmer that told him he couldn’t live on vegetable (plant) food alone as he noted the farmer was plowing his field behind a 1,000 pound ox, who eats nothing but vegetables. Touche, Thoreau.

He then described how he built his house with a detailed list of how much (or little) the materials cost. The total was around $28. He did eventually get to the day-to-day experiences and I loved that he had an entire chapter just on the sounds that he hears in his little spot in the woods, which included frogs, owls, and trains. I also discovered one of his most famous passages on really living:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.  I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to route all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

Frankly, Thoreau, while advocating the simple life, is quite the elitist snob. He thinks that we should only read “the canon” (you know the classics that are written by old, white men?). It seems that to me that if he is getting back to the nature, he might appreciate local knowledge and storytelling just as much as the canon, but he considers these “simple” in the other sense of the word. He is also quite pleased with himself, living very simply (this time, it’s a good thing), spending little, laboring little, not wasting his time on the toil of the average man. Instead, he can really enjoy life, like it was meant to be enjoyed, thinking, writing, discussing philosophical things, enjoying the simplicity of nature, etc. He dismisses the need for big fancy houses, lots of clothes, lots of technology, etc. This is a conundrum for me for a couple of reasons.

1)  I like to think that I am doing my best to simplify, but at the same time, I am a student of technology, technology that I think in some ways, enhances my humanity. I try to buy less things, drive less, have less, spend time in nature, eat whole foods, etc., but I also blog and check facebook daily, as a way to connect, to document my thoughts and to reflect on life in general. At some point, Thoreau dismisses the necessity of increased communication via the telegraph and even the excessiveness of a daily newspaper. I am dying to know how long his rant would be about the internet.

2)  While I like to think that “natural” or “simple” is best, I also know that these are historically contingent concepts. There’s no “natural” outside of what we think of as unnatural. For example, Thoreau is critiquing 1854 society, one that we would think is quite basic, quite simple and natural. He’s probably responding to the industrial age, but so much of his argument sounds just like the technophobes of today. Is there really a “real?” What would “the real” be? Should we be living in huts? Should we refuse all technologies? That would be difficult because any sort of tool is a technology. Are we being ruined by technology? And for that matter, are we being saved by technology?  There are no answers to these questions because they are all about frames and so any answer is just one answer that exists at this moment in time, as part of a discourse within a certain regime of truth within a specific episteme (to use Foucault’s terms). This all makes me question why I embrace the discourse of “the natural” and “the technological” at the same time, knowing that both are fictions that I choose to hold on to. This made it very confusing to highlight passages that I liked in the book, while questioning why I like them, why I want to like them, and how they are really just a part of a swirling mess of discourses and materialities creating the appearance of some “real” at this particular moment. Hey, I think I can cite this mess in my exams!

On a side note, reading a book on the iPhone was alright. I still like the feel of a “real” book, one where I can feel the pages that I have already passed and that are to come. A bar at the bottom of the screen just doesn’t cut it. I like highlighting and tabbing real pages, but I was impressed that this application (stanza), I was able to mark passages, annotate, and even share quotes with facebook. But, it was kind of hard on the eyes reading on a tiny screen with a backlight. And, people think I’m playing around or texting while I’m reading. Someone on the bus said, “You texting?” “No,” I said, but what I really wanted to say was, “No, I’m reading and annotating Walden while sharing passages with my own personal online community.” How about them apples, Thoreau?