Walden by Thoreau Is Immature but Inspiring in a Way

I've been listening to Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, at long last.  It's one of those famous books that you hear about forever, with all the great quotes.  Since I'm a fan of Emerson's writing (see highly modified opinion in later blog here), and the two are associated, and because I like the quotes from Walden, I have at last decided to give it a shot.  I'm only a third of the way through, and I am both disappointed and inspired by it. 

I suppose I was expecting something in the vein of Emerson's enlightened thoughts, but Thoreau is certainly his own fellow.

He's a young man, only 30, and he seems even younger than that, in ways.  I envision a college student—one of those really idealistic ones who want to live in a tent and experience nature, full of zeal and rebellion.  Thoreau actually says something to the effect that he's never received any good advice from his elders.  So ungrateful, I thought!  So, yep, he seems a bit spoiled and bratty that way.  He later says that his constitution is not designed to be a philanthropist, which is sort of funny.  I think he had been frustrated with wanting to help people in the truest way he knew how—and had been rejected.  They wanted gifts, whereas he wanted to help them to be self-sufficient in the way he had accustomed himself to being.  In a way, I identified with him there, as I think of gifts like compost bins or other self or home-improvements.

So, the great Thoreau is an interesting and inspiring person, but he's immature in ways that reflect his place in life.  He's young and headstrong, with no dependents.  I wonder if he changed some of his views in the ensuing years?  I hope he at least changed his mind about the unimportance of proper nutrition, though his diet actually didn't sound too awful—but most certainly he cannot just eat nails and survive. Yes, he said something like that.

Anyhow, he delves deeply at times, resonating with me for a short while.  He's all about finding the least expensive way of living so that the vast majority of your time can be spent on what you are interested in.  He drones on and on, itemizing his expenses for us--in such a classic text!  But it does convey his passion for the reality of his beliefs—that he not only thinks he can do this, but he is doing it!

That was nice mostly as a sorta 'Me, too!  I see it that way!', but it's nothing that I didn't already kinda know.  And I'm not so sure about the complete validity of his itemizing as 'proof' that anyone can do this, as he's 'squatting' on someone else's land! 

He did comfort and inspire me a bit with his recommendation to spend less time 'do(ing) good' and more time trying to 'be good'. I like to fancy that I share this truly broad-minded perspective. He sees the pointlessness of so much cyclical charity.  In his time, the rich factory owners were impoverishing workers and then alleviating the poverty at times with charity.  It would have been better if they'd just 'been good' in the first place.  

In our own time, so many charities are designed to support the pharmaceutical industry.  As if they need our money!  We volunteer to pay for research to develop new drugs.  Sigh…  So many people put much of their best energy into this, donating to these rich conglomerates.  

If the kindly folks who are donating would put more energy into 'being good'—as in, don't harm others (including factory farm animals) or the environment and try to support family businesses—then they'd actually be doing a lot more for the health of the planet and their own communities.  

Not to dissuade people from donating to charity.  That does have its place. But even donations to some of the charities that do the best work can go awry—as when I simultaneously donated to an animal rights group and to an environmental group only to discover that one group was fighting legislation that would promote animal testing, while the other group was pushing for it, so as to more thoroughly test chemicals in household products.  

I figure that the best use of my limited income is to make sure that my own life is as ethical as I can make it. Meanwhile, I do see the value of group action, given our governmental concerns.  And I do still donate to charity, a little.  I just want to prioritize making ethical choices at home, as Thoreau encourages.  I could always do better, and I sometimes feel guilty about my choices, but we do at least have some good patterns established, such as shopping at the farmers market and prioritizing organic foods. 

Thoreau goes farther. I'm not willing to explore the 'freedom' of his lifestyle, as it sounds too uncomfortable and uncertain, but I share his perspective to a degree.  And, in contrasting the minimalist lifestyle that he leads with my own, I feel as though I am blessed with so much already.  I don't think it was his intention, but his book is making me appreciate what I have.  His warning, though, is one that I live with—he doesn't want us to indebt ourselves unnecessarily, making us slaves to possessions.  What's that quote that prompted me to get the book in the first place?  Something to do with 'the cost of something is how much of our lives we exchange for it'.  Yes, I think that's a valuable way to consider everything, including things that are 'free'. 

And while he was talking about real sweat-and-tears labor, I'd also like to point out that television counts here, too.  The cost of television is not just the cable bill and the TV set and little bit of electricity—it's the hours upon hours that we spend watching it instead of engaging ourselves in the activities that we're most interested in.  We can become passive and waste our lives in this way, if we're not careful.  Not to say that we might not sometimes be very interested in a particular show—and sometimes there are wonderfully informative shows that are right up the alley of what we want to learn.  My husband and I spend quite a bit of our free time watching documentaries, and I reserve action and fantasy entertainment mostly for my workouts on the elliptical—at which time I also like to employ the foreign language subtitles (or English subtitles while listening to Spanish or French).  I'm not sure if I learn much new from this, but I hope that it keeps me from forgetting some of what I already know.  Hah, I feel a bit like Thoreau, itemizing his expenses for us!  My point is just that I'm not throwing out the TV altogether; I may even overindulge and am guilty of devoting too much time to it, too. I try to excuse it with my workouts, some language practice, documentary information, and DVDs instead of cable, so as to eliminate most advertising (a waste of time as well as materialistic propaganda!).  Could I do better?  Perhaps.  I could be more extreme, like Thoreau.  And it might not be a bad idea.  But I am a product of this society and find myself unwilling to go to that extreme.

Even so, I appreciate Thoreau's ideas and enjoy listening to them.  Who knows?  Perhaps he's planted a seed for later.  At the very least, he has prompted me to appreciate what I already have and to feel that my life is actually pretty darn luxurious.

A Year In Provence by Peter Mayle

Peter Mayle's wry sense of humor charmed me. Here’s a paraphrased example:  I’d never met a more mendacious, vicious brute. I liked him more every day.

Despite his oft-delightful wit, I didn’t end up loving A Year in Provence as much as I thought I would at first. Mayle went on about the most mundane things, though granted, I’ve never really been much for travel reading. I didn’t connect with his level of sophistication, I suppose, as he talked about continually going to restaurants and dancing at cocktail parties and all such.  I would glaze over and have to go back to re-read sections to make any sense of it.  Here’s how un-memorable the content was: I finished the book and went back to it, forgetting I’d finished it.  Not much of a story.

I did come away from it with a little better sense of Provence, though.  Some things I do recall: 

·    The Mistral is a severe, cutting wind that blows through the region in the winter, especially. The climate is quite cold much of the year.

·      The French spoken by the locals has a hard ‘g’ added to so many words, especially those ending with ‘ien’ or ‘in’.  So, ‘bieng, vieng’ and the like.

·     Some of the restaurants don’t have menus.  They just serve your meal, and you eat whatever it is!  I personally wouldn’t care for this, since I have dietary restrictions, but if I didn’t, I might actually enjoy that… 

·         Lots of mushrooms can be found in the woods.

·         Documents are required all the time, for everything.

·     The area is rich in vineyards and has many wine producers. I knew this about France generally, but not particularly about Provence.

Mayle drew memorable characters—the brutish neighbor; Menicucci, a very competent and cultured furnace guy whom he called about all his home issues; another neighbor who farmed the vineyards, but whose wife did the vast bulk of all the hard work, including chimney-sweeping, mechanical repairs, planting grapevines, etc.

*Spoiler Alert!*

The poor author-couple started remodeling their new house in January, and much of it still wasn’t complete in December!  Honestly, it makes you wonder if it really was THAT bad to be worth it. What a nightmare for them.  The couple had been pestering the workers for months, and they were given endless reassurances, the latest being, “Don’t worry, we’ll be finished way before Christmas!”  Anyhow, the author’s wife solved the issue by arranging a party to celebrate the ‘finished house’, inviting the workers AND their wives.  Since the workers didn’t want their wives to see their work incomplete, they showed up right away after getting the invitations and actually finished the job.  Brilliant stroke on her part, hmm? Too useful a tip not to mention here.

 The grand ending was really just the end of the year, on Christmas day. Aside from having the renovations completed (nearly), their electricity went out. The restaurant was already booked, but Peter explained their problem, and the restaurant set up a tiny extra table next to the kitchen for them. Mayle remarks on all sorts of extreme conditions that wouldn’t garner the sympathies of the natives of Provence, but he claims that any gastronomic suffering will in full.

A Year In Provence was amusing and occasionally engaging. I guess it should be easy in general to forget you’ve finished a travel book, so I won’t hold it against him—and few have, it seems. Apparently, the book was something of a sensation when it came out and was made into a TV miniseries.  I wouldn’t mind watching that…

Fawkes by Nadine Brandes

**Spoiler Alert**

Brandes draws us into a vivid alternative-history/magical version of the political and religious realities of early-17^th century London.  With a stroke of brilliance reminiscent of C.S. Lewis, she renames Catholics as ‘Keepers’ and Protestants as ‘Igniters’, both of whom have respect for White Light (i.e., God) but have a different understanding of how they should interact with it.  Igniters speak directly with White Light, using all the different colors of the spectrum in their magic. This enhances their power, generally speaking.  The Keepers view this direct interaction and broad scope of power as dangerous, and the magic folk among them apply their own personal powers to a single color, which they choose when young and adhere to for life. The correlations are fun and well-conceived, though I did take issue with the obvious conclusion that Protestants were magically ‘stronger’, as there didn’t seem to be any redeeming qualities to concentrating powers on a single color.

Thomas Fawkes, son of the infamous Guy Fawkes, is a Keeper—at first.  His father has neglected to provide Thomas with the mask he should have received in order to harness his color power, so Thomas makes his way to London to find him. Of course he lands in the thick of the Gunpowder Plot as a co-conspirator, though his lady-love, Emma, just so happens to be an Igniter.

To spice it up, Brandes throws in a stone-plague and African skin and John Dee, who was once court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I. I’m loving this alternative history of masks, cloaks, and magic and am appreciating Thomas’ struggle with the madness that surrounds him.  Though he wants to be a loyal Keeper, he fervently respects Emma and is somewhat troubled by the mass murder he’s helping to plan (these Keepers intend to blow up Parliament and the King, of course—which is what the Gunpowder Plot was about).

Half-way through, and I’m enchanted, right?  I adore Thomas’ insight as to the futility of their struggles against one another, especially since both sides claim to respect White Light.  His mind opens to Emma’s perspective, and he’s rightly troubled by what he’s helping to plan.  At this point, I’m feeling that Nadine Brandes has that C.S. Lewis’ grasp on Christianity, that she’s in touch with White Light herself, that if the world would just see things as she does, all would be well.

And then the story turns.  Thomas’ mind isn’t ‘opened’, it’s more that he converts.  And suddenly, somehow, the Keepers are lost, in his mind.  And when, in the end, Guy Fawkes is tortured and headed towards death, all Thomas can think of is how desperately he wants to convert his father, too.  I’m just horrified that while Brandes vividly describes how awful the father’s treatment has been, that Thomas doesn’t empathize with his father, nor does he seem to feel the slightest remorse (his father would likely not have been caught if not for Thomas, after all).  The son only pressures the father to convert, to talk to White Light directly. Brandes seems to view the division between Protestantism and Catholicism to be as profound as they did in those times—and I truly wonder if she doesn’t view Catholics as sufficiently ‘saved’!  For modern Christian circles, I believe this view is unusually narrow-minded, though I doubt she was continuing her correlation by this point.

The last third of the story loses me, as well, in that Thomas Fawkes seems to feel obliged to burden everyone with his confessions.  In reality, he would have been offed immediately. Foolishly, selfishly, he repeatedly opens that maw of his to tell everyone how he betrayed them.  I’m not just upset for his sake—he still has plans to try to save people, and if he’s killed, he won’t be able to do it. But he insists on having a clear conscience at all times, and he repeatedly speaks up with his confessions, displaying not a wit of reserve or savviness or guilt for ruining the lives of his Keeper-friends. When King James asks him what boon he desires, instead of doing good or even benefitting himself or Emma, Thomas ends up asking only to see his father, whom he pesters to convert as the poor man is in agony.  Thomas attends his father’s execution with Emma, and it’s such a happy day for him as he sees his father dying—because his father shows White Light in his blood, as Igniters do.  What a joyous thing, hmm?  [This is irony, btw.]

I’m drawn in by Thomas’ earnestness, and I appreciate his shift, but then I’m left baffled by his suddenly-narrow adherence to his newfound perspective.  Again, I suspect Brandes loses her correlations and isn’t intending to imply that Catholics aren’t ‘saved’ (though maybe she is?).  In the end, Thomas’ entreaties to his father remind one of a overzealous missionary, desirous of saving souls while being unmoved by human suffering. 

I was so inspired by the first half of this book that I’m not sorry to have devoted time to this novel. Brandes is a fine writer with a wonderful imagination, but I was quite disappointed with our protagonist in the end. Guy Fawkes, however, acted with unwavering humility, savviness, and loyalty, however misguided his plans were. He seems a hero, and I’ll likely never feel as dubious about the holiday called ‘Guy Fawkes’ Day’ again, thanks to this fictional account by Nadine Brandes—who, again, is a fantastic writer.