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Henry David Thoreau: Journals
$240
Thoreau’s Journal is one of the greatest piece of American nature-writing and one of the greatest intellectual achievements in world literature. As Virginia Woolf said, in the Journal “we have a chance of getting to know Thoreau as few people are known.”
Thoreau considered his journals his central literary endeavor. They are, among other things, the raw material out of which he crafted his other books. But they are also a very different enterprise from his books. They form a daily attempt to collect his thinking about life, based on decades of observation. Full of strange paradoxes and hilarious stories, they record his liveliest and most intimate observations of humanity and of nature, his deepest reflections, his daily activities and travels, and his interactions with people and with the more-than-human world.
Most people know Thoreau through Walden. But in the Journal, his masterwork, we will meet Thoreau in a fuller and more intimate form and as a very great thinker about human life and the natural world. Again, as Woolf put it, “Thoreau could lift a fish out of the stream with his hands; he could charm a wild squirrel to nestle in his coat; he could sit so still that the animals went on with their play around him.” We will find the humorous, sociable, witty Thoreau, who found intelligence in all life. He recounts everything from his walks, river journeys, and passion for ice-skating to his fight against slavery. The Journal allows readers to see beyond the conventional misreading of Thoreau as misanthropic and isolated. Here we will find the man who knew his neighbors intimately and whom they knew well, who was interested in all of the society around him. This Thoreau is now the center of attention on the man and his work.
We will also think about what kind of project or genre these texts are and in what ways we can read and think about them. We will not be reading the complete journals—the two million words comprising the 47 manuscript volumes that Thoreau wrote over 24 years—but we will read what I believe is the best and most representative edition, edited by the writer and translator Damion Searles.
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Text:
The Journal of Henry David Thoreau (New York Review of Books)