Not the “hermit” of Walden but a public intellectual
In Thoreau’s case, how do you write a biography about someone who devoted most of his life to autobiographical writings? Well, for starters, Walls doesn’t spend a lot of time at Walden Pond. She assumes the reader has already read Thoreau’s best-known work, so she doesn’t devote a lot of time summarizing it. Instead, she concentrates more on Thoreau’s family life, literary career, and the behind-the-scenes story of how Walden became a book. In regards to other Thoreau works, however, such as The Maine Woods and Cape Cod, Walls does quite a bit of recapping. Although Thoreau: A Life is largely a factual biography, it includes a fair amount of literary criticism, as well as considerable speculative psychoanalysis of the man in question.
For those who know little about Thoreau, there’s a popular misconception of him as a hermit who abandoned society to live as a recluse deep in the forest. For most anyone who would be interested in reading this biography, however, it’s likely common knowledge that Walden Pond was just outside of town, Thoreau’s house in the woods was not very far off the beaten path, and while he lived there he still had a great deal of social interaction with friends, family, and the citizens of Concord, Mass. Thoreau’s experiment at Walden was more about domestic economy, environmental awareness, and spiritual clarity than about self-imposed isolation. Walls also reveals that the relationship between Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson was more complicated than simply the kindred spirits of a mentor and mentee. She delves deeply into their friendship and shows that the two were as much rivals as friends. Beyond the expected cast of Transcendentalists, Walls also recounts Thoreau’s encounters with many important literary and historical figures of his day, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Horace Greeley, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown.
One surprise to me was the extent of Thoreau’s celebrity during his lifetime. At least in Massachusetts, and to some extent farther afield, he was well-known as a naturalist and as an author who was popular on the lecture circuit. When he published an essay on a current issue, both the intelligentsia and the general public paid attention and reacted. That’s not to say, however, that his books sold well. He struggled to make ends meet during his lifetime and made most of his living on carpentry and surveying. Instead of just Thoreau the guy who wanders in the woods, Walls’s biography really provides a good look at Thoreau the writer and man of letters who had to promote himself and deal with publishers and critics just like any other literary figure. We also get a glimpse at Thoreau the natural scientist, who counted Harvard faculty like Louis Agassiz among his colleagues. Walls has already published an entire book on Thoreau’s contributions to science entitled Seeing New Worlds, which I look forward to reading.
Thoreau may not have lived as exciting a life as Humboldt (who has?), but the two share much common ground. Both explored the intersection between literature and science, both were early pioneers of ecological thought, and both have been served well by Walls’s thorough research and thoughtful writing. In Thoreau: A Life, Walls skillfully combines factual data, intellectual history, and philosophical analysis into a well-crafted biography that does justice to this illustrious and complex individual.
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