"Not sure how you would consider yourself his fanboy anyway."

Lol how is what I am doing not being his fanboy? I'm singing his praises incessantly, for one thing, but for another, I am actively using him as a role model in my own life in a number of ways. Just last week I went foraging for berries (mulberries and dewberries), and thought of him the whole time. And you know what - he was right about everything he said about that activity (which was a lot, if you read "Wild Fruits").

That's called being a naturalist and appreciating the world you live in, not being Thoreau's fanboy.

Not to mention his outsized impact on my writing style in the last few years. I have to actively stop myself from overusing words like "commonly" and "latterly" and "withal." Haha.

But the thing is I directly attribute Thoreau's influence on me to that aspect of myself and continue to promote and meditate on the guy after almost two years of uninterrupted study. So idk, if he has any fanboys, I am absolutely one of them. Not that it matters one way or the other I guess.

But I'm still curious what you meant when you were talking about the edge he hung over? Or whatever it was. I didn't understand that.

I would say that you're undoubtedly influenced by him but unless you try to emulate the things he did and recreate his life within your own, you aren't that attached to him. I don't know, I just don't see you that way.

"I Am Thoreau"

I never want to hear here again I'm the most author-obsessed person here...

I am NOT Shakespeare. (And neither was Edward de Vere, you conspiracy nuts!) :p

Obi, if you were Shakespeare, I'd actually read your long posts.

Lmao I was joking. I use drugs, Thoreau wouldn't have approved.

Indeed in that eulogy of Emerson's that I quoted before, he says this:

"His virtues, of course, sometimes ran into extremes. It was easy to trace to the inexorable demand on all for exact truth that austerity which made this willing hermit more solitary even than he wished. Himself of a perfect probity, he required not less of others. He had a disgust at crime, and no worldly success could cover it. He detected paltering as readily in dignified and prosperous persons as in beggars, and with equal scorn. Such dangerous frankness was in his dealing that his admirers called him "that terrible Thoreau," as if he spoke when silent, and was still present when he had departed. I think the severity of his ideal interfered to deprive him of a healthy sufficiency of human society."

I myself will often find myself thinking "Thoreau would not approve" as I do something, such as buy blackberries grown in Mexico. Lol. So I can attest to this effect. Elsewhere Emerson refers to something he calls "the Thoreau poison" which is the effect the man can have on you when you allow him to stew in you - "I see the Thoreau poison working today in many valuable lives - in some for good, in some for harm."

There again I know what he means. I mean the man singlehandedly changed me from an agnostic atheist to an agnostic theist. That was never going to happen easily.

However, again, with the drug thing for instance, I disagree with the guy. It was my drug use in part that even allowed me to see what Thoreau was talking about and appreciate him in a new way. Not that that's necessary, but it did it for me. I didn't even like poetry pre-drugs.

bo, I'm not sure where you get off suggesting someone can't call himself a fanboy of someone? You think you know Thucy better than he knows himself?

If I identified with any author it'd probably be with either William Morris or Isaac Asimov, though I am especially partial to a lot of Heinlein.

Well, bo_sox, what has happened is more like, I realized that what Thoreau was preaching was *already* what I am trying to do. So it's less that what he recommended was something I then started to try to do, and more that I was shocked to find that I agreed so much with him. Here's a superficial list:

-Both vegetarian
-Both hugely appreciate natural beauty
-Both interested in plants and botany
-Both interested in agriculture and food production
-Both interested in a holistic relationship to nature
-Both anti-consumerist and minimalist in lifestyle
-Both anti-war and fiercely egalitarian
-Both somewhat alienated from society because of our uncompromising views
-Both comfortable with solitude
-Both convinced that a higher meaning lurks in the universe, if we could but find it
-Both American, valuing plain speaking and spurning niceties and complex customs
-Both prefer rural life to urban life
-Both suspicious of the "technology gospel"
-Both appreciate poetry and aesthetics as much as science and philosophy
-Both taking an unorthodox and not conventionally "successful" path post-school
-Both hugely enjoy foraging for food and walking aimlessly outside

I mean I could go on, but it would just get tedious. It's more helpful to list the ways I differ with the guy than to list the things we have in common, honestly.

The differences list is much shorter

-Whereas he is about self-sufficiency and independence, I put the focus on our obligation to go to any length to help others, just as we would help ourselves. He seems to agree in principle, but did not take it to its logical conclusion, he was instead content to live at home and simply write, rather than devote his life to humanitarianism.
-He spurned all drugs, I use both medicine, caffeine, alcohol, cannabis, and others
-He spurned imported products and items, I embrace them if they are otherwise ethically sound (like tea or coffee, or bananas, notably)
-He didn't like travel, I find it highly valuable
-He was probably a little more suspicious of technology than I am
-He was a little bit more economically unrealistic than I am, not really seeming to value trade or specialization (indeed he rails against these at times, and while I am inclined to agree, I don't agree to that extent)
-He was generally a little too pretentious and unempathetic with his fellow townsmen and people generally. I can be a harsh judge too but I make a point to remember that we are all just human - whereas he seemed to genuinely believe he was "better" than his peers. (This being said I am aware that whatever my beliefs, in practice I am just about as sanctimonious and pretentious as he was, and it's active area of self-improvement for me)

That just about covers it though. I'm just more of a globalist than he ever could have been. That's the main one. That and the drug thing. Lol. I'm also more of a moralist, whereas he was more concerned with metaphysics. Other than what will always separate us because we lived in different centuries. He was probably fairly sexist, though I've never seen that shine through much, so I'm prepared to suspend judgment on that sort of thing.

Anyway I'll stop spamming this thread with Thoreau lol.

He really is a great author though. All bravado aside I encourage you all to read as much of him as you can, or re-read what you have read in the past.

I think we need to define fanboy. I'm sensing we have different ideas of what that means.

I hope krellin doesnt read this thread because whenever I talk at length about myself he always finds something to misinterpret and then mock for the next 10 months. Lol.

Dostoevsky: 7
Hamilton: 2

"He's the greatest American thinker, that's for sure."

Um, yeah, no.

That would be a fun next game, though.

Lol whatever semck

Thucy - you provide a continuous stream of reasons to mock you for ten month's straight. I'l leave this one be, buddy. See...I'm not *all* bad.

1. I'll take Twain as an intellectual and man of words over Thoreau any day (and I have to think I'm not alone there, at least on the "man of words" point...Twain could turn a phrase better than Thoreau ever could--and when you got burned, you got BURNED...just ask Joseph Smith, Jane Austen and God." :p

2. "Obi, if you were Shakespeare, I'd actually read your long posts."

And if you were Thoreau, I'd care about all that "I am Thoreau" talk you just went on about. :p

I'm not Thoreau, and that's why I didn't say that I'm Thoreau, Thucy did.

Good try though.

Mark Twain wrote well, but how did he live? That's what's special about Thoreau. He was complete. He really was a kind of modern prophet. Twain was simply a humorist, great though he was.

Also, Twain was at best a philosopher, journalist, comedian, and writer. Thoreau was a writer, poet, scientist, mystic, philosopher, activist, and more. His genius extends beyond his writing.

Quality over quantity--

Stephen King and Danielle Steele have pumped out HOW many books?

And yet, "Huck Finn" will be read when they've all turned to dust...

As long as there's an America, "Huck Finn" will be read and read as America.

Thoreau's A voice of America--Twain, for his century at least, is THE voice.

Also, Dostoyevsky wins in a 7-2 curb stomping of Peter F. Hamilton.

That's the thing. He was of first rate quality in every category.

Wait... Shakespeare isn't American?!?

:)

Show me where Twain's verse equalled this:

"I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.

A bunch of violets without their roots,
And sorrel intermixed,
Encircled by a wisp of straw
Once coiled about their shoots,
The law
By which I'm fixed.

A nosegay which Time clutched from out
Those fair Elysian fields,
With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
Doth make the rabble rout
That waste
The day he yields.

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
Drinking my juices up,
With no root in the land
To keep my branches green,
But stand
In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem
In mimicry of life,
But ah! the children will not know,
Till time has withered them,
The woe
With which they're rife.

But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
And after in life's vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
And by another year,
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fairer flowers
Will bear,
While I droop here."

All of Huck Finn.

But don't take my word for it...take the word of Mr. Hemingway here...

"The good writers are Henry James, Stephen Crane, and Mark Twain. That's not the order they're good in. There is no order for good writers.... All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn.' If you read it you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating. But it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

And with a few exceptions--Poe is the definite one, our first internationally-recognized star...you could make an argument for Melville as the other, though that's a lot harder to sell, and then Whitman might be my third, though in fairness, he overlaps with Twain a bit--I'd argue he's right...

There was no truly great, "This Must Go in the World Literature Canon" writing pre-Twain, Poe, and then you can make cases for "Moby Dick" and maybe "Leaves of Grass."

As good as Thoreau might have been...we could've done without him.

We couldn't do without Twain--we'd have lost our literary identity, our national conscience, and I'd argue our national soul as well...

As much as Shakespeare was the "spirit of the age" for his nation, for Elizabeth's nation, Twain was the spirit and voice for HIS age in a way Thoreau simply was not.

Put another way--

If Thoreau were suddenly gone, I'd be horrified and absolutely miserable...but Emerson and Whitman and other Transcendentalists could carry on.

And if Marlowe, Jonson, and Thomas Kyd were all to suddenly vanish, I'd probably be sadder still.

A real part of me would be DEAD INSIDE if Twain or Shakespeare were ever lost to us...we'd ALL OF US in the English-speaking world be a little deader inside.