Wandering the web, I ran across something new by Will Howarth, in American
Scholar. Howarth, as some of our readers will know, is a local-boy-made-good. A
1958 grad of SHS (of whose Hall of Fame
he is a member), this son of Mayor Nelson Howarth has taught at Princeton since
1966. He is a former president of the Thoreau Society, former editor-in-chief
of The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau and served as president of the Center
for American Places.
In his
new piece, titled “Reading Thoreau at 200,” Howarth asks why it is that the seminal work of the great
American transcendentalist is held in such scorn today. It’s a good
read, as some might put it – some 4,000 words – but Howarth does not (as
Thoreau sometimes does) overstay his time. He’s lived with Thoreau for decades
years now, and is clear-eyed about his constant companion. From the piece:
From the 1920s to
the early 2000s, Walden was required reading in hundreds of thousands of U.S.
high school and college survey courses. Today, Thoreau is taught far less
widely. The intricate prose of Walden is a tough read in the age of tweets, so
much so that several “plain English” translations are now marketed . . .
The path to Walden
is, increasingly, neglected and overgrown. I constantly meet undergraduates who
have never hiked alone, held an after-school job, or lived off schedule. They
don’t know the source of milk or the direction of north. They really don’t like
to unplug. In seminars, they look up from Walden in cautious wonder: “Can you
even say this?” Thoreau worries them; he smells of resistance and of virtue. He
is powerfully, compulsively original. He will not settle.
And while we’re at it, allow me to
recommend his graceful
reminiscence of Springfield published by the Washington Post in
1983, occasioned by his visit to attend his 25th high school reunion.
This article appears in Jun 8-14, 2017.
