Thoreau makes more sense as the years go by
Of course I have had my problems with Henry David Thoreau. Who hasn't? Schnorrer, misfit, mama's boy, he never sought to be popular and succeeded magnificently. Over the years I have called him a "misanthrope, a slob, and a loser," "a world-class mooch," and a "tree-hugging pyromaniac." I am in fine company. Upon first meeting him, Walt Whitman called Thoreau "a very aggravated case of superciliousness."
Whitman later changed his mind. I, too, have been warming to the old coot. ("It is never too late to give up your prejudices," Thoreau wrote, encouragingly.)
Thoreau hasn't changed, so it must be me. In retrospect, I wish I had taken more of his advice, specifically, "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes." And I wish I had been raised to break rules, not to follow them. "If I repent of anything," Thoreau wrote, "it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?" That demon inhabits us all.
All this to say that I slipped on my Birkenstocks and drove out to Concord - yes, I should have biked - to look in on this year's Annual Gathering of the Thoreau Society, which started Thursday and runs through tomorrow. I was hoping to encounter clusters of column-worthy, wild-eyed eccentrics. Instead I met people wearing tatty shorts and leather sandals and shouldering backpacks at an age when they really should be carrying briefcases or tote bags. In other words, people just like me.
I missed the opening lecture on "Zen Anarchism as a Political Philosophy," but I did mange to hear Fairleigh Dickinson tax law professor Theodore David discuss "Thoreau and the IRS: What Henry Would Want You to Know About Today's Tax System." Thoreau notably refused to pay his taxes, and I was hoping that professor David, a former IRS agent, might explain how I could do the same. No such luck. David pointed out that Irwin Schiff, author of the popular book "How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes," is currently serving time in federal prison.
Thoreau Society executive director Michael Frederick acknowledged that the grump of Walden Pond meanders in and out of favor. What Frederick calls "the simplicity movement" is clearly on the upswing. If Thoreau were a stock, you would buy him. "People see the need to revamp our whole notion of energy and of resource consumption," Frederick says.
In a new introduction to "Walden," John Updike argues that, as our world seems to make less sense, Thoreau seems to make more. "In a time of information overload, of clamorously inane and ubiquitous electronic entertainment," he writes, "the urge 'to front' - in Thoreau's ringing verb - 'only the essential facts of life' remains strong."
Don't take his word for it. Check out the Gathering yourself. There is a free lecture this morning by Harvard professor Lawrence Buell, and a complete listing of events cans be found at thoreau society.org. A website! I remember when the Thoreau Society refused to install a fax machine. Now they are partying like it's 1999.
Free plug
There is a lot of Thoreau in Montana writer Alston Chase, who has just published "We Give Our Hearts to Dogs to Tear: Intimations of Their Immortality." (The title paraphrases a line from a Rudyard Kipling poem.)
This book should probably carry a warning label: For serious Dog People only. Having said that, Chase, whom I have met a couple of times, may have written one of the great dog books of our time. "Hearts" is simultaneously a memoir of his decades spent in Paradise Valley, where, before the movie stars arrived, making a phone call could be a three-day affair, and a well-informed rumination on wilderness land use. Chase is probably best known for his 1986 book, "Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's
Mathematician, philosopher, outdoorsman, and amateur economist, Chase addresses many difficult subjects here, in a direct, yes, Thoreauvian prose style. In a chapter titled "The Soul of a Dog," he asks, "Was not the immortality of dogs at least a possibility?" If you care about the answer to that question, read this book.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
