Finding Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau has been read in many ways over the years. In this helpful new study, Richard W. Judd aims to explain “the dynamics of Thoreau's reputation” in American history (p. 2). He suggests that Thoreau's “epigrammatic” writing style has allowed readers to discover “an inexhaustible supply of pithy quotes useful for virtually any occasion” (p. 13). The only way to understand the “essential Thoreau,” he suggests, is to probe “the context of the time in which he is read” (p. 24). Thoreau was only a modestly successful writer during his lifetime. Not until the end of the nineteenth century, when some Americans began to experience ambivalence about the machine age, did Walden (1854) begin to be widely read (Judd reports that six American editions of Walden were printed between 1889 and 1902). In the early twentieth century, Thoreau rode a “cult of nature” fad and fully entered the American literary canon (p. 56). In the interwar and postwar periods he was read by literary critics for his stylistic genius, by social critics for his critique of inequality and materialism, and by others still as a prophet of nature. (During this period Thoreau was many things to many people, and Judd's analysis of these developments is more diffuse than when he focuses his attention on other periods.) In the 1960s Thoreau became a cultural icon, no longer confined to the attention of scholars and intellectuals; indeed, he was made into a figure for the time—a hippie and a political activist. His most recent incarnation is as a founder of modern environmentalism. In all these periods, Judd suggests, Thoreau is disciplined by his readers to meet their needs. He succeeds in helping us understand the demands placed upon Thoreau and how his “malleability” as a writer allowed him to provide guidance and comfort to the range of needs evolving from his time to our own (p. 107

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