“Whom God hath put asunder let not man join together” — Emerson
I don’t remember the first time I read Emerson or Thoreau. I must have been young — probably a teenager.
At that time the writings of Thoreau, in particular, deeply penetrated my immature mind. I remember being thrilled by his description of isolated cabins as I “felt” the dampness and sights of the Maine woods. Mostly unsuccessfully, I tried to anticipate what he would soon encounter, intuiting his thinking and fancying myself thinking along with him. Yes, Thoreau was exploring the woods, but more importantly, he was probing the thickets of his mind and as a young girl, I allowed myself to be carried along by the words of a writer with ideas much, much bigger than mine. It was a great ride.
Thoreau was a loner. A recluse. He lived by himself in a hand-built shack with a large porch overlooking a pond. There, while sitting on a chair of his own making, Thoreau’s mind wandered. There’s nothing weird or unhealthy about this sort of solitude — most writers and artists get away from people in order to pour back into themselves their own thoughts … those thoughts then escape in a better form.
Nature merely launched Thoreau. His meditations on nature immediately segued into reflections on human companionship, solitude, God, and the unquieted soul at rest. He bound these thoughts together with the thread of local lore and his own acute observations. Thoreau’s writings, then, are much more about the machinations of people than the beauty of nature. Thoreau is NOT a nature writer — he writes about people. Nature is only his backdrop.
He also writes alone. Staring at the rippled surface of a pond. On a wicker chair. With no one to talk to.
That’s what’s so amazing. Thoreau’s profound social perceptions were formed apart from people. He observed himself, other individuals and most social interactions as a human being, one of unusual compassion. This is how it’s done. Great writing is based on perceptions and observations done from a critical distance which are then sucked back into the writer; after being tossed about, denied, cheered, jostled against other observations and allowed to lay fallow, these perceptions and observations are ejected as prose … beautiful prose.
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This is the opposite of Gonzo journalism. Hunter Thompson’s riveting tales of fear and loathing miss a step or two or three — the reflective steps — before they were ejected as prose. Thompson had no critical distance because he didn’t want it. He didn’t want to reflect. He didn’t want to take the time to observe. His writing was the dictation of instantaneous experience. He dictated his experience without governing boundaries and without deferring to the slow pace of rumination and reflection.
Though nature bounded and shaped Thoreau’s thinking; nothing bound Thompson. Thompson hurdled his way through his prose, always in it, always the center of attention. His prose was only an expression of his own consciousness. Thompson’s shallow thoughts, in the end, were the only story he could tell — his own feelings and ideas were the first and final filter through which his writing was refracted.
Thompson was in a hurry. He didn’t have time to observe. There was no chair on his porch.
I confess that I was drawn to Thompson’s writing as a vain twenty-something. Very much so, in fact. As a young reporter, I wanted “to gonzo” my stories, to tell them from the standpoint of my own feelings and experience. His heady, narcissistic way of writing appeals to the young and egoistic because it glorifies the writer, not the subject: the reader learns quite a bit about the writer, far less about the subject.
As Thoreau used nature to launch his queries into human nature and society, Thompson used himself to launch his queries into … himself. That’s the problem with Gonzo journalism. Ultimately, it’s self-referential. In the end, nothing more can be said except this. It’s profundity is limited by the soul-depth of the writer, which in the case of Thompson, isn’t very deep.
Gonzo journalism is sizzle, a quickly extinguished display of emotive fireworks.
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As I age, Thoreau appeals to me even more than when I was young, and Emerson appeals to me even more than does Thoreau. I’m drawn to thinkers and observers much deeper than I. I think this is “age appropriate.” By the time a thoughtful, creative person reaches his 50s or 60s, a big chunk of life is over. At this point, life slows, but in a good way. The desire to think slowly overwhelms the desire to live in a fast life and on the edge. I’m finally old enough to wait, to let my observations age like wine. Hopefully, they’ll get better.
A well-reflected life moves from Thompson to Thoreau to Emerson … and then, to the pithy sayings of Jesus.
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Thoreau’s classic, “The Maine Woods,” and some of his other works, can be read online for free here.
