{"id":123,"date":"2006-01-18T03:31:25","date_gmt":"2006-01-18T08:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=123"},"modified":"2018-08-24T01:43:15","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T05:43:15","slug":"14560-%c2%a0%c2%a0-henry-david-thoreau-a-yankee-in-canada-ed-maynard-gertler-henry-david-thoreau-thoreau-walden-and-other-writings-ed-joseph-krutch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=123","title":{"rendered":"14560. (Henry David Thoreau) A Yankee In Canada [ed. Maynard Gertler] (Henry David Thoreau) Thoreau: Walden and Other Writings [ed. Joseph Krutch]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"06-01-18<\/a>Thore\u00adau is one of those peo\u00adple that you might read as a teenag\u00ader, then keep in the back of your mind for the rest of your life. But do you get around to re-read\u00ading him lat\u00ader in life? One thing that strikes me now, on reread\u00ading him, is how much he gets dis\u00adtort\u00aded by false mem\u00ado\u00adry. How many peo\u00adple have decid\u00aded that the ide\u00adal life is on a farm, and talk about Thore\u00adau and \u201csim\u00adplic\u00adi\u00adty\u201d? But for the actu\u00adal Thore\u00adau, farm life was the com\u00adplex rat race he was flee\u00ading from! He com\u00adplained that every\u00adone he knew was car\u00adry\u00ading a barn on their back. One man\u2019s sim\u00adplic\u00adity is anoth\u00ader man\u2019s 1984, I sup\u00adpose. The econ\u00ado\u00admist John Ken\u00adneth Gal\u00adbraith who had grown up on one of those dour Scot\u00adtish-Cana\u00addi\u00adan farms in south\u00adern Ontario once explained that after milk\u00ading cows with frozen teats on sub\u00adzero morn\u00adings and bail\u00ading hay by hand, noth\u00ading he ever did as an adult was clas\u00adsi\u00adfi\u00adable as work, and he would much rather be a pro\u00adfes\u00adsor than go back to that <\/em>sim\u00adplic\u00adity, thanky\u00adou very much. I did my own fair share of farm work, and even with more mod\u00adern machin\u00adery, I know exact\u00adly what he meant. Try stand\u00ading up to your knees in half frozen sheep shit while cold driz\u00adzle soaks into you, for an entire day, while you wres\u00adtle fierce\u00adly kick\u00ading ani\u00admals to the ground, one after anoth\u00ader. Sim\u00adplic\u00adity, indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

On reread\u00ading, I found Walden <\/em>and Civ\u00adil Dis\u00adobe\u00addi\u00adence <\/em>to be pret\u00adty much as I remem\u00adbered them. Thore\u00adau made it clear in Walden <\/em>that he was mak\u00ading an exper\u00adi\u00adment in self-dis\u00adci\u00adpline, not design\u00ading a blue\u00adprint for every\u00adone to live by. He had enough sense to know that if every\u00adone tried to live off the beans in their back\u00adyard, the result would be grind\u00ading medieval pover\u00adty, not inde\u00adpen\u00addence. He was not going off to live in a cave. He walked to town every day to see his friends, and he even went off on lengthy jaunts of tourism.<\/span><\/p>\n

His trav\u00adel jour\u00adnals con\u00adtain some of his most enter\u00adtain\u00ading writ\u00ading. His prose style is remark\u00adably mod\u00adern-sound\u00ading for the 1850s. His obser\u00adva\u00adtion of sen\u00adsory detail was also unusu\u00adal for the peri\u00adod. A read\u00ader hav\u00ading no appro\u00adpri\u00adate clues might place the prose style at cir\u00adca 1910. \u201cA Yan\u00adkee In Cana\u00adda\u201d describes the Charlevoix region north of Que\u00adbec City, a place I did a few hun\u00addred kliks of walk\u00ada\u00adbout in, with Fil\u00adip Marek. Thore\u00adau spoke French rea\u00adson\u00adably well (he was of Chan\u00adnel Island ances\u00adtry), and asked ques\u00adtions every\u00adwhere. He was not only pre-occu\u00adpied with nature, which describes with pre\u00adci\u00adsion, but with eco\u00adnomic and social facts as well. For exam\u00adple, he not\u00aded that the vot\u00ading fran\u00adchise was wider in Cana\u00adda East than in New Eng\u00adland, that the British still treat\u00aded Que\u00adbec as a gar\u00adri\u00adson town (it is still 17 years before Con\u00adfed\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtion), and which vari\u00adeties of fruits and cloth were import\u00aded and exported.<\/span><\/p>\n

One thing he got iron\u00adi\u00adcally wrong. He noticed a large num\u00adber of stone Church\u00ades, imag\u00adin\u00ading them to be a lega\u00adcy of Nor\u00admandy. But, in fact, most of the orig\u00adi\u00adnal church\u00ades of Que\u00adbec had been made of wood, in a sim\u00adple style impro\u00advised by the Habi\u00adtants. Over the next two cen\u00adturies, most of these church\u00ades suc\u00adcumbed to the inevitable fires, and only a hand\u00adful of them sur\u00advive today on the Ile d\u2019Orleans. But the style sur\u00advived. The Eng\u00adlish set\u00adtlers of New Eng\u00adland, also com\u00ading from a land of stone church\u00ades, copied the Que\u00adbec wood\u00aden church\u00ades, per\u00adfect\u00ading them into the dis\u00adtinc\u00adtive white Con\u00adgre\u00adga\u00adtional jew\u00adels that still make many New Eng\u00adland vil\u00adlages sub\u00adlimely beau\u00adti\u00adful. The pret\u00adty stone and tin-roofed church\u00ades that Thore\u00adau saw along the St. Lawrence were most\u00adly built short\u00adly before he saw then.. They are usu\u00adally paint\u00aded white in the trim\u00admings, and built of pale gray stone, so that a Que\u00adbec vil\u00adlage has a visu\u00adal charm almost as strik\u00ading as a Ver\u00admont one, but the effect is dif\u00adfer\u00adent. The \u201cstrip vil\u00adlage\u201d dom\u00adi\u00adnates in Que\u00adbec, fol\u00adlow\u00ading river\u00adbanks, evolved from farm lots that are nar\u00adrow on the roads, but extend for miles back into the for\u00adest. This con\u00adfig\u00adu\u00adra\u00adtion is crit\u00adi\u00adcal in harsh win\u00adters, when the walk\u00ading time to the near\u00adest neigh\u00adbour can deter\u00admine life or death. By con\u00adtrast, New Eng\u00adland vil\u00adlages focus on a square, and are much more com\u00adpact, but out\u00adly\u00ading farms must be ser\u00adviced by more road mileage. He was, of course, fas\u00adci\u00adnated by the Catholi\u00adcism in Cana\u00adda, as any New Eng\u00adlan\u00adder would be, but he was not hos\u00adtile. He was equal\u00adly fas\u00adci\u00adnated by the omnipresent kilt\u00aded Scots High\u00adlanders, hav\u00ading appar\u00adently nev\u00ader seen so many bare male legs.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Thoreau\u2019s prose is won\u00adder\u00adful, and you can just pic\u00adture your\u00adself hav\u00ading a cheer\u00adful after\u00adnoon pok\u00ading around in the woods with him. He claimed to have been a hap\u00adpy man, and per\u00adhaps he wasn\u2019t lying.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thore\u00adau is one of those peo\u00adple that you might read as a teenag\u00ader, then keep in the back of your mind for the rest of your life. But do you get around to re-read\u00ad\u00ading him lat\u00ader in life? One thing \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bu-reading-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9809,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/9809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}