Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, detailing his famous stay at Walden Pond, is said to be one of the great pieces of American literature. It is revered for Thoreau’s example of independence and simple living.
He lived with his mother his whole life and lived 26 months in a shack. The book is written in such a way that these things never come up and the reader will usually assume that Thoreau lived life in a small cottage. To add background information, assuming it would be accurate, the book would likely not have achieved such renown, but by book standards would be much better.
Including honest background information would undoubtedly improve Walden significantly. In fact, the more personal background information, the better the book would become. The book would be more informative and provide more perspective. Readers would learn about how Thoreau lived with his mother prior to his 26 month stay on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s property, thus explaining how he could sustain himself on just $40 a year. This would help more people realize that Thoreau has a pretty bad self-sufficiency record, and therefore is not to be used as a role-model.
On the other hand, if Thoreau lies about his background info, there would be a very pronounced reduction in quality. For one, obviously, it would make the book much less truthful. This by itself would make the book much worse.However, it would open up new inconsistencies that attention could be drawn to. For instance, he might claim to own a small cottage on the outskirts of Concord, rather than living with his mother. History would clearly show that he never left his mother, and it’s mildly possible that such inconsistencies would do Thoreau’s reputation more harm than good.
The judgment of how ‘good’ a book is is often a very subjective standard. Fortunately, there are certain variables that can be used to help get a more objective result. Among these are honesty, information provided, and enjoyability. If a book is dishonest and/or deceptive, it is a big failure as a “Good book.” Likewise, if the reader comes out of a book not having learned anything, or not being able to recount anything about the story, the book has some room for improvement too.
It will never really be known exactly what would change had Henry David Thoreau decided to provide more background information. It can only be guessed at, but chances are, if he did add it, Walden would improve in at least some respects, either in honesty and perspective, or in more holes to be pointed out and then compared to his stated philosophy.
THANKS for reading this essay. I hope you enjoyed and learned something from it. I’ll post more soon.
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