Thoreau's myth is a carefully crafted construct. For one thing, Thoreau's family was one of the wealthiest in New England, having invented, literally, the modern pencil. He never wanted or needed for a single thing. Next, Walden was within walking distance of his home and he would return home on weekends where his mother would do his laundry. Self Reliance My Ass.

As long as Thoreau's writing periodically inspires me to re-examine my life and reconsider my priorities, I don't give a damn what his myth was.

The first poster is either confused or disingenuous about the connection between Thoreau and pencils. Yes, his family did manufacture pencils, but it was Henry David who did the crucial inventing (of a new method to bind graphite into the pencil and prevent smearing) which allowed the Thoreau pencil to be of high quality and sell widely. So, yes, they had a nice income from pencils; but HDT was greatly responsible for that, not the spendthrift lazybones the poster suggests.

-- Wordtree

The term most often used to describe Thoreau's upbringing is "genteel poverty." His paternal grandfather left his widow an estate of about $25,000. (That made them the third richest tax payers in Concord for awhile, not one of the wealthiest in New England.) The fortune wasn't handled well and dwindled considerably. Henry David's father, John, worked hard to come back up in the world but had some missteps along the way. He opened a store that was a financial flop. He did, however, manage to marry a woman from a wealthy family. He also happened upon pencil-making and was successful at it, but he didn't make the fortune you suggest, nor did he invent the modern pencil. He didn't own his own home until Henry David was older, and then it wasn't a mansion by any means. It was a smaller house in a newer part of town behind the train tracks. They struggled to maintain a sense of culture and travel in "good" social circles, but they had to scrimp on necessities to afford cultural luxuries. Many people in the family -- including an aunt -- pitched in to pay Henry David's tuition to Harvard. After Henry David left Harvard, he always supported himself. He did not take a dime from his family (and they didn't have the largesse you seem to think to give anyhow), and he did not try to present himself as something he wasn't -- a po' boy from the 'hood. He was just a guy who decided not to waste his time accruing capital. With his talents, I'm sure he could have turned his family's modest means into something more; he just had no inclination to do so. Why bother wearing fine linens when burlap keeps you just as warm? That was his philosophy. So what is your angle? Why are you trying to present him as a fake?

...provides some interesting perspective on this, having noticed the bifurcated tendencies of Americans to self-involvement and enlightened communality. He seemed to guess that the selfish side was likely to win out in the end, and not just in the sense that Emerson embodied. In the end, too many Americans mix the self-reliance of Emerson with the materialism he decried. It appears we took the worst from each side. Though I hate to admit it, that actually describes me pretty well. My good works are largely theoretical.

See, individualism doesn't seem so bad when you consider some of the real world alternatives.

Garrison Keillor, whose column is just below this article, had a hilarious chapter on this in his masterpiece "Lake Wobegon Days". It's called "New Albion", and describes the misadventures of the underachieving transcendentalists who founded the town. "A naked man in a fine silk hat."

a possible second photo of Emily Dickinson for $481. Not a Transcendentalist herself, the poet was of the same time and place, and eventually became an admirer of Thoreau's writing.

It must go down like a hard bite on tinfoil to the Saloniks but the greatest success story of communal living was the kibbutz movement in Israel. Why? Because it had real tangible goals and practical objectives in lieu of Luddite charm of everyone becoming a philosopher king.

From the article: "The Unitarians were liberal Christians..." (emphasis added).

The Unitarian-Universalist Association would, I think, resent being consigned to history by use of the past tense in the article. It's sort of like saying the Catholic Church was...

For more information on their current activities, here is a link to their website: http://www.uua.org/

I think the point here is that Emerson and the transcendentalists represent a form of philosophy originally based on Christianity that did not become fundamentalist. They were pretty much the first American philosophy, prior to the pragmatism of Pierce, James and Dewey (who is having a resurgence too.)

There is also a biographical movie currently being escorted around the country by the current head of the Emerson society that is looking for a distributor. I saw it at the Open Center in NYC last week. They didn't consciously make the movie to counter the "literalist" movement, but the message is clear: you can have an indigenous faith and not peg it to one of the creeds based on biblical interpretation.

Reading Emerson directly is tough sledding (though not Thoreau.) He was a savant who burned out on organized religion by the time he was thirty, and went to Europe where he learned the ideas that formed him--mostly the Romanticism of Rousseau--which confirmed in him the belief that the individual was the source of change when communicating "directly" with a "higher power," or "purpose" that "trancends" communal based faith. In a way, it can be interpreted as Protestantism brought to it's final destination.

Not many fundies show up on Salon.com, but if any do I wonder how they do it. All those denominations and sects based on one or another interpretation and no evidence that it makes any difference except whether or not you believe it. You've got to be desperate in my view to not see through the sham, which is exactly what Emerson did and will be enshrined forever as one of the great American thinkers as a result.

It's only been about two hundred years, but it still makes you wonder when these folks are going to stop being led around like sheep.