Adapting Walden
The Tao of Thoreau, Part Three
“[Few] people actually bother to read Thoreau anymore. [Those] who revere him without reading him, preferring to sample him aphoristically on inspirational posters, have simplified both him and his work beyond recognition.” — Donovan Hohn
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I believe that Walden, Henry David Thoreau’s masterpiece, is even more relevant today than it was in 1854. But if the book continues to trend away from genuine readership, it will be a grave loss. For our own sake as well as future generations, it’s vital that we prevent Walden from becoming a collection of motivational posters for cubicles and suburban half-bathrooms. This is why I’m bringing it into the 21st century by creating a new adaptation. The goal is to update the instances of outdated language that have accumulated over time, all while keeping Thoreau’s ideas and voice intact.
I’d like to share my editorial process with you — what it looks like, the challenges I’m facing, and lessons I’ve learned thus far. As of January 2016, I’ve edited about half of the book. My co-editor, Billy Merrell, has weighed in on the first quarter. The bulk of his work will begin as soon as our Kickstarter campaign is (hopefully!) fully funded in March.
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The Tipping Point
I am not revising Walden to the point of adding or removing ideas. Thoreau’s mastery of the English language was superb. The problem — and my reason for creating this new version — is that cultural and linguistic change has distanced Thoreau’s text from today’s reader. Is the rate of linguistic evolution increasing? That’s an enormous question, and one that many researchers are currently exploring and debating. Nevertheless, it’s no secret that the general pace of innovation has rapidly increased from the Industrial Revolution until today. We’ve developed new vocabulary to help us talk (and write) about our ideas and inventions. In the span of the last two centuries we’ve seen many wonderful developments in human rights, medicine, travel, and technology. But over time, there’s been a sea change in our collective values. The emphasis on advancement means that we leave much behind, sometimes without stopping to notice what we’re losing. In Orality and Literacy, Walter J. Ong talks about this shift, how in oral societies memory is prized but in today’s literate societies everything is archived. Machines remember for us. We can certainly see that sentences and paragraphs have shortened since at least the Romantic period in literature. Today, everything is abbreviated. Twitter was #inevitable.
Again though, not all of these changes are bad. As our reliance on memory wanes, our ability for critical analysis waxes. And if change is the one constant in language, why fight it? Let’s embrace the inevitable, preserve all that is worthy, and let the rest go by the wayside.
There’s been a backlash against the futility of busyness. Take the very existence of the term “tech sabbath,” for instance. We’re seeing a movement toward slowness and balance. Analog is exciting again. It seems people still actually want to read things in print, but standards for quality have increased as the concept of print media as beautiful artifact has been thrown into sharp relief. The dream of the 1890s is alive, and not just in Portland. Beneath our decorative axes and artisanal ice cubes there’s a deep yearning for broader margins, for less noise and a return to simple living.
Have we reached a tipping point? I don’t know. It seems everything is happening all at once more than ever, and all I can say with confidence is, I don’t know. What I do know is that a quiet desperation pervades our society. I see it in people’s eyes as I walk the streets or meet their gaze at intersections. I hear it in my friends’ voices and read about it on news feeds. I’ve felt it welling up during personal struggles with workaholism.
Revolution is possible, but public change is impossible without private transformation. This is what Thoreau and his fellow Transcendentalists believed, and I agree.
Much of Walden remains readable by today’s standards, its pithier epigrams in particular (just try searching for “Walden quotes” on Pinterest). But it’s the vital connective tissue between Thoreau’s maxims that has become increasingly difficult. The passage of time has raised so many literary roadblocks that many intelligent readers find the book all but impenetrable. Walden is certainly not alone in this. The loss of accessibility has been going on for millennia, as has the practice of updating stories in order to prevent their disappearance. But I think we tend to wait too long.
The changes I’m making to Walden can be considered adaptation, a degree of change that is more extensive than the editing one might do for a contemporary text, yet more limited than translation. My goal is simply to shorten the distance between 1854 and today as much as possible, so that the beauty, wisdom, and power of this excellent book can shine. I have no wish to impose my style or opinions on the author. Here is Thoreau, both the sylvan saint and the arrogant crank, authentic and unvarnished — but freed from obstacles that stand in the way of today’s reader. These range from organization and flow to matters of cultural, historical, and literary reference, syntax, and individual words.
What are some examples of the obstacles I’m encountering in Walden, and how am I deciding what to keep and what to change?
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that viewed from the highest level, the book’s pace is top-heavy. The first of Walden’s 18 chapters is long, and full of many twists and turns. Depending on the edition it’s between 60 and 80 pages. The other 17 chapters are much more digestible, averaging around 10 pages. This makes getting into the text difficult at first, even if it’s somewhat downhill after that. To mitigate this issue, I’ve reorganized the book into four parts, each with 5–6 chapters for a total of 23. The original “Economy” is part one, consisting of six chapters. This creates a much more sustainable pace, providing the reader with regular milestones and frequent breaks. All of the ideas within “Economy” are still there, but now they’re grouped into smaller chunks that are less likely to overwhelm.
Editorial Ethics
When I began this project in June 2015, my approach was somewhat different. Early moves were fast and heavy. Entire sentences were omitted, sometimes several in a row. Occasional additions were made for the sake of clarity or flow. And there were a number of times when I felt that Thoreau might be wandering too far from his point, effectively getting in his own way and possibly alienating the reader.
For example, in chapter one he says, “Age is no better, nor hardly so well qualified for an instructor as youth. It has not gained as much as it has lost.” Fair enough, I can agree with that. Age does not guarantee wisdom. We’ve all met old fools and young sages. But then he goes on to say, “Practically, the old have no very important advice to give to the young. … I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.”
Ouch. I remember the first time I read that. Now, I’m not a particularly reactive reader. I prefer to give an author the benefit of the doubt until problems become patterns or the story falls apart. But those words hit me like a frozen cod to the face. They also seemed like unnecessary digression. Thoreau’s gist in this passage is that where one generation fails another may succeed, that the young are more malleable and promising, presumably with their entire lives ahead of them, and therefore have much to teach us — as opposed to the old who tend to give advice most volubly when the matter at hand reminds them of their personal triumphs and regrets.
What to do? After wrestling with those rogue sentences for several days, turning them over and trying various unsuccessful ways of translating the sentence into a more palatable quip, I struck them and moved on. Weeks later, the subject came up in conversation with some former colleagues. I told them about decisions like these, confessing that on rare occasions I was removing some of the thornier statements when they seemed to detract from the point Thoreau was trying to make.
One person moved back as if stung, and replied, “Wow! That’s quite a liberty you’re taking.” Another chimed in: “Yeah — I don’t know if it’s okay to take words out of a dead man’s mouth.”
My first inclination was to go on the defensive, but instead I backpedaled. “Well, my associate editor hasn’t reached that part of the text. I’m open to push-back if he disagrees.”
I went home and reflected on my colleagues’ criticism. And it hit me: they were absolutely right. What’s worse, I was the arrogant one! I had no stones to cast at Thoreau. Or who appointed me as his PR manager? Furthermore, it became clear that messing with a deceased author’s very ideas and opinions is unethical, even if the work is in the public domain. Clarifying or adapting is fine, but taking the meaning out of a dead man’s mouth is deceitful. How would Thoreau have felt about me taking a belt sander to his prose?
Feeling humbled and duly chastised, I resumed the adaptation with a sharper pencil and a lighter touch. I read more about Thoreau’s life (I highly recommend Walter Harding’s The Days of Henry Thoreau) and studied some of his lesser-known texts, such as Cape Cod and The Maine Woods. I already knew from many sources and my own experience that Thoreau was a genius. But the more I learned about this man and his work, the more aware I became of the magnitude of that genius and my own unworthiness. I had begun editing Walden from a premise that, if unchecked, could have proved fatal. Though I was a great admirer of Walden, I had underestimated the content in my hands, and by extent its author. Shame on me. I had known all along that adapting a literary classic was serious business. But then the weight of it settled in. As I read and reread passages, I noticed more ways in which Thoreau wielded a wide variety of literary tools with casual flair. I wondered, “Am I really up to this task? Who the hell am I to mess with Thoreau?” Two things kept me going. First, the unshakeable belief that if done well, this adaptation would be a gift to readers today and tomorrow. Second, as I shared this project with various culturally savvy and intelligent readers, most of them expressed delight and support.
“Walden is a difficult book to read for three reasons: First, it was written in an older prose, which uses surgically precise language, extended, allegorical metaphors, long and complex paragraphs and sentences, and vivid, detailed, and insightful descriptions. Thoreau does not hesitate to use metaphors, allusions, understatement, hyperbole, personification, irony, satire, metonymy, synecdoche, and oxymorons, and he can shift from a scientific to a transcendental point of view in mid-sentence. Second, its logic is based on a different understanding of life, quite contrary to what most people would call common sense. Ironically, this logic is based on what most people say they believe. Thoreau, recognizing this, fills Walden with sarcasm, paradoxes, and double entendres. He likes to tease, challenge, and even fool his readers. And third, quite often any words would be inadequate at expressing many of Thoreau’s non-verbal insights into truth. Thoreau must use non-literal language to express these notions, and the reader must reach out to understand.” — Ken Kifer
I discovered that when in doubt, searching nearby for a joke or satirical statement clarifies Thoreau’s intention. It’s likely that he meant for the words on advice to be taken seriously, but probably not literally. In the very next paragraph he says with a wink, “One farmer says to me, ‘You cannot live on vegetable food alone. It furnishes nothing to make bones with.’ And so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones, walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.”
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Juxtapositions
Here are some specific side-by-side examples of changes I’m making.
Thoreau begins the book with a qualification. From one perfectionist to another, I understand the desire for specificity and accuracy. But Henry, this isn’t crucial! Let’s keep it simple.
Outside of ancient Greek scholarship, few people have any idea who Deucalion and Pyrrha are. And even fewer can read Latin. What’s more, the meaning of these gorgeous words, “blind obedience to a blundering oracle,” is now made quite clear. In passages like the above, I’ve added short clarifying descriptions, removed superfluous Latin or Greek phrases, and annotated the rest in the margins. Here’s the above passage as seen in the book layout:
Thoreau’s frequent use of “men” when he means “people,” “mankind” or “humanity” could be jarring for some readers. Gendered language for people as a group or a whole has slowly but surely fallen out of use. During Thoreau’s day, it was commonplace for writers to use the word “men” when referring to humanity as a whole. Additionally, the overwhelming majority of people working outside the home were men. Men also received greater exposure to higher education. While we have no reason to believe that Thoreau was sexist, the frequent reference to men — when he really means people — in the original text might be a tough pill for some readers to swallow. So wherever it makes sense, I’ve updated gendered language. But when he uses a singular masculine pronoun in some example of human activity, we’re leaving it alone more often than not for the sake of preserving Thoreau’s meaning.
Archaic place-names are replaced with either current names or, where it doesn’t hurt the story, generic terms. Yes, Thoreau was a thoroughbred product of New England, and it was to New Englanders that he wrote. Broad readership in his own neck of the woods was all he ever hoped for. But he got a little more than he bargained for! Today, this book has global relevance. Finally, in this instance one long sentence has become two, unnecessary words have been removed which makes the passage flows a little better.
This one was tough. Thoreau was an avowed abolitionist. His parents’ home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Henry helped transport runaways to safety, and on one occasion he personally stood guard for an entire day while his family housed a fugitive. He delivered a rousing speech in defense of John Brown that later became one of his most incendiary essays. So what is he saying here? That it’s frivolous to pay any mind to the horror of slavery in America? No. This is an example of Thoreau’s method of tricking the reader and shocking them into paying careful attention. But to “almost say” it’s frivolous to be concerned over slavery in light of the ways we enslave ourselves is distasteful no matter how you look at it.
Billy came to the rescue on this one: “Because Thoreau says ‘I may almost say’ as an aside, it implies he’s not really saying it. So therefore it’s safe to cut. Regardless, what I take his intro to mean is something like this: I sometimes wonder how we can go along with the gross and un-American form of servitude called Negro Slavery. With that statement said, what follows is less bristling. As a sensitive reader, I’m somewhat more receptive to going along with the more broadly humanitarian statement that self-imposed slavery is somehow worse. But I still find that to be flawed logic on his part. It’s hard to stomach a white person saying that their plight is worse, in any form. But that’s what he said…”
Finally, when Thoreau uses the word “gross” he usually means “great, overriding, or ubiquitous.” For clarity, I chose the word “widespread” for the above sentence. And by “foreign” he means that the slavery is in direct contradiction to the principles of freedom and equality upon which America was founded.
Beautiful imagery notwithstanding, sentences that clock in at 482 characters are pretty hard for modern readers to digest. It’s not that we’ve become dumber over the years. I think what’s happened is that everything in our culture has sped up, and we shift through mental gears more quickly in order to process it all. We’ve grown more adept at visual scavenging and less skilled at sustained focus. We can still read at length, but we rely on frequent breaks and hard stops more than our predecessors. When carved up into three sentences, this passage can be absorbed in a single read. Finally, conventicle is a cool word, but “some secret meeting concealed by the shadows of night” does the job with less obscurity.
This is just a small sampling of the thousands of decisions we’ve faced thus far. But hopefully by now you have a clear idea of what this work entails. I can’t wait to share more of it with you!
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