“On the title page of my paperback copy of Walden, an echo of a former self greets me. My name, written in loopy adolescent script, and the date: August 12, 1993. I was 17 when I bought the Vintage Books/Library of America edition at Waldenbooks in the Bridgewater Commons Mall, using proceeds from a summer job. I dutifully read it in those final weeks of summer, with pen in hand, underlining here, making embarrassing marginal comments there. One late afternoon, I was sitting alone at home, working my way through the book, when my boyfriend stopped by unexpectedly. I couldn’t have planned it better. I had wanted to be seen just so: dim room, puddle of light from a lamp, reading Thoreau. So goes a story about the Transcendentalists and my world. ...”
2020 April: Henry David Thoreau - I, 2020 May: This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal - II
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