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Notes on the Last Mile to Walden (Part 2) |
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Written by Steve Wills
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Thursday, 16 November 2006 |
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That Thoreau devoted an entire chapter of Walden to the subject of reading, is, in my estimation, motivation enough to anticipate that he would have been an avid internet subscriber, had the technology been available. Indeed he probably would have expounded emphatically about how every man, from the mansion to the dingiest shanty should have a wireless link available to them unencumbered by tax or subscription fee, although he would be the first to remark on how cold the day in Hades would become prior to corporations and government giving up a penny of it. Scholars might argue that his oration on the subject of reading elevated it to an art form. In fact, according to Thoreau, reading was not "just an art" but, indeed, the very stuff of life itself. One must question, then, if YouTube and Entertainment Weekly and the majority of the world wide web justifies the existence of the medium and if fiber should be allowed down that final mile into the woods in Concord. To this I say, resoundingly, yes and yes again. True, in the days he spent building his house, there was precious little time for any reading at all and if after a long days work he surfed the net, he surely would have cursed himself soon enough. But, in the early nineteenth century, in Concord and in the woods, we would have believed that a reader of Homer's Odissea must be read in Greek as no translations into English existed at that time. Indeed, if one insists on literal and exact translations then one might have to disqualify such works at Penelope’s Complaint: Or, a Mirror for Wanton Minions by Peter Colse, who excerpted Homer in 1596, as this was, at best, incomplete paraphrasing, or what Thoreau certainly would have called "Easy Reading" and not worthy of his time. At yet, if he had, at his finger tips, an archive, indexed and compiled and therefore accessible by a search engine, would he not have preferred to know of this work and therefore reject it knowingly, rather than to lament in ignorance of it's non-existence? Of this, given his clear appreciation of his own genius, I can assure you, he would. Only registered users can write comments.
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