His anti-authoritarian stand in one of his most famous pieces of writing, "Civil Disobedience," made Thoreau a poster child for 1960s-style rebellion; his retreat from the material world in an attempt to lead a simple life of quality close to nature, as recorded in
Walden, is even more apposite in the over-populated world of today than it was in his own day. Ecologists, naturalists, and civil libertarians all claim Thoreau as theirs; the irascible writer of forty volumes of journals would, in all likelihood, distance himself from any such name association. Like Groucho Marx, he would surely never join a club that would have him as a member; and like another famous Marx--Karl--he penned one of the two most influential tracts of a turbulent century:
Das Kapital and
Walden both are regarded by many as prescriptives for curing the economic and material ailments of society.
Thoreau is considered one of the key figures of the American Transcendental movement, and his Walden; or, Life in the Woods, a record of two years spent living alone in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, is viewed not only as a persuasive how-to for living, but also as one of the finest prose works in American literature.
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