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Now Comes Good Sailing: Writers Reflect on Henry David Thoreau
Contributor(s): Blauner, Andrew (Editor)
ISBN: 0691215227     ISBN-13: 9780691215228
Publisher: Princeton University Press
OUR PRICE:   $22.46  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: October 2021
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American - General
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
- Literary Collections | American - General
Dewey: B
LCCN: 2021013407
Physical Information: 1.2" H x 5.6" W x 8.6" (1.25 lbs) 368 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

From twenty-seven of today's leading writers, an anthology of original pieces on the author of Walden

Features essays by Jennifer Finney Boylan ● Kristen Case George Howe Colt Gerald Early Paul Elie Will Eno Adam Gopnik Lauren Groff Celeste Headlee Pico Iyer Alan Lightman James Marcus Megan Marshall Michelle Nijhuis Zoë Pollak ● Jordan Salama ● Tatiana Schlossberg ● A. O. Scott ● Mona Simpson ● Stacey Vanek Smith Wen Stephenson Robert Sullivan Amor Towles Sherry Turkle Geoff Wisner Rafia Zakaria and a cartoon by Sandra Boynton

The world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), the author of Walden, "Civil Disobedience," and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. In Now Comes Good Sailing, twenty-seven of today's leading writers offer wide-ranging original pieces exploring how Thoreau has influenced and inspired them--and why he matters more than ever in an age of climate, racial, and technological reckoning.

Here, Lauren Groff retreats from the COVID-19 pandemic to a rural house and writing hut, where, unable to write, she rereads Walden; Pico Iyer describes how Thoreau provided him with an unlikely guidebook to Japan; Gerald Early examines Walden and the Black quest for nature; Rafia Zakaria reflects on solitude, from Thoreau's Concord to her native Pakistan; Mona Simpson follows in Thoreau's footsteps at Maine's Mount Katahdin; Jennifer Finney Boylan reads Thoreau in relation to her experience of coming out as a trans woman; Adam Gopnik traces Thoreau's influence on the New Yorker editor E. B. White and his book Charlotte's Web; and there's much more.

The result is a lively and compelling collection that richly demonstrates the countless ways Thoreau continues to move, challenge, and provoke readers today.