Got bio back

 Phlox

I borrowed Ellery Channings bio, and got Walls. I do want to read Channing but after I finish Walls. 

Thoreau has just moved into to his Walden home. He craves solitude and is a little irritable when his sisters visit him. It seems like he didn't want to be taken care of, which must have been so confusing to them, they loved taking care of him. 

He bought the wood from the Irish laborers who built the railroad. 

I read a really fun book Hermits. Solitude is wonderful, I quite love it. 

I really need to read Walden again. That might be better than just reading about what he did when he wasn't writing it. This is a problem I have, I can always imagine a better book to read than the one I'm reading. What is the ultimate best book, the most optimal book to be reading in each moment?! Leading a purposeful life, I guess you just follow your interests, but also you have to batten the hatches to get through some longer things. 

I have been reading about Memoirs in Mary Karr's book The Art of Memoir. In a way memoirs are about examining life.

Thoreau was 28. He's still close to home, he still works, he still has visitors, and many people would visit the pond at the edge of town. Nobody is under the illusion that he's not in an edge of town situation, he's not out in the wilderness isolated. 

But he's self sufficient in a new way for him. He's mother and sisters aren't taking care of him. Well, they will perhaps do his laundry occasionally. He is living more rough with self determination. Some people find it helpful to spend a fair amount of time alone to discover themselves in important ways. 

Was his ostentatious simplicity performance art as Wall's wonders? He was hospitable to everyone who visited and explained his mission of living deliberately. 

P.195 Walls: “Meeting Thoreau became an Event, the kind of thing one retailed to posterity. As a consequence, all those harmless and loving dinners at home, where he dropped off his laundry, caught up on the news, packed in a good meal, and maybe carried away a pie for breakfast laid him open to endless charges of hypocrisy. No other male American writer has been so discredited for enjoying a meal with loved ones or for not doing his own laundry. But from the very beginning, such charges have been used to silence Thoreau.”

What does is develop his voice as a writer, writing he eulogy to his trip with his brother without even naming his brother in the book, and then the confrontational prophecy of Walden.