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Article: UPDATING THOREAU'S QUEST FOR RURAL LIFE AND SIMPLICITY
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- August 25, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1987 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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If Boston's western suburbs have a secular patron saint, he must
be Henry David Thoreau, who is to environmentalism and civil
disobedience as Orville Redenbacher is to popcorn.
Has it occurred to you that there is something a little sick
about the reverence with which the 'burbs treat Henry? Sure, the
man wrote well, at least when he was writing about beasts, birds
and fishes and their habitats.
But he was also a bigot and a misogynist, an incorrigible
deadbeat and sponge, a technological reactionary who hated
railways, and a pettifogging oddball who felt it was important to
account for every bean and nail involved in that odd shack he
pretended to live in at Walden Pond.
His ...