Walden
Henry David Thoreau · 1854
Walden defies category. A two-year experiment rendered as a philosophical essay in eighteen sections. The most important nature writing in the language, and the template for the "living-as-argument" essay tradition.
The case against
Thoreau lived a mile from Concord, walked into town constantly, and famously took his laundry home, then wrote as though he had discovered self-reliance alone among the bean rows. Economy, the opening section, hectors for eighty pages before the pond gets a word in. You need a high tolerance for being lectured on simplicity by a man with a mother nearby.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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