Chapter 8 – Writing Walden
The nature writing in Walden manifests three salient compositional techniques. He let the physical lake be a literary black hole drawing inward to itself nearly fifteen years worth of observations from his broader sojourning space. He vigorously threshed his Journal passages during editing, letting the chaff of scientific rigor blow away, and the kernels of actual truth fall to the floor, where they ground his most elegant passages. He deliberately culled his perceptions of time, space, substance, and process to create a model of reality that best suited his book.
Replica of Thoreau’s writing desk in replica of Thoreau’s House at Walden Pond State Reservation with replicate props (courtesy of Richard Smith).
Gray foam on the surface of Thoreau’s Cove associated with melting slab ice and gentle currents. Though Thoreau avidly wrote about such things in his Journal, he deliberately culled them from Walden, which was too pure –in his literary mind– to include what looks like a serious case of water pollution. The bulge near the center is foam produced by a whirlpool created by the stick beyond the braided flow pattern.