Kathryn Schulz writes that the author of Walden was "self-obsessed: narcissistic, fanatical about self-control," and his account of his months in the wilderness is closer to a "semi-fictional extended meditation" than nonfiction: "Thoreau did not live as he described, and no ethical principle is emptier than one that does not apply to its author … The hypocrisy is that Thoreau lived a complicated life but pretended to live a simple one. "
October 25, 2015
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