‘America's original social distancer'

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND LOCKDOWNS MADE DAVID GESSNER, PROFESSOR OF CREATIVE WRITING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA WILMINGTON, REVISIT HENRY DAVID THOREAU—THE 19 TH CENTURY AMERICAN NATURALIST, ESSAYIST, POET AND PHILOSOPHER WHO LIVED IN ISOLATION FOR TWO YEARS STARTING 1845. THOREAU SPENT HIS TIME GROWING HIS OWN FOOD, CONTEMPLATING AND WRITING. HIS STAY IN THE WOODS BY THE WALDEN POND IN CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, RESULTED IN HIS MOST-KNOWN WORK, WALDEN—A BOOK THAT DESCRIBES THE ACT OF LIVING DAY TO DAY AND IS CONSIDERED A CLASSIC ON NATURE WRITING AND INDIVIDUALISM. GESSNER COMPARES THOREAU’S SELF-IMPOSED ISOLATION TO HIS OWN FORCED SECLUSION DURING THE PANDEMIC IN HIS BOOK QUIET DESPERATION, SAVAGE DELIGHT TO CONCLUDE “JUST HOW INTENSELY RELEVANT THOREAU IS TO OUR TIMES”. EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOK:

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Quiet Desperation, Savage Delight: Sheltering With Thoreau in the Age of Crisis

By David Gessner

Publisher: Torrey House Press

I ’M NOT trying to find a silver lining in a pandemic where many are sick and dying. Just saying that the nature of my days has changed and that there is something not entirely negative about that change...

We all suffer from what Samuel Johnson called “the hunger of the imagination,” the insatiable craving to fill the moment with more than what is in it now, as well as the constant desire to seek what’s around the bend. Is it really possible to be content with less?