-
Three Reviews
- University of Iowa Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Three Reviews Thoreau: A Naturalist's Liberty. By John Hildebidle. Cambridge, Mass.: Haroard University Press, 1983. This quiet, well-mannered book turns on two related arguments, two by virtue of the fact that natural history involves the methods of both science and history and, as an inquiry, includes historical material (antiquities, local lore). But since the arguments concern Thoreau's attitudes toward science and history, they can be put as one: that, given Thoreau's ambivalence, he rejected neither as extremely as previous critics have thought nor varied much in his attitudes throughout his hfetime. This argument, to my mind, is dispensable, chiefly because it seldom takes account of the context of previous assessments and Hildebidle himself does not so much disagree with them as modify them-dissent from them, in the sense of the pun. His work is revisionist, and the argumentative framework is functional: to sharpen our interest in the matters at hand and to let him get on with the work of enabling us to see them better. To the extent that natural history depends on seeing, he may be said to be the scholaras -natural historian, one, incidentally, whose exposition, in its shifting atten22 tions, may have been prompted by his familiarity with this genre. In any case, seeing is the focal issue, reminding me of Gary Snyder's "See or go blind!" This, to be sure, is an admonition to undertake a vision quest (in a book concerned with the succession of forest trees, though indebted to Thoreau for other things), but it is a good motto for what, finally, is an insistence of our literature, the need to pay attention to things, to be witness to such firsthand experience. Hildebidle enables us to see, less so in the chapters on A Week, Walden, and Cape Cod, which do not answer easily to a single view, or, in the case of the latter two, to such binary terms as heaven and hell, elect and fallen; very much so in the central chapters on the method and genre of natural history and on Thoreau's late natural history essays. In the chapter on method he considers Gilbert White's The Natural History of Selborne and Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. In the chapter on genre, where "The Succession of Forest Trees" represents Thoreau's most scientific achievement, he sets out the tradition of natural history writing and redefines the genre. The chapter on late natural history essays-it is called "Schooling the Eye"-treats the following, though never completely or as writing: "Dispersion of Seeds," "Notes on Fruits," "Huckleberries ," "Autumnal Tints," and "Wild Apples." Now, in enabling us to see, Hildebidle also enables us to see what he does not. In my view, this concerns the placing of Thoreau's natural history in the context of American literature; that is, of establishing its significance in terms of the most characteristic and important issues. Raising the issue of history, as he does, is one way of doing this, but it is not an especially lively way, even when the proponents of the usable past are offered in testimony. Such allusion to recent work (circa 1915-1930) is decorative, not useful-no use is made of it. This is important, because use could be made of it and of contemporary work, Paul Metcalf's, for example. For one thing it might help to explain what happened to the genre that Thoreau found so congenial and so wonderfully adapted to his own ends. Did it die with the advent of professional science? Isn't there a tradition of nature writing that extends beyond John Burroughs, the last in the Thoreauvian line mentioned by Hildebidle; the tradition in which such diverse practitioners as E. B. White and Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey and Sigurd Olson are enrolled? Thoreau fostered a tradition of nature writing, but this, I think, is not the most important outcome of his work, which may be why Hildebidle doesn't bother with it. But what, then, is the important outcome? Three Reviews ~ 2) [3.236.55.137] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 18:41 GMT) Well, it might yet be the outcome now that Hildebidle has described the method and defined the genre for us. Natural history, as Thoreau found it in Gilbert White's letters and in Darwin's journal, was an open form, what Emerson called an "unclosed genre." Emerson himself did not employ it but he recommended it to Thoreau, who...