Literary Safari

We stopped by at Walden Pond on the way to Maine this past weekend. Though I’ve read Walden; or, Life in the Woods many more times than I can remember, I’ve actually never visited Henry David Thoreau’s home in the woods, the place where he spent two years and two months living alone, in a house he had built himself, earning his living by the “labor of [his] hands only” engaged in an experiment to experience a “life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.” (After roughing it for those 26 months, Thoreau then spent nine years composing and revising his groundbreaking narrative about his experience.)

On the drive over, I sat in the passenger seat slowly flipping through and reading Thoreau at Walden, John Porcellino’s graphic novel interpretation of Thoreau’s story. Published by the Center for Cartoon Studies and Hyperion (2008), this brown and black ink illustrated edition brings Thoreau’s journey alive using carefully selected original text from Walden. The line drawings are spare and stark, allowing space for the crux of the philosopher’s words and ideas to come alive.

Porcellino is an astute editor who has culled and woven original language from Thoreau’s original, and organized it by the seasons into four sections: winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Just before we pulled into the driveway of Walden Pond, I re-read the “Summer” section, where Thoreau breathes in and relishes the season that, for most of us, is nearly over: “Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day, for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days … and I spend them lavishly.” (That is exactly what I plan on doing for the remains of these warm summer days.)

If you’re wary of this book just because it’s a graphic novel, don’t be. There’s a terrific introduction by D. B. Johnson, author of the picture book Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, a key to quotation sources (linking readers back to the original text), and an annotated “panel discussion” section which provides further background about Thoreau along with anecdotal details about objects in the illustrations (for example, Thoreau’s three-legged table pictured on page 13 gives Porcellino the opportunity to tell us more about the furniture in his cabin in the woods). [plus a teachers guide] After all this, readers will no doubt be tempted to return to the original edition of Walden, as I was.

But beyond all this, what I love most about the book was its nimble execution of Thoreau’s credo of “Simplify! Simplify!” Porcellino really gets it. He has taken the essence of Thoreau’s philosophy and poured it into an 88 page “comic” where wordless panels convey the silence of Thoreau’s journey, where nature is a key organizational device (as it was for Thoreau’s daily living), and where one man’s personal epiphanies urge us to take pause and figure out a way to render them our own.

Check out this interview with John Porcellino at School Library Journal for more on his work process.