I read this not as a disparagement of Thoreau so much as a lesson about both poetry and prose, how we are incapable of fully describing that which we experience.

In one sense, Thoreau is a liar and a hypocrite, in the physical, the literal sense, in that he was unable to sustain himself (on Walden Pond, I surmise) without stealing from his neighbor, something he fails to report. In another sense he is a failed guide as well, and in this sense less a failure personally but as a representative of man, unable to capture in words all of what he witnesses and experiences.

In this latter sense he cannot be faulted, I think the narrator acknowledges by his tone.

It is, after all, more of the same liquid, the problem with describing what we experience, the problem with truly communicating, one to another, this time poured into the vessel which is the well known Thoreau.

What I find most valuable about it, ironically, is the reminder of Thoreau's life and pursuits, the documentation of which led me for a number of wonderful years along a fruitful journey of my own: if I did not have Kitahdin, I did have Walden Pond, and I had the Saco River, and Mount Madison, and many points along the Appalachian Trail, South River Falls, Twin Otter Peaks, beyond, and deep into the south where Muir took me, and west into the Pecos and the Ozarks and down into Big Bend country.

It did that for me, unintentionally as it might have been.

Take care,

Joe

...never wrote about stealing
from his neighbors' fields,

Thoreau is a liar and a hypocrite, in the physical, the literal sense, in that he was unable to sustain himself (on Walden Pond, I surmise) without stealing from his neighbor, something he fails to report.

OK, you say Thoreau is a liar and a hypocrite. Strong language. You say he stole from his neighbor. How do you know that he stole anything, if he never wrote about it? Are we talking about Thoreau, or a fictional character named Thoreau, created by the poet, who does fictional things - perhaps to support the poet's opinions, or just for the sake of this poem? Was collecting cowshit from a neighbor's field without permission (we are talking about cowshit here) acceptable behavior in Thoreau's day? Might he not have done so with the approval of the cow's owner, and not thought it significant to make a note of that in the published version of his autobiography?

Maybe he never wrote of stealing because he never did. I don't know. I'm not sure the poet does either. Either way, I have a little trouble seeing that it reflects on Thoreau's character. Unless he wrote a long boring sermon on the evil of cowshit-stealing (oh, wait - that would have been Emerson) it's hard to see where hypocrisy would enter in.

It seems to me that the Thoreau of the poem is no hypocrite. He tries to live his ideals, as an experiment. Others might smirk that it was tougher than he'd thought it would be, but he accepts the blisters as the reality of that living. He doesn't seem to complain about a little shit (and onion-stink) on his hands. He even admits to being less than a perfect writer, or even that writing is at best imperfect. To which I say, for the sake of symmetry, no shit.

Granted. I was speaking as I interpreted the narrator's intent, from the narrator's 'omniscient' point of view.

Take care,

Joe

You say he stole from his neighbor. How do you know that he stole anything, if he never wrote about it? Are we talking about Thoreau, or a fictional character named Thoreau, created by the poet, who does fictional things - perhaps to support the poet's opinions, or just for the sake of this poem?

I thought perhaps the cowchip story was in his journals but not in his BeanField chapter of Walden. I agree that the word "steal" is probably Roderick's.

But I do agree with SoccerFreak that the poem might also be about the difference between experience / reality and the literary work created as a result of that experience / reality.