Now Comes Good Sailing

Writers Reflect on Henry David Thoreau

De: Andrew Blauner

Narrado por: William Hope, Barbara Barnes, Kaliswa Brewster, Kate Harper, Peter Marinker, Ako Mitchell

This audiobook brings together original pieces on Thoreau by 27 of today's leading writers

With narration by William Hope, Barbara Barnes, Kaliswa Brewster, Kate Harper, Peter Marinker, and Ako Mitchell

Features essays by Jennifer Finney Boylan • Kristen Case • George Howe Colt • Gerald Early • Paul Elie • Will Eno • Adam Gopnik • Lauren Groff • Celeste Headlee • Pico Iyer • Alan Lightman • James Marcus • Megan Marshall • Michelle Nijhuis • Zoë Pollak • Jordan Salama • Tatiana Schlossberg • A. O. Scott • Mona Simpson • Stacey Vanek Smith • Wen Stephenson • Robert Sullivan • Amor Towles • Sherry Turkle • Geoff Wisner • Rafia Zakaria • and a cartoon by Sandra Boynton

The world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the author of Walden, “Civil Disobedience,” and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. In Now Comes Good Sailing, 27 of today’s leading writers offer wide-ranging original pieces exploring how Thoreau has influenced and inspired them — and why he matters more than ever in an age of climate, racial, and technological reckoning.

Here, Lauren Groff retreats from the COVID-19 pandemic to a rural house and writing hut, where, unable to write, she rereads Walden; Pico Iyer describes how Thoreau provided him with an unlikely guidebook to Japan; Gerald Early examines Walden and the Black quest for nature; Rafia Zakaria reflects on solitude, from Thoreau’s Concord to her native Pakistan; Mona Simpson follows in Thoreau’s footsteps at Maine’s Mount Katahdin; Jennifer Finney Boylan reads Thoreau in relation to her experience of coming out as a trans woman; Adam Gopnik traces Thoreau’s influence on the New Yorker editor E. B. White and his book Charlotte’s Web; and there’s much more.

The result is a lively and compelling collection that richly demonstrates the countless ways Thoreau continues to move, challenge, and provoke listeners today.

©2021 Andrew Blauner (P)2021 Princeton University Press

A Thoughtful Collection

Fantastic to hear so many diverse contemporary “takes” on Thoreau’s life and works. Many are stirring; all are worth considering. Some inspired me to listen a second and third time before going to the next. Some turned me back to Thoreau’s essays (“Civil Disobedience, “Life Without Principle”) and Walden to savor again the texts the authors refer to.
I’d recommend that you encounter this work while the current pandemic and, for many of us, isolation are still fresh in our minds.