One Great Author. One Great CD.
"'What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make
my first entry today."
With these words, in response to prodding from Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry David Thoreau embarked on a writing enterprise--his
Journal--that occupied him continuously over the entire period of his
literary career, from 1837 to 1862. In one sense Thoreau's Journal is
his greatest achievement as a writer, the remarkable record of a
remarkable man's view of the world. Ranging in topic from entries titled
"Young Women at Parties" to "Sunlight after Storm", the Journal is
neither diary nor autobiography in the usual meaning of these terms,
because the daily chronicle and the narrative of outward events are
minor aspects of this voluminous work. The Journal is clearly not the
work of a diarist, but the notebook of a writer dedicated to the
continuous practice of composition.