14 Comments
User's avatar
Tamsin Grainger's avatar

He is not in my book either and I reserve the right to refer to women and not always the famous men if I can say what I want in a better way with their help

Expand full comment
Antonia Malchik's avatar

Or just ... anyone :) We are all walkers.

Expand full comment
Greg Davis's avatar

Thank you, Nia. Nous sommes tous les randonneurs.

Expand full comment
Antonia Malchik's avatar

Indeed (though in case I'm making myself sound too smart I put that phrase into Google translate!).

Expand full comment
Sara Bir's avatar

As Thoreau said, "It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a wanker."

Expand full comment
Antonia Malchik's avatar

Sara <<laughing/crying emoji>>!!!

Expand full comment
Chris La Tray's avatar

You'll never argue me away from the inspiration I still take from Thoreau and a lot of these other people we've now decided were terrible, Antonia! I will not cede the dwindling shreds of comfort I occasionally find in the world knowing I'm not the only one so awful! *shakes fist at sky* ... *breaks down, weeps* ... *burns every book in the house*

Expand full comment
Antonia Malchik's avatar

No burning books! I promise you, I still enjoy Thoreau in general, despite the fact that he wasn't really off alone in the woods. I'd just like our view of stories to be broader and deeper :) and I'm sure you don't argue with that! And I think he was a good person for his time, despite his rather demeaning characterization of us poor mothers and housewives. (I do not, however, like F. Scott Fitzgerald and likely never will. I'll admit that this is probably due in part to the fact that we moved a lot and so I ended up having to study the symbolism in The Great Gatsby 3 years in a row, each time in a different school, and was heartily sick of it.) I know I admitted last year to disliking John McPhee, but if it helps I like plenty of other classic writers--Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Proust, and Dickens, though for the last I actually prefer the BBC dramatizations. He would have written great TV shows.

Expand full comment
Chris La Tray's avatar

I was partially facetious in my overwrought response, heh. I've been really struggling with my own realizations about some of the writers I've admired and how, the more I learn about them, the more troubled I become. The whole art vs. person thing. It often makes me either want to stop reading or stop learning about creative people. As for Thoreau, I think he too often gets held to a standard of a myth created about him that he wasn't even alive to contribute to. It's always been obvious to me that he was, at most, living on the fringe of society. Which is where I long to be. Maybe that is why I relate so much to him.

Expand full comment
Antonia Malchik's avatar

That is probably very true, and I still find him inspiring, too! He was doing his best, as we all are.

I've been thinking so much about stories recently, and am starting to feel like stories get to stand on their own no matter the flaws of the people they come through. None of us knows where that creative inspiration comes from, but I think at some level we all know it doesn't come solely from ourselves.

Expand full comment
jj's avatar

The timing of this piece is exactly what I needed to read today. Thanks, Nia!

Expand full comment
Antonia Malchik's avatar

Aw, JJ, thank you!

Expand full comment
Richard Gay's avatar

I noted a tweet this morning from someone who conveyed that another tweet was essentially causing them to lose faith in America. It occurred to me that their America was a fantasy.

Expand full comment
Antonia Malchik's avatar

It's funny, a friend of mine here commented last month that liberal-minded locals should "take back the flag" and put it on our trucks in the way that Trump supporters are wont to do here. It brought me back to the Bush years and the run-up to invading Iraq and the question of what a patriot is, in which displaying the flag played a big role.

The retired police chief lives down the road from me (next door to his son, who was a high school classmate of mine and is now the deputy police chief and whose daughter is in the same class as my son -- small town!) and has a bumper sticker on his truck that says, "America Love It or Leave It" and every time I think how about "America, Love Its Ideals Enough to Make It Better."

Expand full comment