Damion Searls on Thoreau
If you have 48 minutes to spare, there are worse ways to spend it than by listening to Christopher Lydon talk with Damion Searls about Thoreau. Even if you don’t, the introductory article is worth reading, especially the quotation from Searls about the links between Thoreau, Proust, and Rilke—authors not usually bracketed together.
Searls, the editor of NYRB’s excellent abridged edition of Thoreau’s Journal, is one of the most astute readers of Thoreau that we have, and Lydon’s sensual and intellectual appreciation of Thoreau’s prose (he actually groans when hearing something especially good) makes him the right interviewer.
Lydon brought up Thoreau’s preoccupation with color, of which yesterday’s entry at The Blog of Henry David Thoreau is one of many examples: “We love to see any part of the earth tinged with blue, cerulean, the color of the sky, the celestial color.” He also endeared himself to me by quoting Thoreau on frogs:
Frogs are strange creatures. One would describe them as peculiarly wary and timid, another as equally bold and imperturbable. All that is required in studying them is patience.... At length he becomes as curious about you as you can be about him. He suddenly hops straight toward [you], pausing within a foot, and takes a near and leisurely view of you. Perchance you may now scratch its nose with your finger and examine it to your heart’s content, for it is become as imperturbable as it was shy before. You conquer them by superior patience and immovableness; not by quickness, but by slowness; not by heat, but by coldness.
Searls impressed me in his response to the episode of Thoreau and the giant squash. One summer Thoreau raised several enormous yellow squashes from seed, weighing a total of 310 pounds. He noted later that they were coarse and tasteless, and I remember the incident mostly because of this cranky observation: “I raised last summer a squash which weighed 123 ½ pounds. If it had fallen on me it would have made as deep and lasting an impression as most men do. I would just as lief know what it thinks about God as what most men think, or are said to think.”
Searls, though, focuses on a different passage (September 28, 1857), in which Thoreau marvels at the thought that the tiny seeds he planted somehow called those enormous squashes into being:
I planted six seeds sent from the Patent Office and labelled, I think, ”Poitrine jaune grosse” (large yellow pumpkin (or squash?)). Two came up, and one bore a squash which weighs 123 ½ lbs. [Here he lists and adds up the weights of the others.] Who would have believed that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse in that corner of our garden? Yet that little seed found it.
To Searls, this passage conveys a sense of “identity and friendship with this heroic little seed,” and that is a pleasant way to think about it.
When I listened to the show, I took the time to transcribe those two passages as well. (I came, by the way, by googling “Yet that little seed found it.") They are strikingly beautiful.
I read the passage about the poitrine jaune grosse to several people I know, one responded that she felt the seed to be “adorable,” which in some way is very similar to Searls’s description.
I have several questions not related to this post, I hope you don’t mind.
1) Do you listen to Open Source regularly? I am sure there is a lot would interest you. Lydon is the rare interviewer that speaks to his guests on equal terms, allowing them to speak intelligently about their subjects. He makes a wonderful show.
2) Powell’s Books is listed first as a place to order your book. Do you have any relation to Powell’s? I am just curious because Portland is my hometown, and Powell’s is my bookstore.
3) Is there a possibility of digital distribution of your book in the near future? I’m interested in reading it, but it is expensive to ship things to the Philippines, and customs is very slow.