In our time.
an essayIn his time, one of the most admired of the Transcendentalists who hold such a prominent position in the American literary firmament of the 19th century was a man who is all but forgotten today—would in fact be forgotten but for one daughter who was in her own character far more like her mother.
What was loved about Bronson Alcott is difficult for me to see now. I have engaged the question several times in my life, beginning when I was nineteen or so and attending an experimental college in Vermont. Alcott was an experimenter with ideas, and much interested in educational reform, and thus an easy target for someone looking for an answer to the wholesale human stupidity that seemed to overwhelm the world about me at a time when my generation were being used as cannon fodder in Vietnam and nuclear annihilation was the only monitor of peace.
Who was this man who was so loved by Emerson, Thoreau, Parker, Fuller, and Channing—and at least respected by Hawthorne and the difficult Mr. Garrison?
Over-paid by others for hyphenated jobs such as lawn-work, snow-shoveling, house-painting, office-boy, dish-washer, warehouse-grunt, table-waiter and hotel night-clerk–I’ve since chosen to be a writer, editor, publisher, and for most of my life, a bookseller, and even managed to occasionally pay myself. Hound is my first published novel.
I have often gone hundreds of miles out of my way to visit a bookshop someone said was worth knowing. More than a personal anecdote, the habit is a determining factor in making this list. Would I give up another few hours of my ever-shortening life to go there?...
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