The case for:
1. Despite an Ivy-League education, chose to practice the affectations of poverty. This segues directly into:
2. Wrote a book about self-sufficiency and solitude in the wilderness while regularly visiting town and entertaining guests. In other words, he wrote an entire book ironically.
3. Participated in a futile act of protest, the repercussions of which his relatives bailed him out of.
4. Spent far more time writing about and justifying aforementioned act of protest than actually protesting.
5. Neckbeard.
To say that he wrote Walden *entirely* ironically is a stretch...I mean, he did actually spend a fair amount of time in his little cabin by the lake.
ReplyDeleteI will grant your other points though, much as Thoreau is near and dear to my heart.