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“Henry David Thoreau’s Magical Thinking”
A really nice article about Henry and his brother, John.
https://newrepublic.com/article/129218/henry-david-thoreaus-magical-thinking
“Henry David Thoreau’s Magical Thinking
“After his brother’s death, the writer began to reconsider the science behind life.”
By Branka Arsić
(c) Copyright 2016 New Republic. All rights reserved.
February 8, 2016
Photo: Miguel Vieira/Flickr
https://newrepublic.com/article/129218/henry-david-thoreaus-magical-thinking
Walden Gone Wild
Re-imagining the classic book Walden by Henry D. Thoreau as an irreverent, R-rated, stoner comedy.
Now available in the Kindle book store.
Now available in the Kindle book store.
Walden Gone Wild
an irreverent re-telling of the classic
book by Henry D. Thoreau
two-hour feature film script for TV or movies
eighth draft
by Shawn Paul Stewart
Kindle Direct Publishing
Dallas TX
Walden Gone Wild; a.k.a. Walden, A love Story; Two Hearts in Concord is published exclusively online by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author. For information regarding permission, write to the author at shawnpaulstewart@yahoo.com.
PAu-2-422-692, PAu 2-228-949, PAu 1-605-213,
PAu X-XXX-XXX
Copyright (c) 1992, 1997, 1999 and 2016 by Shawn Paul Stewart (SPS), All Rights Reserved.
Printed in the U.S.A.
First printing via Amazon.com, February 2016
Based on a true story..
This is my primary research into what has come to be known as the “Transcendental triangle,” a love triangle involving Henry David Thoreau, Ellen Devereaux Sewall, a young minister’s daughter, and John Thoreau, Henry’s older brother.
Author Page on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00G6O0OP0
Website with references:
https://beforewalden.wordpress.com/
Cover art by the author.
FADE IN.
EXT. RIVER – MORNING
On a calm river, early morning, a boat glides by carrying two figures, one is poling and the other is steering.
ELLEN v.o.
In September, 1839, Henry David Thoreau and his older brother John, Jr., took a trip down the Concord-Merrimack rivers. It turned out to be something less than the quiet vacation they had in mind.
The water like a solid sheet of glass parts smoothly before the little dory’s prow. But the stillness belies something ominous.
Angry storm clouds knit their brows on the horizon. As he poles the dory through the shallows, Henry looks at them worriedly.
JOHN
You shouldn’t drink and pole.
HENRY
You could help, you know.
John BELCHES LOUDLY, crushes a beer can he was drinking from, and tosses it in the water. Several cans are floating behind the boat.
HENRY
Looks pretty bad. Let’s put in.
Henry keeps on poling, and the clouds keep on rolling in spitting lightning here and there.
JOHN
You know everything about boats.
An uneasy silence.
JOHN
And nothing about women.
HENRY
Leave off, will you?
JOHN
Push on, I say.
EXT. RIVER – NIGHT
An unholy downpour is falling from the sky. The storm has hit them head-on. The little dory rocks from side to side, creaking and groaning, fighting the mad current; Henry is poling, trying to find a bed to dig into, and John is alternately rowing and bailing out water. Their little lifeboat is on the verge of overturning and sinking, throwing these “sinners into the hands of an angry God,” as Jonathan Edwards might say.
Henry slaps one oar into an eyelet, leans into it hard, and tries to coax the bucking bronco of a boat towards shore. The oar snaps, one of only two on board, and Henry falls on top of John almost knocking him overboard.
JOHN
This is your fault!
HENRY
My fault?
The steering gone, they both tumble down into the keel and find themselves face to face, half under water, wet, cold, and shivering mad.
JOHN
I saw her first!
HENRY
What are you, in kindergarten?
JOHN
Who paid your way through college? Tuition, room, and board? You owe me!
HENRY
Not everything’s about money!
John stands up, balancing himself in the rocking boat, holding the last oar over high his head as if he’s going to smash it down on Henry’s face.
HENRY
Look out!
A big branch swings out of the darkness and rakes John off his feet, knocking him overboard into the crazy waters. John is a bobbling figure quickly left behind in the whirlpool of currents.
The river makes a ninety-degree turn at just that point, and the water slows down long enough for John to clamber up on shore using some vines and creepers, where he stands, flipping his hair back over his shoulder and looking around downstream for his brother. The boat is gone.
John takes off at a dead run through the forest, barreling down the bank as fast as he can after his brother and the renegade boat.
With a thousand tree branches and thickets and thorn bushes standing in his way, it becomes an obstacle course, but John rips through these without thinking.
He blasts through the woods like cannon fire. Emphasis here should be on blinding speed, knifing tree limbs, and the total disregard he has for his own safety while racing through this forest of razors.
Finally, he reaches a bend in a clearing where the river slows down somewhat, though the rain is still blurring everything in sight. It’s a mess along the banks, slippery, slimy, sucking pockets of mud. John stumbles toward the shore and shades his eyes.
JOHN
Henry! Henry!
He sees the boat caught up in some branches near the opposite shore… but where’s Henry?
In a small divot near the edge of the stream, Henry comes clawing his way up hand over hand through a mass of weeds and debris. He struggles to come onshore but even here the current is too swift and the slope too slippery. Mud dissolves beneath his feet as the soggy bank grows wider and wider. He flops down again into a tangled network of roots and vegetation and is stuck there permanently, too tired to fight.
John crawls out along the dead trunk of a tree in whose twisted arms and rotted roots his younger brother is now hopelessly tangled.
Henry reaches out a weak hand toward his older brother.
HENRY
Help me up. Dumbass.
John reaches out his own hand but stops short.
JOHN
Only if you help me.
Water is lapping over the younger man’s head. He can barely stay above water.
JOHN
A small wager: I ask her to marry me first. If she accepts, I win her hand. If not… you get the money and the girl.
Choking back water, Henry shakes his head “No” as hard as he can, adding to the froth and foam around his neck.
JOHN
She’ll never marry a debtor, and you’ll be in my ledger forever. This is your only chance to be free. Free of me. What’s the matter? I thought you said she loved you?
Henry gulps a breath of water, considering.
JOHN
Well, then?
At last now John extends his arm out and towards his younger brother. Their hands come together in the driving rain. A SLOW MOTION handshake. The deal is done.
ELLEN v.o.
But best to begin at the beginning.
FADE OUT.
FADE IN:
EXT. WOODS – DAY
Ellen flashes back briefly on her childhood. FLUTE MUSIC from the trees. She’s walking around looking up, trying to figure out where the music is coming from.
ELLEN v.o.
I remember the day I was married. I was ten years old. We were living in Concord, Massachusetts, where father was studying to be a minister. That’s where I first met David Henry Thoreau.
YOUNG HENRY, about 15 years old, shirtless and wearing homemade war paint, jumps out of a tree and scares YOUNG ELLEN SEWALL, then about 10.
YOUNG HENRY
Woo woo woo woo!
He’s pretending to be an Indian. She’s pretending to be impressed. He starts whistling on his handmade flute. Not bad for a beginner.
YOUNG HENRY
You know, the Indians believe that flutes cast spells over reluctant maidens.
He digs a hand in his trousers and comes up with a lovely, hand-woven ring made of flowers and yarn.
YOUNG HENRY
Here. With this ring, I thee wed. Ellen Sewall, will you marry me?
She’s not really paying attention.
YOUNG ELLEN
Yes. Kiss me now.
They do, laying their lips upon one another’s in tender adulation. Kid stuff… not too heavy.
YOUNG HENRY
Now you can’t move away. You’re my wife.
Little Ellen continues braiding flowers, bored.
YOUNG ELLEN
Yes.
EXT. THOREAU’S – DAY
Ellen is moving away. Her parent’s chaise wobbles away down the dirt streets of Concord. Young Henry waves at Ellen, who looks back at him through the sad rear window.
ELLEN v.o.
But I was ever a dutiful daughter, and of course grew up to be a model minister’s child.
INT. BEDROOM – DAY
Suburban Scituate, Massachusetts, near Boston, 1839.
We hear sounds of lovemaking. Or as it becomes clearer, the sounds of after-lovemaking. Kissing and smooching above all. A woman giggles. A man growls, slapping something we assume to be her bottom, pulling the woman closer. She giggles more, devouring his kisses.
Sitting on top of the man, the woman rises into frame. It’s Ellen, of course, now 17. The model minister’s daughter. Wrapped in nothing but a bed sheet. This can be PG- or R-rated depending on the director’s preference.
ELLEN
What if I touch this?
She reaches lower making her lover groan. It’s not important for us to recognize the boy just yet, JOSEPH. We will learn his name later.
From off screen, WE HEAR A CAR HORN. Not an eighteenth century buggy horn, but a modern day automobile horn. This is the first sign that we will be mixing timelines from here on out.
Ellen jumps, startled.
ELLEN
Oh, shit. It’s my parents.
She runs barefooted to the window and throws aside the curtain. Her POV: indeed, her parent’s chaise wobbles up the driveway.
ELLEN
Oh, shit. Oh, shit. You’ve got to get out.
JOSEPH
Where?
He looks out the window. They’re on the second floor, a long way down. The chaise is still wobbling up the driveway, almost too slowly to be believed.
She throws clothes at him. One of his shirts looks suspiciously like a priest’s collar. Even Unitarian ministers back then wore something similar, all black. She points to the window.
ELLEN
Just. Get. Out.
Shoving his legs into his trousers, Joseph looks at the window, unhappy.
EXT. STREET – DAY
Dirt streets. That’s the first thing the audience will notice. No sidewalks here.
Welcome to rural Concord, 1839.
John, 27, walks through down the street dotted with quaint colonial houses, thumbing through his iPhone.
ON-SCREEN: we see pictures of victorian porn. Women in their underwear covered down to their ankles. Not very sexy. But John seems psyched.
JOHN
Oh, baby.
He walks right past a man mowing his lawn in full Victorian clothing: great coat, vest, long pants. Phew! From our time period, it looks like he’s headed for church.
A horse clops kicking up dust and pulling a modern day pickup truck full of hay.
Kids roll by playing with a stick and hoop, high entertainment those days.
Mixed timelines.
EXT. HOUSE DAY
Cynthia Thoreau steps out the front door of the house wiping her hands with a wash rag. She looks down the street and sees her oldest son coming home for lunch.
CYNTHIA
John!
John is so busy fiddling with his phone that he walks right past the driveway where…
Two girls are washing their horse in the driveway, just like a modern car owner might do on the weekend. They have buckets, soap, even a garden hose, which does not exist at all in 1839. Oh, and, need we mention that the two girls are wearing very teeny bikinis?
They wave at John, flinging soap. Singsong:
GIRLS
Hi, John.
John walks by, unseeing. Then he steps back into frame, turns his phone sideways, and snaps a picture.
CYNTHIA
John!
John mounts the front stoop.
CYNTHIA
Where’s your brother?
JOHN
Who knows.
Waves to nowhere.
JOHN
Nova Zembla.*
*1839 saying for, “Timbuktu.” Far off somewhere .
John enters the house, leaving his mother stranded on the front porch, exasperated.
JOHN o.s.
Just call him.
Cynthia, somewhat old fashioned, fishes in her apron. We think she’s going to pull out a phone. Instead… she pulls out an old iron cowboy western dinner triangle calling bell. She rings it, loudly.
THE SOUND OF THE TRIANGLE REVERBERATES DOWN THE STREET.
EXT. WOODS – DAY
Various shots to show that: THE SOUND OF THE TRIANGLE FADES as it gets further and further away from the house.
EXT. TREE – DAY
Henry, now 22, has a very serious conversation with someone who’s sitting off screen.
HENRY
I don’t know. It seems like we’re just…. We’re going in different directions, you know? I dunno. I still care about you, but some times love’s not enough. You’re….
Reveal: off-screen, he’s talking to a woodchuck.
The woodchuck chatters as if it understands him and crawls into his lap. He strokes it, lovingly.
HENRY
Maybe we just… need a break.
Long pause.
HENRY
Maybe we should see other people.
The woodchuck turns on him with rabid teeth. And woodchucks have long teeth. It bites him right in the crotch.
HENRY
Ow! Sonofa-buckeyball!
Henry spins around with a woodchuck clamped to his crotch. Whatever it’s romantic inclinations, the damn thing doesn’t want to let go.
HENRY
Get off me! Goddammit! Sonofabitch!
THE SOUND OF THE DINNER BELL FADES IN. Even cross vast distances, Henry can still hear it, almost as if he has bionic hearing.
He spins around, knocking the woodchuck loose, which goes flying into a tree trunk. The woodchuck stands up on its hind legs, chattering angrily. Maybe even a SUB-CAPTION, translating:
WOODCHUCK
You bastard!
Henry takes off running toward the sound of the bell.
EXT. WOODS – DAY
Various quick shots show Henry hustling home for dinner:
Henry runs like a madman through the woods racing home for dinner. Like the Flash, he leaves a trail of fire in his footsteps. Literally. (Fire will be an important motif later.)
SUPERFAST POV – Henry blasts through the forest like a Speeder Bike from Return of the Jedi—under logs, around trees, around redwoods (incongruous, yes). He blows right past a small bush that flies up into the air. What looks very much like an Ewok emerges from the bush, exposed, shaking his fist at Henry.
EWOK
Eee chuu Taaa!
A lady Ewok emerges from the same bush, arranging her “clothes.” Yikes!
He jets across Walden Pond at supersonic speed, breaking the sound barrier, going so fast that he literally runs across the water, his feet barely touching the surface. (Simple wire work. Think of the scene where Clark Kent races the train in the 1970s Superman movie.)
EXT. HOUSE – DAY
Henry arrives, barely winded, but looking like hell.
HENRY
Hey, ma. What’s for dinner?
Cynthia shakes her head, following him inside.
EXT. CONCORD – DAY
Rural Concord, Massachusetts, 1839, downtown. Population: 1,784 people and probably double the number of cows and horses. This was a very small town, even then. Main Street on a busy week day. Carts, wagons, and coaches vie for their speck of the street, dirt or mud, in this tiny town center. It’s literally a one-stoplight town. Just for fun, let’s put an actual stoplight right on one of the busiest corners. It turns yellow just as a wagon hauling hay tries to run it.
DRIVER
Shit.
On cue, his horse actually does just that, takes a big dump in the middle of the road.
Stepping around the horse dung are two guys hauling a huge and log on their shoulders, HENRY and his older brother, JOHN. They are the target as we crane down to meet them. John and Henry are now 27 and 22 respectively. They’re talking absently, complaining about their load, and greeting people as they try to carry this huge 22-foot log on their shoulders. They’re doing a good Buster Keaton routine of the avoiding hitting things with the log.
JOHN
This is the most wood you’ve seen all year.
HENRY
Shut up.
JOHN
Seriously, dude, you need to get in the game. How did you go four years of college without getting laid?
HENRY
I was studying divinity.
JOHN
Oh, yeah, right. You mean they didn’t have cheerleaders in the ministry school? “Oh, god. Give it to me, god.”
HENRY
You’re an ass.
JOHN
Don’t be such a ninny. You’re gonna be some little house-husband on the prairie.
They wind their way through morning crowds, early day commuters. Several times, by turning and talking to one another, they nearly decapitate several townsfolk. Maybe Laurel and Hardy is more like it. People are cursing them, they ignore it.
Okay, to imagine this scene, you have to envision a comedian like young Will Ferrell playing Thoreau, mid-twenties, galways whiskers and all. (For neo-classical noobs, galways whiskers are those dorky, mid-eighteenth century beards that avoided the face and ran right around the chin, ear to ear. It kept the neck warm in the winter, some say.)
JOHN
Gotta pluck ‘em while they’re young. Look at her, how old you think she is?
A woman passes them by. She looks 67.
JOHN
She is 25, my man, ripe for the picking.
Henry makes a face.
What’s very obvious are the differences in the way that people are greeting the two brothers. Ridiculously good-looking John waves and smiles at everybody, and they wave and smile back, calling him “J.J.” or “Johnny Boy.” Friendly, familiar terms. A slap on the shoulder, high-fives.
By contrast, most people scowl and sneer at Henry. Avoiding his “Hellos.” Sneers, jeers, quick turnarounds. A woman with kids does a quick u-turn. He is definitely the least-liked brother… the town pariah.
The two brothers turn in to the sawmill which is also doubling as their father’s pencil factory.
INT. PENCIL FACTORY – DAY
They drop their heavy load onto a conveyor belt. The log rolls along.
JOHN
Ah. I love the smell of graphite in the morning. It smells like… lung cancer.
Henry pushes the log along and into the spinning jaws of a huge wood saw. The sound is ferocious as it chews through the log. It seems to be cutting away everything. Wood shavings, sawdust, pulp, and curlings fly everywhere.
At the other end of the assembly line, John slaps his father on the shoulder, who is waiting.
JOHN
How’s it going, pops?
JOHN, SR., grumbles. That pretty much becomes his shtick. He grumbles about everything, without saying anything.
The log continues through the assembly line and finally, right in front of both Johns, out pops one single pencil. That’s all. From the whole log, you get one single pencil. It’s like the old cartoon joke about the toothpick factory. From one entire log, you get a single toothpick.
John, Jr., picks up the pencil. On it is stamped JOHN THOREAU AND SON, emphasis on the singular, and SON.
JOHN
Seems like a waste.
John, Sr., grumbles. The other, the forgotten son, Henry, wanders over. Henry is completely plastered with sawdust and wood shavings. He looks like a wooden cigar store Indian. Or a brillo pad made of wood and tree resin. Ridiculous.
HENRY
What about my project?
John holds the pencil lower, in front of Henry.
JOHN
Gives whole new meaning to “pencil dick.”
…..
Read more in the Kindle book store.
Author Page on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00G6O0OP0
Walden, just sliiiiightly re-imagined
Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. I thought about chopping off my hands and saving future generations from having to read this tripe, but… let’s push on. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. It’s also how I got to be known as the “cheapest bastard in town,” according to my brother. John, just like father, was an actuarial accountant. Or as I like to call him, a man in a monkey suit.
“Everywhere I go, it’s ‘Henry owes this, Henry owes that,'” said John. “Why don’t you to pay your bloody bills?”
“Because they haven’t invented credit cards yet,” I told him.
The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it. Odd, most people refer to kids as the apples of their eyes; it made me wonder what this guy had done with his axe. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. Notice how often I refer to nature in the middle of pointless sentences that go nowhere. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was all dark-colored and saturated with water. Believe it or not, there are some businessmen who sell ice to idiots down south so that they can sip Long Island iced teas all summer. Why didn’t I think of that? There were some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year with us. Notice this long lovely image describing the railroad? I hate the railroad. I hate all technology, despite the fact that I’m using it here to find my way home. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man’s discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. “Winter of discontent,” that’s an allusion, in case you missed it. One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. [Editor’s note: Henry, you broke the axe you borrowed, yet the whole point of this 84-word sentence is to tell readers that a stupid snake sat unmoving in the bottom of a pond-hole? Come on!] It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. Then again, all my neighbors are tilling their fields to feed their families while I am fucking around building a weekend cabin. What do I know? I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. Others, like lawyers, never thawed. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog. It was creepy as hell, so I took a stick and beat it over the head until it was dead.
WALDEN, A Love Story, seventh draft
Henry’s Journal, June 19, 1840
The other day I rowed in my boat a free, even lovely young lady, and, as I plied the oars, she sat in the stern, and there was nothing but she between me and the sky. So might all our lives be picturesque if they were free enough, but mean relations and prejudices intervene to shut out the sky, and we never see a man as simple and distinct as the man-weathercock on a steeple.
W a l d e n 