Funny-ass Thoreau

This book presents fans of Henry David Thoreau with a marvelous display of his most underappreciated quality: his killer sense of humor. Amid the transcendental musings of his best known works and the nature descriptions in his voluminous journal, Thoreau was constantly tossing off jokes, whipping out witticisms, and making fun of himself and others. Here he is in his own words trying to wrangle a pig, peeing in the woods, losing a tooth, laughing at Emerson shooing away his own cow, describing the slapstick of snowmelt and mud in the Concord streets on the town’s slipperiest spring day, elaborating on his dislike of other men’s bowels, and more. Included in this volume is Thoreau’s posthumously-published lecture, “Getting a Living,” which can (and ought to be) read as a stand-up philosophy routine bristling with one-liners.