Doctorow, E. L.
E. L. Doctorow's novels include The Book of Daniel, Loon Lake, Ragtime, and Billy Bathgate. He served as a member of the Walden Woods Project Advisory Board.

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Thoreau's Walden; or Life in the Woods, like Twain's Huckleberry Finn or Melville's Moby Dick, is a book that could only have been written by an American. You can't imagine this odd, visionary but very tough work coming out of Europe. It is peculiarly of us: it is indelibly made from our woods and water and new world ethos. - Remarks made at the Walden Woods Project Press Conference, 1990.

 

That Walden is a humble place - an ordinary pond, a plain New England wood - is exactly the point. Thoreau made himself an Everyman, and chose Walden for his Everywhere. Ibid.

 

We need both Waldens. the book and the place. We're not all spirit any more than we are all clay; we are both and so we need both&emdash;as in: You've read the book, now see the place. Ibid.