Not a counterpoint to your experience but rather a stinging endorsement: Pond Scum by Kathryn Schulz http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum ht

Not a counterpoint to your experience but rather a stinging endorsement: Pond Scum by Kathryn Schulz http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum This vision cannot survive any serious reading of “Walden.” The real Thoreau was, in the fullest sense of the word, self-obsessed: narcissistic, fanatical about self-control, adamant that he required nothing beyond himself to understand and thrive in the world. From that inward fixation flowed a social and political vision that is deeply unsettling.