Thoreau’s Journal is forthcoming in a new edition from NYRB Classics, abridged by Damion Searls; the Quarterly Conversation’s Geoff Wisner has given a favorable and interesting review of the book:
Most obviously, Searls has made this a big book. “The present book — the largest one-volume edition yet published — is conceived as an abridgment, not a selection: it aims to preserve the feel of the Journal as a whole.” […] Best known as a translator and fiction writer, Searls has an extraordinary sensitivity to Thoreau’s language and to his intentions for the Journal. The Journal, he writes, “is above all a book of rhythms: the long ebb and flow of the year and the quicker rhythms of Thoreau’s roving from topic to topic . . . . Seasons mattered deeply to Thoreau and I have tried to preserve the balance between the seasons, from his long summer walks to his heavier reading in the snowed-in winters.”
Because months mattered too, Searls made the creative decision to include “one set of months less abridged than the rest, a representative Thoreau calendar with an extra March to fetch the year around.” He lists these special months in the introduction, noting that they “constitute a sort of book within the book and might fruitfully be read on their own.”
This is a canny and impressive approach, but no less impressive is Searls’ unobtrusive use of the phrase “to fetch the year around,” which is one of the most important in the Journal. Never content just to enjoy the quality of each month or season, Thoreau was always looking for clues to the season to come.
