[MD] Platt's Proverbs On Beauty

[John Carl]

Platt,

"Reality is fabulous", says Thoreau,"be it life or death, we crave nothing
but reality."  And then he goes on to describe in precise, accurate,
glittering detail the  most subtle and minute aspects of life in and about
his Walden Pond; the "pulse" of water skaters, for instance, advancing from
shore across the surface of the lake.  Appearance is reality, Thoreau
implies; or so it appears to me.  I begin to think he outgrew
transcendentalism rather early in his career, at about the same time that he
was coming out from under the influence of his one time mentor Emerson.
Thoreau and the transcendentalists had little in common--in the long
run--but their long noses, as a friend of mine has pointed out.

Ed Abbey, Down the River with Thoreau