Philip Lopate on Emerson
There is a particularly perceptive article about Emerson in this month’s Harper’s. If you’re a subscriber, you can read it online, but if not, I’d seek it out. Entitled “Between insanity and fat dullness: How I became an Emersonian,” Lopate, by way of reviewing the two new Library of America volumes of selections from Emerson’s journals (see the bibliography for more on these books, and other Emerson volumes in the Library of America series), explains how reading 1,900 pages of Emerson made him realize that, “In middle age, I find myself an unrepentant Emersonian. I simply like the man…”
