Woodsburner
How Thoreau set the Concord woods on fire.
Henry David Thoreau ... fire starter? The idea is unthinkable 鈥� almost like finding photos of Smokey Bear playing with matches. And yet, one spring day in 1844, on a fishing trip with a friend, the 26-year-old lit a campfire that blazed out of control.
By the end of the day, 300 acres of the Concord woods were destroyed. Had the wind been blowing from a different direction, Walden woods and the city of Concord could have been decimated as well.
John Pipkin has had the great good sense to turn this somehow little-known event into a novel, Woodsburner, that manages to be both philosophical and a rollicking good read. As the fire burns, he joins together one conflicted transcendentalist, a farmer鈥檚 wife, her farmhand, an opium-addicted preacher who鈥檚 come to build a church, two Slavic 鈥渨itches,鈥� and a bookstore owner who dreams of being a playwright but who makes his profits off somewhat more earthy fare.
By the end of that April day, Thoreau, who had resolved to abandon his writing career to build a better pencil, will instead turn back toward a life tied to nature that would lead to his writing his most famous work, 鈥淲alden.鈥� The fire will change other lives as well.
鈥淲oodsburner鈥� is Pipkin鈥檚 first novel, but, with its complex structure and top-notch prose, there鈥檚 not a page that reads like the work of a novice. His descriptions of fire have both life and a sense of menace, as when Thoreau thinks for a second that he and his friend鈥檚 frantic efforts have stamped it out. Then he turns around. 鈥淥verhead, he sees a throng of clever flames crouching in the branches of a sleeping birch.鈥�
Pipkin weaves his characters together in unexpected ways, which it would be a shame to say more about. Fire is a recurring motif in everyone鈥檚 lives 鈥� whether depicted in a stained-glass window or in a more ominous fashion. The farmhand Oddmund, for example, is orphaned by an act of spectacular stupidity, when his father 鈥� symbolically erasing his family鈥檚 infamous past 鈥� sets fire to a scroll on board the ship that carried them to America. The resulting explosion kills everyone except the 10-year-old Norwegian boy. From shore, scavengers observe the destruction of the Sovereign of the Seas:
鈥淭hey knew that water, even an ocean of it, was no deterrent when a fire was determined to do its business.鈥�
That fact is uppermost in Thoreau鈥檚 mind, but while he runs for help, he also thinks about the events in his life that have led to the day 鈥� such as his brother鈥檚 death and the shuttering of the school they ran together. The other characters are in a similarly reflective mood, and Pipkin alternates chapters between their points of view. Eliot Calvert, purveyor of books, pencils, and pornography, reflects on how far business and family life have intruded on his desire to be a real writer. (If Thoreau is a proto-environmentalist, Calvert is a proto-Bruckheimer: His play climaxes with the burning 鈥� on stage 鈥� of an entire house.)
For readers who are looking for a fun read, not philosophy tracts that 鈥渟eek the infinite in every bud and leaf, find revelations in birdsong and thunder,鈥� fear not: Most of the characters have no patience with transcendentalists.
鈥淚鈥檝e met plenty of deep-thinking men. There鈥檚 no shortage of them hereabouts,鈥� remarks the solidly built Emma Woburn, the object of Oddmund鈥檚 silent love. Her view is rather more benign than her fellow characters. 鈥淧oets,鈥� Eliot thinks, 鈥渁re intent on ruining everything.鈥�
Even Thoreau has convinced himself (sort of) that a life of making pencils is more worthwhile than a life writing with them. 鈥淭he world does not want for another self-assured scribbler, possessed of a surfeit of words and little of necessity to say,鈥� he writes in his journal. 鈥淭o have a tangible effect, to feel the weight of one鈥檚 accomplishment in the palm of one鈥檚 own hand 鈥� progress with heft! 鈥� this is the divine union of invention and reward. I have decided! I will make pencils, still.鈥�
For a lover of nature like Thoreau, it鈥檚 hard to imagine anything worse than starting a wildfire (aside from accidentally clubbing a baby seal or sitting on the last golden toad in existence). Pipkin doesn鈥檛 underplay Thoreau鈥檚 horror at what he鈥檚 done (or overplay the inherent irony of the author of 鈥淲alden鈥� burning down the woods). Instead, he concentrates on the ability of a natural disaster to act as a catalyst in people鈥檚 minds and lives. The result is, well, transcendent.
Yvonne Zipp regularly reviews fiction for the Monitor.