Describing himself as “a philosopher doing research on envy and resentment,” David Farrell Krell acknowledges the privileges that allow him, like Henry David Thoreau, to live like a bum, “making leisure and even indolence my profession, reading and writing when I should be doing real work in the real world.”
In 146 aphorisms, as Krell calls them, the American scholar reflects on nature, the weather, animals, art, tragedy, environmental issues and more from a ski cabin in the mountains of southern Germany's Black Forest.
He lives with a cat he’s named Marlonbrando, who probes his intentions: “And so where, in all this is Walden? Are you in Massachusetts or the Black Forest? What is Walden to you?”
To which he replies: “I’m not sure where it is or even what it is. It is something between walking and writing. It is something about a few very simple things — a desired intimacy with life, I suppose.:
