Review by Choice Review
In this portrait, Marcus (independent writer) notes that Ralph Waldo Emerson "designed his essays to be disassembled" (p. 120). If Emerson challenges readers to "reverse-engineer" an essay like "Self-Reliance," Marcus has one-upped him by reverse-engineering Emerson's life itself. This is not a comprehensive, play-by-play biography but a lively consideration of watershed moments and motifs in Emerson's life. Tinkering with biographical conventions, Marcus reflects on Emerson's parents and his strangely bucolic Boston childhood not in the first chapter but in the last. Straying from a narrowly linear and largely familiar narrative allows for invigorating fixations and reassessments: Marcus shows Emerson striking up a friendship with Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, and he takes readers on the road with Emerson on a grueling winter lecture tour of the Midwest. He writes especially searchingly about the integral but imperfect symbiosis between Emerson and his second wife, Lidian (noting hysterically that their only wedding gift was a dual inkstand). Throughout the book, Marcus is on a first-name basis with his subject, so it is perhaps unsurprising to find him channeling the kind of arresting, informal, and thought-provoking formulations that Emerson deployed in his best essays. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty, but especially general readers. --Jacob Risinger, The Ohio State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Ralph Waldo Emerson is the embodiment of American letters--individualistic, self-reliant, and guided by rational thought. Marcus' psychologically astute portrait demonstrates that such tidy summaries fail to capture the genius of this complicated thinker who considered his life's work to be "the infinitude of the private man." Indeed, Emerson absorbed the world. He cogitated on nature and the nature of life and documented his thoughts in his commonplace books. Emerson came from a long line of ministers and seemed destined for the pulpit. Instead, he turned to writing essays, a form well suited to someone accustomed to listening to and delivering sermons. Marcus' three-dimensional sketch shows Emerson as husband, father, friend, and mentor. Emerson was driven to grief at the loss of his beloved first wife and son Waldo, yet often seemed to prioritize practicality over passion. His second wife, Lidian, called him Mr. Emerson, and her activist fervor likely influenced his own. Marcus' deeply personal interpretation illuminates an iconic prophet who discovered that seeking the meaning of life turns out to be the meaning of life.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Literary critic Marcus (Amazonia) serves up a distinctive biography of philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson that homes in on "those elements of Emerson's life that spoke to me most directly." Fortunately, Marcus's instincts are a good guide to the shifting sands of Emerson's life and thought. Examining how grief shaped his subject's outlook, Marcus explains that Emerson was distraught after the deaths of his first wife in 1831 and his eldest son at age five 11 years later, leading him to adopt a solipsistic view of human consciousness as fundamentally lonely and unable to close the gap between self and other ("The soul blots out everything else, including your wife's soul, and maybe your dead son's," writes Marcus). Elsewhere, Marcus grapples with Emerson's complicated views on race (he was an abolitionist who claimed that whites were superior to Black people) and his tumultuous friendship with protégé Henry David Thoreau, whom Emerson was at first enamored with, but came to view as a disappointment after Thoreau's poetry career stalled. Marcus provides astute insight into how Emerson's life influenced his transcendentalist beliefs, and the empathetic portrayal of Emerson's decline into dementia and tender relationship with his eldest daughter, who was his primary caregiver at the end of his life, is a poignant highlight. The result is a discerning take on an essential 19th-century American thinker. Photos. (Mar.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A reconsideration of the life and work of one of America's greatest essayists. In this new biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Marcus, author of Amazonia, emphasizes the enduring freshness and abiding relevance of Emerson's writing. As the author explains, his subject's "eloquent riffs on the primacy of self and the suffocating conformity of the tribe penetrated deep into the American psyche," and we might understand ourselves better by revisiting his writings and the profound philosophical matters they engage. Marcus provides illuminating commentary on a series of landmark works--Nature, "Self-Reliance," "Experience," "Circles"--with each linked to contemporary concerns and controversies. For example, the author frames Emerson's lifelong grappling with the allure and limitations of individualism in relation to our own complex responses to government intervention and social pressures in the Covid-19 era: "Truly, the pandemic could have been dreamed up as a stress test for Emerson's ideas. How can we survive apart? How can we survive together?" Marcus demonstrates that the possibility anyone possesses for renovating personal vision and becoming an active creator of the world is Emerson's presiding subject, and one that he revised relentlessly over a lifetime. We gain an acute understanding of how suffering and loss qualified his most ardent endorsements of visionary renewal. The author's reflections on Emerson's personal life are remarkably astute, especially regarding his antagonistic relationship with his father, his longstanding romantic confusions, and his complex responses to the loss of his first wife and his son. Also excellent is the analysis of Emerson's interactions within his intellectual milieu and the significance that his friendships with such figures as Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau had on his thinking. Though many other biographers have covered similar territory, Marcus' treatment produces a distinct and memorable sense of revelation. A lively, intimate, absorbing account of the sage of Concord. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
