Solitude Is Not Loneliness

His neighbors kept asking Thoreau the same thing: alone out at Walden Pond, wasn't he lonesome? The chapter on solitude is his answer, and it begins by reversing the question. What does constant company actually cost? Thoreau thought most sociability runs on a script, and Kaag thinks he saw today's feeds coming a century and a half early. Then the harder charge, that he simply did not like people, which deserves a real hearing; Hannah Arendt helps Kaag give it one. And the episode ends on Kaag's favorite question in the whole book, the one Thoreau puts to the dirt under his feet.