Mindprints - by Ivan Gaskell (Hardcover)

About the Book

"We tend to associate Henry David Thoreau with the renunciation of material possessions, projecting onto him our fantasies of a life lived beyond the modern obsession with "things." But Thoreau's practical philosophy held a special place for tools, artworks, Native American artifacts, and a variety of natural phenomena. In Mindprints, Ivan Gaskell focuses on the material items that were important to Thoreau, using them to reveal Thoreau's unique and profound aesthetics of everyday life and the environment. "Mindprint" was Thoreau's term for a material object that has captured the presence of its maker and first user. Thoreau applied the term to ancient stone artifacts and other objects in an effort to capture something of the relationship between material items and humans. For Thoreau, these relationships contribute to the creation of "worlds." By looking at Thoreau's engagement with material worlds through his writings and his practical philosophical experiment at Walden Pond--but also, importantly, via his work as a designer of improved pencils, as a house builder, as a land surveyor, and as a collector--Gaskell reveals the aesthetics at the heart of Thoreau's thinking"--

Book Synopsis

A rediscovery of Thoreau's interactions with everyday objects and how they shaped his thought.

Though we may associate Henry David Thoreau with ascetic renunciation, he accumulated a variety of tools, art, and natural specimens throughout his life as a homebuilder, surveyor, and collector. In some of these objects, particularly Indigenous artifacts, Thoreau perceived the presence of their original makers, and he called such objects "mindprints." Thoreau believed that these collections could teach him how his experience, his world, fit into the wider, more diverse (even incoherent) assemblage of other worlds created and re-created by other beings every day. In this book, Ivan Gaskell explores how a profound environmental aesthetics developed from this insight and shaped Thoreau's broader thought.

Review Quotes

"By situating Thoreau's wide-ranging writings in their cultural, historical, and biographical contexts, Gaskell brilliantly illuminates the critical role that perceptual acuity and aesthetic sensibility played in his management of daily life, ethical commitments, and philosophical thinking. Gaskell's meticulously crafted account makes Thoreau come alive as someone who practiced and lived his philosophy. The book is timely and pertinent today as we face global challenges posed by environmental crises and consumerism."--Yuriko Saito, Rhode Island School of Design

"I've often wondered what a properly transcendental history of material culture might look like, and thanks to Gaskell's Mindprints, I now know. Through carefully chosen examples of Thoreau's distinctively subjective empiricism, Gaskell gives the reader profound means to consider Thoreau's perpetual, heartfelt question: why do just these things make a world?"--David Wood, curator of the Concord Museum

"Louisa May Alcott's observation that Thoreau 'made one small spot a continent' could apply as well to this book. Gaskell's study moves outward from the physical spot on earth that Thoreau inhabited to the virtual continents he embraced through mindprints, common things and experiences that 'projected human presence across the ages.' In the process of unpacking Thoreau's contributions, Gaskell also pushes the study of aesthetics from a narrow focus on 'the arts' to an embrace of sensory engagement of all sorts. This is a magical book on an enduring topic."--Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University

"'I have travelled a good deal in Concord, ' Thoreau wrote in Walden, famously mocking the notion that travel takes place beyond the borders of one's hometown. Devotees of the transcendentalist philosopher will be grateful that, nearly two centuries later, Gaskell took up residence in the adjacent town of Lexington and fixed his uncommon powers of perception on his erstwhile neighbor's life and writing, traveling imaginatively with Thoreau to yield this extraordinary book. Gaskell unsettles and expands our understanding of Thoreau by homing in on the sensory particulars of his surroundings, cherished revelations of worlds past, present, and still to come."--Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'Margaret Fuller: A New American Life'

About the Author

Ivan Gaskell is professor of cultural history and museum studies at the Bard Graduate Center. He is the author or editor of several books, most recently Paintings and the Past: Philosophy, History, Art.