Just completed my latest long-term read: Essays, First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I must admit I was underwhelmed. I acknowledge that maybe I don’t have the intelligence to see what Emerson was getting at. But I found his work disorganized and all over the place. He is an aphorism machine. You can find great quotes for graduation speeches and coffee mugs. But these aphorisms are embedded in long rambling paragraphs of nonsense. I doubt many of those who quote him actually read the essays from which the quotes derive. Again, perhaps I’m just too obtuse and uneducated to see the brilliance. But I won’t be reading his Second Series anytime soon. I am admittedly disappointed because I am a big fan of Emerson’s protege, Henry David Thoreau. Emerson? Not so much.
