Category: United States

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Maine hermit-thief book

Not much has been reported (deliberately) in this blog on the story of Christopher Knight, the “hermit” of Maine who survived stealing food from campsites and residencies for 27 years until being caught by authorities and gone through court trial. The first book on the subject has appeared: The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, by journalist Michael Finkel. A brief but useful review in the New Republic makes it easy for the genuine student of eremitism to bypass both the book and the story, where others will take Knight to indeed be a hermit.

The first telling observation by the reviewer is the parasitic relationship between Knight and “civilization,” the desire for solitude coupled with a desire for sloth, egoism, active hostility and near sadism towards people, the latter being the psychological torment inflicted on campers and residents suffering break-ins and the baffling theft of only selected items from their residences and campsites, losing all peace and wondering if someone was spying on them, plotting a more sinister assault. As Finkel notes, “Knight…fled the modern world only to live off of the fat of it.”

As the reviewer points out, we want hermits to be St. Antony, or at least Thoreau, someone who can distill wisdom from their experience so that others may share it. Knight is the opposite, the anti-hermit, the anti-Thoreau, who scoffs at the notion of hermit wisdom, who scorns the idealization. Knight demonstrates the dark side of eremitism, the doppelganger, the Yaldabaoth, and will have confused many by the time his story is exhausted.

URL: https://newrepublic.com/article/140991/case-becoming-hermit

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Prisoner & recluse

The New Yorker features a brief essay titled “My Prison Cell: the Refuge of a Recluse” by an imprisoned man who is personally also a recluse. He describes the paradox of imprisonment and reclusion in a poignantly direct manner.

I’m a recluse. By definition, that implies I don’t like being around people. But the oddity of this situation is that I don’t enjoy the feeling of being alone. It’s just that I feel as if I should be alone.

URL: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/my-prison-cell-the-refuge-of-a-recluse

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American hermit research

The hermit remains a cultural artifact studied as an interesting social phenomenon. Here is note by German University professor Ina Bergmann, who specializes in American Studies, announcing research on a book to be titled: A Cultural History of Solitude in the USA. A topic to be included is Robert the Hermit of Massachusetts (18th-19th century). Notes Bergmann:

This is the fascinating story of Robert, a hermit and former slave, who lost his freedom due to deceit and was separated by force from his family. [Robert chose solitude and became a hermit out of desperation and distress]. This narrative aptly demonstrates the impact of slavery in the US and the close link of solitude and freedom.

In a larger context, Bergmann indicates that, as the note states,

she is studying a subject that is a recurring theme throughout US history. It is about solitude and seclusion from society as an extreme expression of the American values of freedom and individualism. Bergmann’s main interest is how hermits and recluses are depicted in literature and culture.

Another project is intended publication of presentations to a summer 2015 conference “Cultures of Solitude, held at the University of Wurzburg, described in part:

The withdrawal from society is an international and transhistorical, yet also culturally specific phenomenon. This international and interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore American cultures of solitude and their representations in cultural products from the colonial era to the present time. Representations of hermits and recluses – whether fictional or historical, deliberately seeking or forced into isolation, temporarily or finally withdrawing from society –, abound in American cultural history. Media depicting hermits and recluses range widely in time, from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, and in genre, from broadsides to novels, from poems to plays, from songs to musicals, from ballet to opera, from engravings to art installations, from documentaries to TV shows, and from computer games to social media.

URL: https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/sonstiges/meldungen/detail/artikel/eremiten-in-der-amerikanischen-kultur-1/; http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-05/uow-hia050416.php; http://www.anglistik.uni-wuerzburg.de/abteilungen/amerikanistik/konferenzen/international_and_interdisciplinary_conference_2015_cultures_of_solitude/

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Rondeau revisited

An article from the Sun Community News in northern New York state titled “Of Mountain Men and Malcontents: The Story of the Cold River Hermithttp://www.suncommunitynews.com/articles/ncl-magazine/david-greene-the-man-who-translated-ronde” revisits the now famous Adirondack hermit Noah John Rondeau (1883-1967). About Rondeau:

Rondeau was not a typical hermit. While he left civilization to live a life of solitude in the woods, he also enjoyed regular visits from dozens of hikers and hunters each season. He had very little formal education, yet effortlessly conversed on a broad range of subjects ranging from science to politics. Rondeau rejected society for decades, but reveled in the attention he received as a hit “attraction” at sportsmen’s shows, as the guest on radio shows, and even a spot on a television show.

For all that, Rondeau was a born solitary and effectively projected the hermit penchant for garrulousness mixed with eccentricity. The article includes harder-to-find photos.

URL: http://www.suncommunitynews.com/articles/ncl-magazine/of-mountain-men-and-malcontents-the-story-of-the-cold-river-/

NOTE: A subsequent article in the same source describes David Greene’s successful efforts to decipher the code writing that Rondeau had devised for his private journal.

URL:http://www.suncommunitynews.com/articles/ncl-magazine/david-greene-the-man-who-translated-rondeau%E2%80%99s-code/