short fiction · 2026-10-29

What the Underground Man Would Have Written in the Margins of Walden

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

He would not have written "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately." He would have written: I went to the woods because I could not bear the crystal palace, because the ant-heap of Petersburg pressed against my ribs until I forgot the shape of my own breath. He would have underlined "simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!" and scrawled beside it: Simplicity is the revenge of the man who cannot manage complexity. He would have read "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life" and whispered: And if the marrow tastes of copper? If the sucking leaves you hollower? He would have noted the bean-field, the seven miles of hoeing, and calculated: Seven miles of straight lines to prove you are not crooked. I have walked seven miles in circles in my room and proved nothing. He would have envied the loon's laugh, the train's scream, the ice's groan — all voices that belong to something, even if only to the cold. His final note, pressed into the flyleaf with a pencil worn to a nub: You built a cabin. I built a wall. We both call it freedom.