Like most people in the class, I did not really like Emerson. As his introductory biographical information points out "he presented his essays as epistemological quests of sorts." Who wants an epistemological quest that admittedly makes "enormous demands on his readers"? I was tired after just reading the introduction to Emerson. But like all good college students do (right?), I started The American Scholar. And...it was pretty good. I'm not talking about the lessons he presents as to what an American scholar is and his/her influences and his/her duties and everything else he had to say which we've all heard before. (Although, I am fond of his saying that books are noble.) I'm talking about his writing.
The writing in The American Scholar is vibrant, descriptive, alive. His verb choices are seldom, if ever, passive. One of my favorite examples of this is on p. 521. "...tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground, whereby contrary and remote things cohere, and flower out from one stem." (Italics inserted by me.) It's almost poetic.
Also, standing out to me is his dramatic, though not over-the-top, writing style. Page 522, he writes "And what is that Root? Is not that the soul of his soul?--A thought too bold--a dream too wild."
Though there are parts of Emerson that one really has to work out and think through (i.e. "Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influence.") Overall, his writing is inspiring. I can see now why so many people are taken by him and consider him one of the great American writers.
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