Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Huge Bore

I made it about halfway through Richardson's Emerson: A Mind on Fire before giving up and reading Emerson's Wikipedia article. I suppose I chose the wrong book. I didn't need over 500 pages chronicling every month of the man's life and every book he read and when. My goal was to learn about some of the intellectual heritage of Unitarian Universalism. The actual result is a need to take a long break from reading. Perhaps it is time to pick up a novel or two.

Emerson quickly outgrew the confines of what was still in the 19th century a quite christian Unitarian church.. He produced all sorts of stimulating thoughts. He thought historical religious revelation was unimportant in the face of the direct religious experience we can have ourselves in the present day. He thought god was in all of nature. He shocked believers and never apologized for saying Jesus was just a man.

That's literally it. I should have started with the Wikipedia article. Among every tiring detail of Emerson's life, I learned that though he was as avid a reader as one could possibly be, he advocated reading only what excites and interests you. If a chapter doesn't stimulate you, skip it. If a book is a bore, read something else. I took his advice a couple hundred pages too late.