‘The Sky’s A-Going to Fall’

A hundred years ago, writing of his life at Walden pond, Thoreau observed that the purpose of his experiment was “to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world. . . .” Less than a century later it is clear that the hunter has become the hunted and that life has driven at least some men into a corner.

From the chicken yard there comes a squawking and flapping; the axe grinds on some great cosmic whetstone; and if the middle-class fowl prefer the routines of egg-laying, owing and clucking to apocalyptic statement, so much the worse for them. “Goodness gracious me!” said Henny-Penny, “the sky’s a-going to fall; I must go and tell the king.” And one night the sky did fall and jackals came to live among the ruins. Henny- Penny said, “I told you so!” and was awarded the Goethe prize.

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Stephen J. Tonsor

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A hundred years ago, writing of his life at Walden pond, Thoreau observed that the purpose of his experiment was “to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world. . . .” Less than a century later it is clear that the hunter has become the hunted and that life has driven at least some men into a corner.

From the chicken yard there comes a squawking and flapping; the axe grinds on some great cosmic whetstone; and if the middle-class fowl prefer the routines of egg-laying, owing and clucking to apocalyptic statement, so much the worse for them. “Goodness gracious me!” said Henny-Penny, “the sky’s a-going to fall; I must go and tell the king.” And one night the sky did fall and jackals came to live among the ruins. Henny- Penny said, “I told you so!” and was awarded the Goethe prize.