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Book Review: And Then I Am Gone-A Walk with Thoreau by Mathias B Freese

Posted by bookishjen in And Then I Am Gone, Baby Boomers, Book Reviews, Books, Culture, Faith, Family, Henry David Thoreau, Inspiration, Love, Marriage, Mathias B Freese, Memoirs, Mental Illness, New York city, Non-Fiction, Nostalgia, Politics, Self-Help, Uncategorized, Walden Pond, Writing

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There is one thing people realize once they come to their “twilight” years. They have more of a past than a future. This is a time when they often take stock of their lives – good, the bad and the ugly. Writer, teacher and psychotherapist Mathias B. Freese is one these people, and now he shares his journey in his thoughtful memoir And Then I Am Gone: A Walk with Thoreau.

Thoreau, of course is Henry David Thoreau author of the classic Walden Pond, which many of us probably read back in high school. For Freese, Thoreau is a muse who guides him during his journey of self-examination. Ultimately Freese is asking himself, not the cliché “What is the meaning of life?” but “What is the meaning of my life.”

And Then I Am Gone is divided into two parts. Part one sets up the tone for the book and provides several chapters focusing on moving to Alabama, finding happiness with Nina, a past love affair, his relationship with his children and his own childhood, his thoughts on Trump, writer Norman Mailer, the movie Citizen Kane, and Thoreau as therapy. Part two focuses on Freese’s new life in a new home, his journey with Thoreau and coming to grips with his own mortality.

Born and bred in New York City, Freese is a secular Jewish man now living in Alabama with his southern belle, Nina, an Irish-American Roman Catholic. Not surprisingly, Freese finds country life below the Mason-Dixon line a complete cultural shock and often has difficulty navigating a world so different from the hustle and bustle of city life. However, it does force him to come to grips with his past. Freese has had success with his professional life, but his personal life was often in shambles. Childhood was difficult with a mother suffering with mental illness. Freese has been married and divorced a few times, and is also estranged from his daughter but is closer to his son Jordan.

Okay, Thoreau. Just what is life all about, hmm? Freese wants to know, You wrote a damn book about it. Surely you’ve got the goods. Now pony up!

Freese has questions and Thoreau provides answers, which often leads to Freese having more questions. Needless, say this can be quite maddening, which often leaves Freese feeling downright pessimistic.

But as I kept reading And Then I Am Gone, I thought to myself. Well, maybe we’re not always meant to have all the answers to our questions after we ask them, whether we ask Thoreau, our best friend, a therapist, our horoscope or a stranger on the street. At times those answers will leave us not exactly happy or more confused than before. Or sometimes we will find clear, concise advice or wise counsel in a time of confusion (especially in one of the most messed times in our nation’s history).

I found Freese’s book to be a true inspiration as I go through my own journey of self-exploration and after year of great difficulty, self-care. There are times I look for answers and feel nothing but despair and at times I feel true joy. We’re not supposed to solve the mysteries life and just accept things are going to be murky. At times we live life to the fullest and at times we are slackers on the couch. we should just live our lives the best we can before we are shuttled off this mortal coil.

I also appreciated Freese’s vivid style of writing. He can be a curmudgeon but he’s also wise, funny, a true storyteller. And Then I Am Gone is a treasure of a book.

Now if only I had kept that copy of Walden’s Pond….

by Mathias B. Freese

Posted on 14 Jan 2018 by oddspecs

And Then I Am Gone: A Walk with Thoreau tells the story of a New York City man who becomes an Alabama man. Despite his radical migration to simpler living and a late-life marriage to a saint of sorts, his persistent pet anxieties and unanswerable questions follow him. Mathias Freese wants his retreat from the societal “it” to be a brave safari for the self rather than cowardly avoidance, so who better to guide him but Henry David Thoreau, the self-aware philosopher who retreated to Walden Pond “to live deliberately” and cease “the hurry and waste of life”? In this memoir, Freese wishes to share how and why he came to Harvest, Alabama (both literally and figuratively), to impart his existential impressions and concerns, and to leave his mark before he is gone. – Blurb

And Then I Am Gone – A Walk With Thoreau by Mathias B. Freese
And Then I Am Gone – A Walk With Thoreau by Mathias B. Freese

And Then I Am Gone is a curious collection of things. Mostly, it’s a diary of a 76-year-old man (Freese). I hope he doesn’t mind but I also think it can be described as the ramblings of a 76-year-old man. Freese jumps around all over the place, telling us about his days, his family, wife, career, thoughts on politics, books, films and neighbors. This is what makes the book so enjoyable to read.

It’s as though we’re privy to a man’s thoughts as they come and go, naturally and freely. Freese is extremely honest and I can’t imagine anyone getting to the end of the book without disagreeing with him at least once or twice.

My favourite parts are when he writes in a more direct style, beginning paragraphs with direct observations: “Today was difficult.” and “Today is the third night of Hanukkah, and Nina is dismantling the artificial Christmas tree.”

Mathias Freese and I couldn’t be more different. He’s a 76-year-old American man. An atheist Jew. A father and a husband. I am a 31-year-old English woman who still writes “girl” and then has to back-space. A spiritualist. A girlfriend and mother only to cats so far.

But to read the honest thoughts of a human being brings about a certain closeness between author and reader. I want to know that people are scared of death, that they still have loving sex in their seventies, that they get riled over their neighbors and are desperate for their families to know how deeply they love them.

Perhaps you think that you don’t need to know these things, that they sound mundane. I think anyone would enjoy this book and find comfort in it. I hope that Mathias finds comfort when people enjoy the read too.

4/5 stars
4/5 stars

About the Author

Mathias B. Freese is a writer, teacher, and psychotherapist who has authored six books. His I Truly Lament: Working Through the Holocaust won the Beverly Hills Book Awards and the Reader’s Favorite Book Award, and it was a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards, the Paris Book Festival, and the Amsterdam Book Festival. In 2016 Tesserae: A Memoir of Two Summers, his first memoir, received seven awards. – Blurb

J M Cornwell

The author lurks in every story, book, and article.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Review: And Then I Am Gone by Mathias Freese

I worried when I told Mathias Freese I’d review another of his books. I thought I’d have to relieve the clear look at myself through the prose of the first book I reviewed, The i Tetralogy. The book was a trip through the Holocaust and I didn’t like what I saw or felt. What caught me this time was the mention of Thoreau. I thought this book, And Then I Am Gone, would be his trip walking alongside Henry David Thoreau.

I was wrong again.

The book was somewhat jarring when he revealed that he enjoyed and looked forward to relations with his farm bred lady who had married him shortly before in Las Vegas, Nevada where he was a practicing psychologist and after the death of his wife. His second wife turned out to be a help when moving from Las Vegas to the house in the woods in the South where they had to make their new simpler life livable. Freese took a few walks around the place and knew what was going on in the latter years of his life far from his New York City borough beginnings where matriculated. His wife was an asset in deal with handymen, carpenters, and such and being in the South stoked his imagination as well as his libido. Evidently, the later years of life are not as devoid of the hormonal frenzy that welcomes us into the threshold of adulthood nor was adulthood with its schooling and training and living left behind with fond regrets and memories.

There are always some regrets and lots of memories in a long-lived life, but that is to be expected even of a secular Jewish teacher-cum-psychologist-cum-author using his life and memories for delving into the past and presenting his work in books. Where The i Tetralogy helped readers face that reality of the Holocaust, this current chapter in Freese’s life will help him–and us, the readers–at least come to terms with what lies behind and what still lies ahead.

There are breakdowns and glitches in us that collect and collude with what lies ahead. Thoughts of Thoreau and his time at Walden Pond provide a touchstone, at least for the author, throughout and probably inform his thoughts and his history as it relates the differences and the commonalities of living in and among nature. I was surprised and a little taken aback by his sheer joy and pleasure with intercourse with his new, country-bred wife, but I always am one who looks away out of respect for the nature of such relations. That is my problem and not the author’s or anyone else’s. That is the way I was brought up and the way I have always been. I prefer reticence to re-enacting Tom’s, or even Aladdin’s, bold peering at what would be best left unglimpsed and unpeeped.

I was drawn by the mention of Thoreau living in his simple cabin in the woods around Walden Pond since I’d never read the book or much of Thoreau. Thoreau was a naturalist and a rich man’s son who perfected the graphite pencil that I have used extensively while drawing and making notes during my continuous (it would seem) education, and there my actual knowledge ends. I never fell in love with Thoreau’s solitary existence or his rambles about the woods near Walden’s Pond, but I do retain the feeling of meandering among the woods, getting to know the denizens, and the peace and solitude of a simpler life.

I didn’t get the sense that Freese’s life in the woods was as carefree or as studied as Thoreau, but Freese, like me, although he has read Thoreau, strives to simplify life and make peace with his memories and life before his second marriage while the families of both mingle and get to know each other in this new place and different house were members of both families find their own paths over the hills and through the woods to the house where new memories will be made with future (and present) generations. Their simple home in the country will be fixed up to their tastes and standards, leaving the old behind and the new to be discovered, lived with, and made livable for their tenure and tastes.

Meanwhile, Thoreau will look on in spirit and find his own peace in his own way whichever way he will.

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Labels: blending families, blending memory and history, finding one’s own way, Las Vegas, life continues, mathias freese, memoir, psychologist, second time around, simple life, therapist, thoreau