Compares life today in the German Black Forest with Thoreau's experiences at Walden Pond. Finalist for the 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Essay Category A Black Forest Walden is a work of philosophical reflection, nature description, and sly humor. In brief chapters, or aphorisms, the American philosopher David Farrell Krell recounts his experiences in a cabin located in the mountains of southern Germany's Black Forest, where he has lived for several decades. Insofar as Krell compares his experiences with those of Henry David Thoreau, who serves as both inspiration and irritation, the book could be described as a critical commentary on Thoreau's Walden. Yet it equally reads as a rigorous yet playful and profoundly literary manifestation of where and how the mind wanders. Hence, the "Marlonbrando" of the subtitle is not the late actor but a feral cat who frequents the cabin and comes to be an important interlocutor, as if playing the role of analyst to the author. The subjects Krell treats are wide-ranging: the changing seasons, environmental issues, romantic love, parent-child relations, European versus American "values," higher education, artistic creativity, solitude, and the contrast between lifestyles in a quiet Black Forest village and in a noisy contemporary United States. Forty-one black-and-white photographs taken by the author accompany and enliven the text.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. Silent snowfall 2. The colors of snow; or, where beauty is 3. In the still of the night 4. The snowplow 5. Ice wings 6. The Storm Beech 7. The Moon and Venus 8. The cabin; or, plucking the raisins 9. The past has not passed 10. Neighbors 11. But where's the pond? 12. River of fog 13. My "office" 14. Conversations with Marlon Brando? 15. Ice wings, Part Two 16. Douglas the Fir 17. Aurora 18. Freaks of nature; or, lighting fires and mourning the woods 19. H.D. in bed 20. Maudlin and bathetic 21. Add your dreams, and not just the sexy ones! 22. Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right 23. Neighbors, Part Two: Herr S.W. 24. The darkness of the woods 25. Monarchs in December 26. The limits of description 27. The limits of knowledge 28. Black and white 29. Fool's spring 30. A reflection on consumer society; or, a Romantic has his uses 31. The deserving poor 32. A succession of beautiful days 33. Neighbors, Part Three: Wolfgang 34. La pensée du jour 35. The smartphone in high mountains 36. The new adventures of Pinocchio 37. News of the world 38. On the difference between European and American "values" 39. Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Two 40. On the degeneration of poetry to chemistry 41. Platonism and Puritanism keep us on our spiritual toes 42. Neighbors, Part Four: Frau S.M. 43. Let's (not!) do lunch 44. The perfect universe 45. Autarchy; or, fatties beware! 46. Woodchuck Heaven 47. Mudslide Man 48. Knowing beans 49. Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Three 50. Moving mountains 51. Obscene spring 52. On jealousy and brutalization 53. The bowlegged larch 54. Speculative gardening 55. Former inhabitants 56. The two corners of Melville's smile 57. Thaw and Thor 58. Former inhabitants, Part Two 59. Taking the arm of an elm tree 60. Thoreau's serviceable body 61. On loneliness; or, snap out of it! 62. The work of mourning 63. A cautionary note 64. Hurry up, please, it's time 65. Return to sender 66. Former inhabitants, Part Three 67. A snippet on schnapps 68. Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Four 69. Doubling up 70. My little chickadee! 71. Home Entertainment Center 72. Neighbors, Part Five: Rüdiger 73. The forlorn pair of shoes 74. The forlorn BMW 75. Kids 76. Henry's mom and dad 77. More work of mourning 78. Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Five 79. Old people 80. About that blackbird 81. Former inhabitants, Part Four: The lover suspended in the rafters 82. On doing good 83. Organized religion 84. Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Six 85. Living in the present 86. Out of doors 87. Bronchitis? Pneumonia? 88. Day, season, and year 89. The bloody truth about trees 90. The head monkey at Paris 91. On the gift-giving vice 92. Losing the whole world 93. Knowing when to break up 94. Accentuate the negative 95. Prejudice 96. How to become just friends 97. Faithless fidelity 98. Advice to the lovelorn 99. Books 100. Former inhabitants... of color... at Walden Pond 101. Crooked genius, crooked rules 102. Art is not yet weaned 103. Life is not yet weaned 104. Problematic praxis 105. The Copernican Revolution? 106. New beech leaves 107. God bless the American Igel; or, true patriotism 108. One more angel story, the last one, I promise 109. Creationism 110. Capital punishment 111. May fog 112. Thoreau's model farm 113. The water works 114. There is nothing inorganic 115. The ashes of once living things 116. The katzenjammer of birds 117. The wolf spider 118. A morning hike 119. Music of the rain 120. Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Seven 121. Save your hay 122. A day's journey 123. Dream and catastrophe; or, the politics of archaeology 124. And then the sky fell 125. Still more work 126. Life stammers on 127. Pinions 128. The logic of error; or, a modest disquisition on the synthesis of being, time, and truth 129. Tell Marlonbrando your dreams, honey, and everything will be all right, Part Eight and Last 130. Cabin smells 131. Desperately sad 132. Self-confidence 133. Polonius 134. Sea of fog 135. Sunworshiper fog 136. Weather can be extraordinarily precise 137. The man in the moon 138. Breaking News: Marlonbrando confesses all! 139. Extra-vagance 140. September mood 141. Periwinkle and ivy 142. To see and say it all 143. Marlonbrando sees the light 144. The power of the past tense 145. From the mountains of Saint Ulrich to the prairies of Chicagoland? 146. Life is at bottom indestructibly powerful and pleasurable Notes List of Illustrations