The Prototypical Geek?

On Monday I finished reading Mr. Emerson's Wife, a historical novel about the rumor (or more) that Henry David Thoreau had a little something going on with Lydia Jackson Emerson, Ralph Waldo's wife. (It offends me to define a woman in terms of her relationship with a man, but there you go.)

Monday night was also geek night on TV. Around nine o'clock, I suddenly realized that Thoreau may very well have been the prototype for today's geeks.

He lived with his mom most of the time.
When he did move out, it was to that cabin on Walden Pond, which sounds like a totally guy-geek place.
He was underemployed.
He had limited experience with members of the opposite sex.
He was handy at fixing things. If they'd had computers back then, you just know he would have been keeping all the other Transcendentalists' laptops up and running.