Walter White’s edition of Leaves of Grass is lacking
So it turns out that Walter White owns David Reynolds’s 150th anniversary edition of the 1855 Leaves of Grass—the one with the green, leafy cover. Apparently, Gale Boetticher gave the book to Walt, inscribing it to him. From seasons 3 and 4 of Breaking Bad, we know that Gale likes “When I heard the learn’d astronomer” so much that he can recite it:
Boetticher even inscribes a quotation from “When I heard” in his notebook:
Here’s the irony: “When I heard the learn’d astronomer” wasn’t included in Leaves of Grass until 1867 (Whitman first published it in 1865 in Drum-Taps). In other words, Gale Boetticher gave Walter White an edition of Leaves of Grass without his favorite poem.
