Growing up in Newton, Mark Greif loved going to Walden Pond with his mother. Long before he read Thoreau, the philosopher took up residence in Greif’s young mind.

“Thoreau was incredibly important to me as a kid, in part because I had no idea what he really said,’’ Greif said. “I just remember circling the pond with my mom and taking up all the things that we talked about that were wrong in the world, or preposterous, and I would find myself saying, ‘Well, what would Thoreau have said about this?’ — not because I knew, but because there was this imaginary figure, a philosopher, who was prepared to really hate everything and withdraw to the pond.’’

That urge to doubt, to push up against received wisdom and the universally acclaimed, is at the heart of the essays in Greif’s new collection, “Against Everything,’’ whose pieces consider everything from the tyranny of exercise culture to the strange case of Nadya Suleman, briefly famous as Octomom.

Each one “began with some kind of itch,’’ Greif said. “The essays that I love are the ones where some woman or man has a problem, an irritation, a gap in understanding, that so drives her or him crazy that the only thing that can be done is to try to think it through, out loud, on paper.’’

Greif, who founded and edits the journal n+1, started out writing fiction, but gave it up when he began “feeling that my fiction looked like everybody else’s. It was . . . fine. Whereas with the essays, with every one, I felt I was making my most earnest attempt to get to the bottom of something that ought to drive people mad.’’

Thoreau wasn’t quite the crank he made himself out to be, of course, and neither is Greif. “Because of the nature of the book,’’ he added, “I always feel somewhat embarrassed by the degree to which I’m cheerful, polite, and optimistic.’’

Greif will read 7 p.m. Friday at Brookline Booksmith.

Kate Tuttle, a writer and editor, can be reached at kate.tuttle@globe.com.