How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an AnswerWinner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Monatigne, perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them “essays,” meaning “attempts” or “tries.” Into them, he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog’s ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller and, over four hundred years later, Montaigne’s honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment—and in search of themselves. This book, a spirited and singular biography, relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored. It traces his bizarre upbringing, youthful career and sexual adventures, his travels, and his friendships with the scholar and poet Étienne de La Boétie and with his adopted “daughter,” Marie de Gournay. And we also meet his readers—who for centuries have found in Montaigne an inexhaustible source of answers to the haunting question, “how to live?” |
Contents
Q How to live? A Read a lot forget most of what you read | |
Q How to live? A Survive love and loss | |
Q How to live? A Use little tricks | |
Q How to live? A Question everything | |
Q How to live? A Guard your humanity | |
Q How to live? A Do something no one has done before | |
Q How to live? A Do a good job but not too good a | |
Q How to live? A Philosophize only by accident | |
Q How to live? A Reflect on everything regret nothing | |
Q How to live? A Be ordinary and imperfect | |
Acknowledgments 329 | |
Sources 367 | |
Other editions - View all
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an ... Sarah Bakewell No preview available - 2011 |
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an ... Sarah Bakewell No preview available - 2011 |
How to Live, Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at ... Sarah Bakewell No preview available - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
became Boétie Boétie's Bordeaux Bordeaux Copy Bridgeman Art Library Cambridge Catholic century château cited death Desan Descartes Dictionnaire edition English Essais de Montaigne Étienne Étienne Pasquier everything Eyquem father feeling felt Florio France Françoise French Gournay's Guise Hazlitt Henri Henri III Henri of Navarre human ibid idea imagination Justus Lipsius killed king La Boétie later Leaguists Léonor letter Lipsius live Loeb edn London look Malebranche Marie de Gournay massacres Matignon Michel Michel de Montaigne mind modern Montaigne Paris Montaigne Studies Montaigne wrote Montaigne's Montaigne's Essais nature Navarre never Nietzsche parlement Pascal Pasquier Pensées perhaps person philosopher Pierre Plutarch political politiques Protestant published Pyrrhonian Pyrrhonian Skepticism Pyrrhonism Raemond readers Renaissance Rome Rousseau seemed Seneca Skepticism someone Stoic story things thought Travel Journal trick Tupinambá University Press Villey Voluntary Servitude wanted wife Woolf writing Zweig