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or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
Other Press, LLC
October 2010
On Sale: October 19, 2010
400 pages
ISBN: 1590514254
EAN: 9781590514252
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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?”
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