Purchase
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
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you loveβsuch questions arise in most peopleβs 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 βessays,β meaning βattemptsβ or βtries.β Into them, he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dogβs 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, Montaigneβs honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainmentβand 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 Γtienne de La BoΓ©tie and with his adopted βdaughter,β Marie de Gournay. And we also meet his readersβwho for centuries have found in Montaigne an inexhaustible source of answers to the haunting question, βhow to live?β
 Media BuzzOn Point - November 22, 2010
| 
© 2003-2026