How to Live

Starred review from July 19, 2010
Bakewell's biography of Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), the French nobleman and father of the exploratory, free-floating essay, departs from chronology to present his life through questions and answers ("How to Live? Don't Worry About Death" and "Be Convivial: Live with Others") that consider "the man and writer" as well as the "long party"—the "accumulation of shared and private conversation over four hundred years." The author, a British book curator and cataloguer, begins with Montaigne's near-death after a fall from a horse, then traces back to his Latin education, his years in public service, his friendship with Étienne de La Boétie, his exploration of Hellenic philosophies, and his topics that would resonate with later Renaissance scholars and general readers alike. Bakewell (The Smart) enlivens Montaigne's hometown, 16th-century Bordeaux, with a wit that conveys genuine enchantment with her subject. Montaigne preferred biographers who tried to "reconstruct a person's inner world from the evidence." Bakewell honors that perspective by closely examining his writings as well as the context in which they were created, revealing one of literature's enduring figures as an idiosyncratic, humane, and surprisingly modern force. Illus.

August 1, 2010

Former Wellcome Library curator Bakewell (Creative Writing/City Univ. London; The English Dane: A Life of Jorgen Jorgenson, 2005, etc.) sketches the life of essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–1592) and traces his evolving reputation.

The author notes that Montaigne is particularly appropriate in our time, "[a century] full of people who are full of themselves." He was a revolutionary writer, the founding father of the personal essay and the man who realized that his own life could serve as a mirror for others. Bakewell identifies 20 Montaignian answers to her title's question, though her treatment of each answer varies both in length and focus. Some answers occasion major biographical attention; others are dense summaries of the philosophical positions of the day. Some comprise Bakewell's appealing summaries and analyses of the essays; others elicit her thoughts on Montaigne's stature in the literary world. By the end of the book, readers will have a good sense of the sweep of the subject's life and times and writing. Among the highlights: Montaigne's notion that reading ought to be pleasurable, even exciting (he loved Ovid, Virgil, Plutarch); Bakewell's account of the profound early friendship of Montaigne and fellow French philosopher Étienne de La Boétie, whose early death devastated Montaigne; Montaigne's careful choreography with the church and its leaders, kings and other dignitaries; his late-life relationship with Marie de Gournay, who became his posthumous editor and whose work remains both revered and disdained. Bakewell describes Montaigne's travels, his physical ailments (kidney stones killed his father and plagued Montaigne as well) and his fascinations with the ordinary—from eating habits to sexual practices to observations that cats and people occupy the same space and observe one another with interest.

A bright, genial and generous introduction to the master's methods.

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Starred review from September 1, 2010

At the beginning of this delightful book about Michel de Montaigne (1533-92), British author Bakewell (The English Dane) notes that Montaigne's essays "rarely offer to explain or teach anything." There's no moralizing. He wrote about how to live, not how one should live, unlike, for example, Francis Bacon, whose essays are from the same period. Using the question "How to live" as her framework, Bakewell gives us not only a biography of Montaigne but an exploration of the themes of his essays, a history of reaction to them both negative (e.g., Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, T.S. Eliot) and positive (e.g., Denis Diderot, Stefan Zweig, Virginia Woolf), and their implications and value for us today. VERDICT This is a rich book, both because of its subject and because Bakewell has a wondrous way with words. It's an exceptionally readable explication of serious ideas, drawn from a man whom we could all benefit from knowing better. Readers who have appreciated Alain de Botton's popular excursions into philosophy, e.g., How Proust Can Change Your Life, will love this book as well.--David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2010
In a wide-ranging intellectual career, Michel de Montaigne found no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well. By casting her biography of the writer as 20 chapters, each focused on a different answer to the question How to live? Bakewell limns Montaignes ceaseless pursuit of this most elusive knowledge. Embedded in the 20 life-knowledge responses, readers will find essential factswhen and where Montaigne was born, how and whom he married, how he became mayor of Bordeaux, how he managed a public life in a time of lethal religious and political passions. But Bakewell keeps the focus on the inner evolution of the acute mind informing Montaignes charmingly digressive and tolerantly skeptical essays. Flexible and curious, this was a mind at home contemplating the morality of cannibals, the meaning of his own near-death experience, and the puzzlingly human behavior of animals. And though Montaigne has identified his own personality as his overarching topic, Bakewell marvels at the way Montaignes prose has enchanted diverse readersHazlitt and Sterne, Woolf and Gidewith their own reflections. Because Montaignes capacious mirror still captivates many, this insightful life study will win high praise from both scholars and general readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)