In How to Live Bakewell creates not only a portrait of the man behind the essays but also a full and dynamic panorama of the world in which Montaigne lived, both personal and political. I knew he was French, that he lived a long time ago, that he’d written essays (one or two of which I’d read in anthologies) and that the English word ‘essay’ comes from his use of the French word ‘essai,’ a nominative form of the verb ‘essayer,’ meaning ‘to try.’ I also knew that he must have written a lot of essays because every time I sell his book to someone I notice that it is very, very thick.īut now I know much more, not only about Montaigne, who lived from 1533 to 1592, but also about the history of France during his lifetime, about the tradition of philosophy and particularly philosophical skepticism, stretching back to the ancient and forward to the post-post-moderns, and about the influence Montaigne had on his contemporaries and continues to have on writers and thinkers today. A week ago I decided to write something about every book that I finish in June, and so far–not surprisingly–I’ve only written a few half-finished but already-too-long pieces on several books, starting with one that I finished toward the end of May: Sarah Bakewell’s How To Live – or – A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.īefore reading How to Live, I didn’t know much about Michel de Montaigne.
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