How to Live

by Bakewell, Sarah

• ISBN13: 9781590514252
• ISBN10: 1590514254
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-10-19
• Publisher: Other Press

Summary

This book, a spirited and singular biography (and the first full life of Michel Eyquen de Montaigne in English for nearly 50 years), relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored.

Table of Contents

Q. How to live?
Michel de Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer	p. 1
Q. How to live? A. Don't worry about death
Hanging by the tip of his lips	p. 12
Q. How to live? A. Pay attention
Starting to write	p. 23
Stream of consciousness	p. 33
Q. How to live? A. Be born
Micheau	p. 39
The experiment	p. 51
Q. How to live? A. Read a lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-witted
Reading	p. 64
Montaigne the slow and forgetful	p. 69
The young Montaigne in troubled times	p. 74
Q. How to live? A. Survive love and loss
La Boétie: love and tyranny	p. 90
La Boétie: death and mourning	p. 102
Q. How to live? A. Use little tricks
Little tricks and the art of living	p. 109
Montaigne in slavery	p. 118
Q. How to live? A. Question everything
All I know is that I know nothing, and I'm not even sure about that	p. 123
Animals and demons	p. 133
A prodigious seduction machine	p. 141
Q. How to live? A. Keep a private room behind the shop
Going to it with only one buttock	p. 154
Practical responsibilities	p. 166
Q. How to live? A. Be convivial: live with others
A gay and sociable wisdom	p. 170
Openness, mercy, and cruelty	p. 174
Q. How to live? A. Wake from the sleep of habit
It all depends on your point of view	p. 182
Noble savages	p. 189
Q. How to live? A. Live temperately
Raising and lowering the temperature	p. 195
Q. How to live? A. Guard your humanity
Terror	p. 203
Hero	p. 215
Q. How to live? A. Do something no one has done before
Baroque best seller	p. 222
Q. How to live? A. See the world
Travels	p. 227
Q. How to live? A. Do a good job, but not too good a job
Mayor	p. 245
Moral objections	p. 252
Missions and assassinations	p. 258
Q. How to live? A. Philosophize only by accident
Fifteen Englishmen and an Irishman	p. 274
Q. How to live? A. Reflect on everything; regret nothing
Je ne regrette rien	p. 286
Q. How to live? A. Give up control
Daughter and disciple	p. 291
The editing wars	p. 303
Montaigne remixed and embabooned	p. 308
Q. How to live? A. Be ordinary and imperfect
Be ordinary	p. 316
Be imperfect	p. 318
Q. How to live? A. Let life be its own answer
Not the end	p. 321
Acknowledgments	p. 329
Chronology	p. 331
Notes	p. 335
Sources	p. 367
List of Illustrations	p. 373
Index	p. 377
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

The riding accident, which so altered Montaigne’s perspective, lasted only a few moments in itself, but one can unfold it into three parts and spread it over several years. First, there is Montaigne lying on the ground, clawing at his stomach while experiencing euphoria. Then comes Montaigne in the weeks and months that followed, reflecting on the experience and trying to reconcile it with his philosophical reading. Finally, there is Montaigne a few years later, sitting down to write about it – and about a multitude of other things. The first scene could have happened to anyone; the second to any sensitive, educated young man of the Renaissance. The last makes Montaigne unique.
     The connection is not a simple one: he did not sit up in bed and immediately start writing about the accident. He began the Essays a couple of years later, around 1572, and, even then, he wrote other chapters before coming to the one about losing consciousness. When he did turn to it, however, the experience made him try a new kind of writing, barely attempted by other writers: that of re-creating a sequence of sensations as they felt from the inside, following them from instant to instant.