How To Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010 NBCC Award for Biography)

422 Pages·2010·6.52 MB·English

by  Sarah Bakewell

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Smart
The English Dane
Copyright © 2010 Sarah Bakewell

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of
Random House UK

Other Press edition 2010

Quotations from The Complete Works of Montaigne: Essays, Travel Journal,
Letters translated by Donald Frame copyright © 1943 by Donald M. Frame,
renewed 1971;

© 1948, 1957, 1958 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior
University. All rights reserved. Used with the permission of Stanford University
Press, www.sup.org

Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Bakewell, Sarah.
How to live, or, A life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an
answer / Sarah Bakewell. — Other Press ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: London : Chatto & Windus, 2010.
eISBN: 978-1-59051-426-9
1. Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592. 2. Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592—
Philosophy. 3. Authors, French—16th century—Biography. I. Title. II.
Title: How to live. III. Title: Life of Montaigne in one
question and twenty attempts at an answer.
PQ1643.B34 2010B
848.3—dc22 2010026896
[B]

v3.1
For Simo
CONTENTS

Cover
Other Book by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Q. How to live?
Michel de Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer

1. Q. How to live? A. Don’t worry about death
Hanging by the tip of his lips
2. Q. How to live? A. Pay attention
Starting to write
Stream of consciousness
3. Q. How to live? A. Be born
Micheau
The experiment
4. Q. How to live? A. Read a lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-
witted
Reading
Montaigne the slow and forgetful
The young Montaigne in troubled times
5. Q. How to live? A. Survive love and loss
La Boétie: love and tyranny
La Boétie: death and mourning
6. Q. How to live? A. Use little tricks
Little tricks and the art of living
Montaigne in slavery
7. Q. How to live? A. Question everything
All I know is that I know nothing, and I’m not even sure about that
Animals and demons
A prodigious seduction machine
8. Q. How to live? A. Keep a private room behind the shop
Going to it with only one buttock
Practical responsibilities
9. Q. How to live? A. Be convivial: live with others
A gay and sociable wisdom
Openness, mercy, and cruelty
10. Q. How to live? A. Wake from the sleep of habit
It all depends on your point of view
Noble savages
11. Q. How to live? A. Live temperately
Raising and lowering the temperature
12. Q. How to live? A. Guard your humanity
Terror
Hero
13. Q. How to live? A. Do something no one has done before
Baroque best seller
14. Q. How to live? A. See the world
Travels
15. Q. How to live? A. Do a good job, but not too good a job
Mayor
Moral objections
Missions and assassinations
16. Q. How to live? A. Philosophize only by accident
Fifteen Englishmen and an Irishman
17. Q. How to live? A. Reflect on everything; regret nothing
Je ne regrette rien
18. Q. How to live? A. Give up control
Daughter and disciple
The editing wars
Montaigne remixed and embabooned
19. Q. How to live? A. Be ordinary and imperfect
Be ordinary
Be imperfect
20. Q. How to live? A. Let life be its own answer
Not the end
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Notes
Sources
List of Illustrations
Q. How to live?