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Review: How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an AnswerNavel-gazing, or the art of self-reflection, hit its high point on the Internet around the turn of the century. Then, every third blog you came across was an exploration of an individual’s daily habits and thoughts. Letting strangers have a glimpse of their lives didn’t bother the authors, because either they wanted the attention or they sincerely wanted to know themselves better. Both options played a role, I’m sure.

In the 16th century, Montaigne was the ultimate navel-gazer. His only aspiration was to learn how to live, the proper way to conduct one’s life. He set out to discover this by writing essays, pieces that are about one subject but would meander or jump to another thought. His goal wasn’t order, but to present life as it is so that he (and the reader) could learn from it. Many readers claim that when they read Montaigne, they feel that he’s writing about them on a personal level. It’s because he was honest with himself, and that we’re all connected, we all feel the same things, experience the same joys and griefs. Many, though, try to rein in their thoughts and feelings, creating a systemic narrative. That’s not life, which really can be compared to a game of Pong. Sometimes you move in a straight line, sometimes you move diagonally. A lot of the time you move back as far as you move forward, and the speed of it all is random. Montaigne knew this and embraced it.

In How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Sarah Bakewell offers readers a portrait of a man clearly ahead of his time. Even now, Montaigne’s raw honesty would be frown upon or mocked. One only likes a mirror when it’s there to please.

Bakewell organizes the book in 20 chapters, each with such headings as “Q: How to live? Question everything” and “Q: How to live? Give up control.” Each chapter covers a period of Montaigne’s life while at the same time exploring the topic at hand. It’s a clever progression. Throughout the book, you learn a lot about French history, nobility, and philosophy, both Montaigne’s accidental attempts at it and Greek and Roman thoughts.

It’s clear that Bakewell loves Montaigne. The writing is at times energetic, humorous, and balanced, much like her subject’s essays. If you’ve never read any Montaigne, you’ll be inspired to after finishing this book. You may even be inspired to contemplate your own existence, perhaps begin a journal or create a blog. If anything, you’ll definitely think about not only how to live, but what it means to live.

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Books Read in 2012

booksAnother year and another list of the books I read during the past 12 months. While I enjoyed many of the books, not many of them excited me, causing me to buy extra copies so I could force them into friends’ hands.

If was to do that, though, here are the ones that were my favorites:

Fiction: Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams, The People Who Watched Her Pass By by Scott Bradfield, and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima
Non-Fiction: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Long for This World by Jonathan Weiner, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive by Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein, and Steve J. Martin, and Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell
Play: In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
Poetry: Happy Life by David Budbill

Here’s the full list:

House of Holes by Nicholson Baker
Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
The People Who Watched Her Pass By by Scott Bradfield
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
Long for This World by Jonathan Weiner
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Dream Police: Selected Poems, 1969-1993 by Dennis Cooper
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy
The Hot L Baltimore by Lanford Wilson
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Marquise of O by Heinrich von Kleist
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima
Under the Glacier by Halldor Laxness
Aura by Carlos Fuentes
After Claude by Iris Owens
Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
Oranges by John McPhee
Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell
This is How it Goes by Neil LaBute
The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus
Happy Life by David Budbill
Old Times by Harold Pinter
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks
The Marriage of Bette & Boo by Christopher Durang
Cloud Atlas by David MItchell
The Drunk in the Furnace by W.S. Merwin
A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O’Neill
Time’s Power by Adrienne Rich
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
How to Improvise a Full-Lenght Play by Kenn Adams
Guest of Reality by Par Lagerkvist
Far Away by Caryl Churchill
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive by Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein, and Steve J. Martin
In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
Desolation by Yasmina Reza
Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley
One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace
Bhagavad Gita translated by Stephen Mitchell
Art by Committee: A Guide to Advanced Improvisation by Charna Halpern
Seascape by Edward Albee
Busy Monsters by William Giraldi
Adult Head by Jeff Tweedy

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Review: Busy Monsters

Busy Monsters by William GiraldiI will admit that a great first line is all that is needed to cause me to continue reading a book. Surely, I’m not the only one that’s been drawn into, for example, Fahrenheit 451 or A Prayer for Owen Meany based solely on their first lines. Busy Monsters by William Giraldi is another book that kicks you in a kidney with its first line: “Stunned by love and some would say stupid from too much sex, I decided I had to drive down South to kill a man.” If you’re not grabbed by the lapels after that first line, then you’re suffering from a deep state of depression that Hallmark wouldn’t even be able to help.

Busy Monsters is the story of Charles Homar and his quest to win back a woman who left him. Homar is writer for a periodical that publishes his over-the-top, true-life stories. Yes, Giraldi makes Homar similar in name to Homer, another writer who wrote over-the-top stories full of monsters. And if you didn’t catch that in-your-face similarity, then let me drive you back to school for your first day of high school freshman English.

Homar’s fiancee leaves because she wants to discover a living giant squid. In his quest to win back his lover, Homar tries to prove himself a man by shooting down a ship, capturing Bigfoot, and confronting UFO enthusiasts. Homar, of course, has his own odyssey on his way to reunite with his Penelope.

Giraldi’s narrative reminds me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins. I’m okay with that; however, it took me a couple of pages to get into the swing of things if I put the book down for a day. The style’s over-the-topness took me aback for a bit, but once I got into the groove, I was happy to ride this rocket to its destination.

Along the way, Giraldi wrote some great lines that encapsulate the book’s theme.

“We human monsters make choices with the minds of worms; good sense lies east, we veer west; trouble sends an invitation, we RSVP the very same day.” Also, “…all I mean to say is that a human being is an oblivious ape in the grip of nonsense…” Those are two that come to mind and really struck me enough to memorize the page numbers they’re on.

If you’re a fan of Vonnegut or Robbins, then I believe you’ll love Busy Monsters. It’s a fun read, and it will cause you to contemplate what kind of monsters, real or imaginary, you’d battle to win what’s important to you.

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My Book Habit

 

— The Undercover Shelf —.

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Review: Butcher’s Crossing

Butcher's Crossing by John WilliamsI’ve now read three books by John Williams, and each one was different in setting and story. The tone, though, has been the same. Williams is a master of the understated. He’s not shy in asking the reader to think, and that’s what I love most about him.

In Butcher’s Crossing, Williams tells the story of a buffalo hunt beginning with lofty intentions only to succumb to sudden changes of nature and humanity. The narrative is set in 1870s Kansas and Colorado. Will Andrews arrives in the town of Butcher’s Crossing seeking to discover the West after dropping out of Harvard. He meets an experienced buffalo hunter named Miller who convinces him that he knows where thousands of buffalo graze in a Colorado valley. Miller promises Andrews there’s a lot of money to be made with the number of hides they’ll bring back. Andrews agrees to fund and go on the hunt, along with two other men, an old man named Charley, who will steer the wagon, and Schneider, the skinner.

Much of the narrative is about the long journey to Colorado. This portion of the book is repetitive and tiresome, and kudos to Williams for making the reader feel exactly how the riders feel. Once in the valley, the killing starts. Miller becomes obsessed with getting as many hides as possible, and Andrews supports his decision even as Schneider objects over and over. Miller’s goal is what makes them miss their time to leave the valley before winter starts. The story then becomes one of survival under a harsh winter for eight months.

Times have changed once the buffalo hunting party arrives back in Butcher’s Crossing, and it’s this portion of the book where Williams’ writing shines.

Andrews is talking with McDonald–the hide buyer–about why he came out West and what he was trying to discover. McDonald tells him there’s nothing to find out.

You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you’re ready to die, it comes to you–that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you’re the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You’re too old.

It’s a bleak outlook, and it reminds me of the tone of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Butcher’s Crossing was published almost 25 years before McCarthy’s classic. I wonder if he read it and was influence by its philosophical outlook on the American dream of manifest destiny. Whereas McCarthy concerns himself with evilness in the world, Williams wonders about something else, something just as damning as evil because it’s unknowable.

We have something to say to each other, Andrews thought dimly, but we don’t know what it is; we have something we ought to say.

I’ve been thinking about that line a lot after finishing the book. It’s stuck with me, and I don’t see it vanishing anytime soon. It’s going to be a filter I experience everything through for a while. And it’s all because Williams gave us a classic tale of the hero’s journey and then questioned if the journey is worth it. That’s something I never thought about, and I’m not sure I want to know the answer. At least not yet. I’m too young.

(Image via New York Review Books.)

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Grow Your Mind with Books

 

Strawberry Fields.

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Confucius on Reading

Whenever people tell me they don’t have time to read, I think of this quote.

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