How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010)

Bakewell, Sarah. How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. Other Press, 2010.

I cannot think of a better book about Montaigne for any audience, whether curious grazer or Montaigne scholar. This ranks up there with translator Donald Frame's book Montaigne's Discovery of Man: The Humanization of a Humanist (in terms of quality of experience). Bakewell uses the very form that Montaigne pioneered, the essay, to do three things at once: (1) present an engaging biography of the Renaissance humanist; (2) give an overview of his massive compendium; and (3) use the Essais to answer the big question of how to live. Just as Montaigne does, Bakewell leans heavily on the anecdotal, but supplements it all with deft scholarship. The result is nothing short of a soaring success. For anyone at all remotely interested in Montaigne, there is no better place to begin. I dare say an unabridged edition of the Essais will make its way to your bedside table if you encounter this rare treat of a book.

Autoportrait (2005)

Levé, Édouard. Autoportrait. Dalkey Archive Press, 2012.

Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, posted an excerpt of his translation of Levé's Autoportrait in the Spring 2011 issue. The title of the fragment is taken from the book itself: "When I look at a strawberry, I think of a tongue." I remember being struck by both the clever title and the power of the analog of strawberry and tongue. So I read the rest of the translation and ordered a copy. The paperback is a humble production: scarcely bigger than my hand; black and white cover; 112 pages of text with wide-berthed margins; no chapters, no section breaks, no paragraphs. Each page a wall of justified text. The sentences are quicksand, however, and I found myself unable to stop reading the little book, sinking ever deeper into Levé's portrait. A writer, artist, and photographer, Levé has a keen eye for detail, the ability to plumb the depths of the most mundane situations. His honesty and introspective aptitude would impress Socrates and Freud. There is no real order or flow to the endless declarative statements, yet, like a well done collage, the effect works. Sadly, this able artist took his own life ten days after he delivered the manuscript of his final novel, Suicide, to his editor. Three years earlier, in Autoportrait, we can see foreshadowing: "Because I am funny people think I'm happy"; "I sometimes feel like an impostor without knowing why, as if a shadow falls over me and I can't make it go away"; "Maybe I'm writing this book so I won't have to talk anymore." Yet, that humorous side is on display, too: "I cannot remember a single game of Monopoly that didn't end with all the players sick of it"; "Hearing someone whistle annoys me, especially with vibrato." It is a striking reminder of the complexity and fragility of human consciousness.

Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent van Gogh (1937)

van Gogh, Vincent. Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent van Gogh. Edited by Irving Stone, Plume, 1995.

There are few artists who have exceptional skills in multiple artistic media. Were it not for van Gogh's intimate and poignant letters to his brother Theo, we would not be able to group the sublime painter with such personalities as Blake (who illuminated his own poetry) and Michelangelo (whose poetry is lesser known but no less profound and emotionally striking). I first heard of Irving Stone's compendium of van Gogh's letters in Henry Miller's The Books in My Life (Miller also happened to be an obsessive water colorist in addition to original and raw novelist). We owe a lot to Irving Stone, who in this palatable volume distills the exorbitant contents of some 1,670 pages of letters to present an autobiography that is at once human-all-too-human and deeply moving. We see that can Gogh was not only well versed in art history, but also well read: in the first two letters alone he talks of Michelet, Heine, George Eliot, Dickens, Thomas à Kempis, and to a manic degree the Bible. In one letter he claims, "I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?" In the next letter, however, he admits that "Man is not easily content: now he finds things too easy and then again he is not contented enough." We find that van Gogh heeded Socrates' advice to know thyself, as his letters exhibit a keen introspective psychoanalyst's eye. And yet the pages also shimmer with aphorisms beyond the self: "If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere"; "...a woman is not old as long as she loves and is loved." It remains to be seen whether the book can sustain an invigorating experience for the casual reader. As with James Ramsey Ullman's The Day on Fire (a novel based on the life of Arthur Rimbaud), the reader may need to bring a special reverence for the artist in question to reap the full benefits of the book's breadth.