Merry Wanderer of the Night:
essay challenge

The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

I took a little break from my Montaigne readalong this month for no reason other than I felt I needed one. I am now picking up from where I left off.

Essays Read this Week:

1. Judgements on God's ordinances must be embarked upon with prudence
2. On feeling from pleasures at the cost of one's life
3. Fortune is often found in Reason's train
4. Something lacking in our civil administrations
5. On the custom of wearing clothing
6. On Cato the Younger
7. How we weep and laugh at the same thing

Favorite Quotations:
"The world is not so completely corrupt that we cannot find even one man who would not gladly wish to see his inherited wealth able to be used (as long as Fortune lets him enjoy it) to provide shelter for great men who are renowned for some particular achievement but who have been reduced to extreme poverty by their misfortunes; he could at least give them enough assistance that it would be unreasonable for them not be satisfied" (Something lacking in our civil administrations).

"Just because I feel that I am pledged to my individual form, I do not bind all others to it as everyone else does: I can conceive and believe that there are thousands of different ways of living and, contrary to most men, I more readily acknowledge our differences than our similarities... My one desire is that each of us should be judged apart and that conclusions about me should not be drawn from routine exempla" (On Cato the Younger).

General Thoughts:

The first essay that really grabbed my attention in this group was Something lacking in our civil administrations. Montaigne talks about an idea his father had about a place where people could report their wants and needs. Kind of like Craigslist. If someone needed a worker they would report it, and if someone needed work they would report it. Ideally these two people would be matched up. Montaigne said that men are perpetually in a state of want because they are unable to find those who are able to fulfill their needs. At the end of the essay he talks about two great scholars who died of hunger. He felt that if these two men had only come forward about their situation there would have been people willing to help them, but since they did not they died.

On the custom of wearing clothing was interesting mostly because it showed a sense of modern anthropology that put Montaigne ahead of his time. He talks about how humans probably don't need clothes because our bodies should be able to adapt to climates just like other animals. This stems from ideas about the New World and travels of Herodotus, which both include civilizations who lived in the nude. He mentions that we leave sensitive parts of our bodies, ears, nose, fingers and so on bare to the world, so why do we cover up the rest of our bodies?

The final essay I read, How we weep and laugh at the same thing was actually a little disappointing. I love the idea of conflicting emotions but I didn't feel Montaigne really pushed it. Most of his examples were about a person looking at someone else and seeing them from a different perspective. Perhaps they were happy they had won a war but realized that someday they would all lose the war between life and death. The essay was only four pages and it just didn't feel finished to me.

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The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

Essays Read this Week:
1. On moderation
2. On the Cannibals

Favorite Quotations:
"True victory lies in your role in the conflict, not in coming through safely: it consists in the honour of battling bravely battling through." (On the Cannibals)

"I wish everyone would write only what he knows--not in this matter only but in all others. A man may well have detailed knowledge or experience of the nature of one particular river or stream, yet about all the others he knows only what everyone else does; but in order to trot out his little scrap of knowledge he will write a book on the whole physics! From this vice many inconveniences arise." (On the Cannibals)

General Thoughts:
On the Cannibals is frequently taught in nonfiction writing classes, or at least it is at Iowa, which is why it makes me think not so much about the essay itself as nonfiction writing. That last quote in my favorite quotations about writing what you know, I think that is my biggest takeaway from this essay. Montaigne is really interested in judgement and the the human tendency to think there is only one way to do something. Your way. Culture to culture we all do things a little differently and it's easy to think of the world only in your terms. I think part of what essays do is help the writer recognize the way he or she does something while still pushing their boundaries and looking at how others might do it.

So then how do you write about your experience in another culture and still acknowledge that you are not an expert on that culture? This seems to be a huge problem in travel writing. The best travel writing, I usually feel, is either completely inward or completely social. In the inward variety the author really doesn't experience much but rather writes about the displacement of being in another culture and ruminates on that. The more social kind involves the writer talking to people of that culture but acknowledging his or her outsider status and understanding.

I am struggling with this quote a little bit because it doesn't acknowledge the writer's ability to go seek out first hand knowledge from an expert. Maybe I'm struggling because I become annoyed by people who do very little research and try to pass themselves off as experts. Part of the reason I love John McPhee is he always acknowledges how stupid he is on a given topic, even if he knows more than the average person. This seems like an extremely important aspect of essay writing--no wonder I'm pulling it from Montaigne.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

Essays Read this Week:
1. That it is madness to judge the true and the false from our own capacities
2. On affectionate relationships
3. Nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de La Boetie

Favorite Quotations:
"How many of the things which constantly come into our purview must be deemed monstrous or miraculous if we apply such terms to anything which outstrips our reason! If we consider that we have to grope through a fog even to understand the very things we hold in our hands, then we will certainly find that it is not knowledge but habit which takes away their strangeness." (That it is madness to judge the true and the false)

"And in truth what are these Essays if not monstrosities and grotesques botched together from a variety of limbs having no defined shape, with an order sequence and proportion which are purely fortuitous?" (On affectionate relationships)

General Thoughts:
I can't decide if the order of Montaigne's essays just happen to line up with my thoughts this year or if I'm just reading too much of my own thoughts into his writing, but over the past several weeks it's seemed like Montaigne and I have just been on the same page.

This week I read On affectionate relationships, which was fitting because I've been thinking a lot about friendship. When I went home over spring break I had a strong desire to get back together with old friends. I did get together with a couple of friends I've stayed in touch with since high school, but I didn't see either of the people who were really my best friends in high school. I did run into some people who were good friends of mine, and it was just like seeing a stranger. The loss of old friendships has been painful for me. In On affectionate relationships Montaigne describes a kind of friendship in which the friends will do anything for each and other and are really a part of each other.

"Moreover what we normally call friends and friendships are no more than acquaintances and familiar relationships bound by some change or some suitability, by means of which our souls support each other. In the friendship which I am talking about, souls are mingled and confounded in so universal a blending that they efface the seam which joins them together so that it cannot be found. If you press me to say why I loved him, I that it cannot be expressed except by replying: 'Because it was him: because it was me.'"

I just really loved that quote because I think it perfectly sums up my ideas on friendship. The majority of my friends now are really just familiar relations. We have parties, go out for coffee, and so on, but I don't feel like I know them that well or like they know me that well. It's crazy to think about now, but the only people who I feel really know me are my friends from high school who are still my friends today. I never thought I would stay in touch with so many people from high school, the whole point of college is to branch out and meet new people right? But I've found that friendships are largely disappointing, and the only people who really have my back are the people who watched me through my awkward teenage years.


I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

Essays Read this Week:
1. On educating children

Favorite Quotations:
"In the case of those who wish to hide their borrowings and pass them off as their own, their action is, first and foremost, unjust and mean: they have nothing worthwhile of their own to show off so they try to recommend themselves with someone else's goods" (On educating children).

"My aim is to reveal my own self, which may well be different tomorrow if I am initiated into some new business which changes me" (On educating children).

General Thoughts:
This essay brought up a lot of the same things last week's On schoolmaster's learning brought up. Montaigne talks about problems with educating, particularly with exams well, regurgitation, "Spewing up food exactly as you have swallowed it is evidence of a failure to digest and assimilate it; the stomach has not done its job if, during concoction, it fails to change the substance and the form of what it is given." Montaigne believes education should allow you to know yourself and school should be where you form yourself. He thinks teachers give students quotations and books to read in an attempt to make the students believe those are the last words on everything. In this way students never learn how to speak for themselves. They simply say what others have already said.

"I sometimes hear people who apologize for not being able to say what they mean, maintaining that their heads are so full of fine things that they cannot deliver them for want of eloquence. That is moonshine. Do you know what I think? It is a matter of shadowy notions coming to them from some unformed concepts which they are unable to untangle and to clarify in their minds: consequently they cannot deliver them externally."

I really love the idea of learning to form yourself. I've gotten bad grades in some classes but walked out with information that really shaped my thoughts on the class topic. I've gotten A+ in some classes that I remember nothing from. These are obviously extremes, but I've often thought about going back to the professors of classes and showing them how much I actually did learn in their class-- even if it wasn't what I supposed to learn for an exam.

Questions:
1. What do you think education is for?

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

Essays Read this Week:
1. Same design: differing outcomes
2. On schoolmasters' learning

Favorite Quotations:
"We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life." (Seneca, On schoolmasters' learning)

"Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own."(On schoolmasters' learning).

General Thoughts:
I had an intense connection with On schoolmasters' learning. I'm nearing the end of my third year in college and I've had a lot of frustration towards the university experience. I'm glad I've had the opportunity to go to college. I'm lucky to have great parents who help me pay for school and encourage me. I've had some great professors at the University of Iowa. And, after all, if I wasn't an English major this blog might not exist and that would be a shame.

That said, I don't know if I feel I've learned that much in college. In school we are required to learn a lot of information so we can take a test or write a paper, which is what Montaigne talks about in this essay. As Seneca said, "We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life." When I leave with my diploma will I really walk away any better off than I was when I came here? I will, but I'm not sure any of those things I've learned come from the classes I've taken or if they come from the experiences I've had. Life experiences. Experiences I might have had with or without college.

"We allow ourselves to lean so heavily on other men's arms that we destroy our own force." Is this the burnout I've experienced over the last year? Maybe. I feel like I'm constantly told what to think about something, what to see. I used to have my own opinions but now I have to prove everything I say using someone else's words. It's mind numbing.

Questions:
1. If you're in school do you feel like we are fed knowledge without learning anything of value?
2. If you're out of school what do you think you came away with besides a degree?

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

Note: I'm posting this on Thursday rather than Monday because I was participating in a giveaway hop on Monday.

Essays Read this Week:
1. That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them
2. One is punished for stubbornly defending a fort without good reason
3. On punishing cowardice
4. The doings of certain ambassadors

Favorite Quotations:
"... that it is with pain as with precious stones which take on brighter or duller hues depending on the foil in which they are set: pain only occupies as much space as we make for her" (The taste of good and evil things depends on our opinion).

"The man who is happy is not he who is believed to be so but he who believes he is so: in that way alone does belief endow itself with true reality" (The taste of good and evil things depends on our opinion).

General Thoughts:
The longest essay I read was That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them, which is probably why I have the most to say about it. Montaigne spends quite a bit of this essay talking about pain and death, which was attractive to me this week because I have thumb injury causing quite a bit of pain. He says the most painful part of death is not death itself, but the time we spend thinking about it. Death, he says, is actually the release from pain. This basic principle can be moved to other parts of life though. For example, I spend a lot of time thinking about writing my papers, but once I finish the paper I find it's actual quite painless and relieving. If I would just quit thinking about the paper and write it I could save myself a lot of pain and misery.

I really liked the second quotation I posted from this essay though. It seems like the more negative energy you put out, the more you find yourself in a negative state of being. If you believe you are happy and put out positive energy, good things will come to you. This isn't always true, but I think there is something to be said for it. I've recently been dwelling in negatives so it seems like a lot of negative things have happened to me. In reality as many positive things have happened as negative, it's just easier to focus on the negative for some reason.

I did tsk tsk about halfway through this essay when Montaigne talks about how crazy women are for putting themselves through the pains of corsets and other crazier things (flaying themselves alive to have a fresh color in their skin?) just to become beautiful. Clearly Montaigne lived during a different time, but he doesn't acknowledge why women were driven to do these things, probably because no one thought about it much. But that is a story for another day...

Over the course of One is punished for stubbornly defending a fort without a good reason and On punishing cowardice I felt like Montaigne was relying on Nature to explain new human values. He talks about how humans are going against Nature because of new technology and broken traditions, and what this means for humans. Just funny that this argument continues to go on today.

From The doings of certain ambassadors I came away loving the first idea of the essay. He says when he meets other people he tries to bring the conversation back to the subject each person knows best. I thought this was a great idea and one I should observe more frequently.


Questions:
1. Do you believe that having a negative/positive attitude changes the way you feel about yourself or your life? Do you think you can apply "positive spin" to your own reality?
2. What subject are you an expert on? What would others want you to talk about?

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It's obvious I'm obsessed with essays and really want to make all of you love them too. I've studied essays as long as I've been in college (almost three years!) and read them before I came here, but in 2011 I would like to take a few steps back. My Awesome Essays posts typically focus on newer essays, or at least essays from the 1960's to present. I like that focus because I think it's easier for people to read those essays and discuss them. But for those of you who are up to a bit of a challenge, you might like to join me in the 2011 Montaigne Readalong. This isn't a challenge, you can participate as much or as little as you like.

This really my own self challenge. I want to read all of Montaigne's essays in one year, no small feat. Michel de Montaigne is a 16th Century writer, so obviously the writing style is very different from what we read today. The edition I plan to read is 1,344 pages long! Now you understand why I want to read it over the course of a year. Break that huge number down, and you're reading about 25 pages a week, which probably about as much Montaigne as I can take every week.

So where do you fit into all of this?

You don't really even need to sign-up, although it'd be nice to let me know if you want to participate in any way by leaving a comment. I'm going to post a schedule for what essays I'm going to read each week on a page underneath my header. If you're struck to join in for any particular week, you can go there and find out what essays I'm reading so you can discuss them on my blog post that week. Basically you can follow along as much as you want, joining in on conversations a few time over the year or every week (if you dare).

How do I find the essays?

The great thing about Montaigne is that he is in the public domain! That means you don't even have to buy a book to participate in this. One option is to subscribe to Montaigne's Essais on Daily Lit. This way you'll get essays emailed to your account as often as you like, although I'll tell you there are 459 parts to the Daily Lit subscription, meaning that if you got an email every day it would still take you over a year to read. I think these should line up with my book, although I'm not entirely certain yet. You can also check out some of the essays on Oregon State's website. If you're really excited you can read the same book I am, the Penguin edition called The Complete Essays.

I'll provide more information about all of this later, but I wanted you all to know I am hosting this next year!

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

I borrowed I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog

from a friend, which isn't something I do a lot of but she thought I'd really enjoy it. I'm really glad I read this book because Diana Joseph is a hilarious writer and it commented on a lot of issues I could relate to myself. Like relationships between children and parents and what it means to be a woman. I especially liked her essays about romance and growing up, and what it means to be a slut ("What happens is sometimes a girl will go with this one, and he isn't right for her, so she'll go with that one, and she doesn't like him either" [13]). College has kind of turned me into a feminist (which has really been nagging me in the back of my mind lately, but that's another story) so reading Joseph's comments on gender were really interesting to me.

But the moments this essay collection really shines are the stories about Joseph's son. I love when she buys him a guitar to make him a rock star, which is so something I picture myself doing as a mother, only to find out that her son has absolutely no interest in becoming a rock star. And later, she finds that he thinks most people smoke weed, and that is bad. While it might not every be explicit we might be able to assume that Joseph has smoked weed at some point in her life, so it's difficult that her son looks down on these people so much. But then again, isn't that what he is supposed to think? And later he calls a girl at his school a slut, but Joseph was kind of a slut herself, and how dare he call this girl a slut when he doesn't know anything about her. So in this way her past comes into conflict with the personality her son has created for himself.

Another enjoyable moment was when she talked about her pervert friend Andrew Boyle; "I worry that my friend Andrew Boyle is a pervert, even if he doesn't hang fuzzy dice from the rearview mirror of a sleekly black Pontiac Trans Am" (136). As funny as this moment was, I think it's also really important. Joseph is upset by her son judging the slutty girl in his class and consequently judging his own mother even though he knows nothing about sex, why people have it, and what really makes a slut. With Andrew Boyle though, Joseph knows her friend, but she slaps this pervert label on him with a great deal of ease. I'm not saying this is a bad thing really, it's just interesting to see how easily we label people, but when it's us that is getting the label it's hard to take.

This essay collection earned a B.

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I just found out about this challenge today. I love essay collections so this is really a good challenges for me. I'm hoping to read 30 essays total. I will list them as I read them. This challenge is hosted by Books and Movies.

Here are the basics:

~ Join anytime, but don’t start reading until January 1, 2010. The challenge ends November 30, 2010.
~ If you read a book of essays, that book can also apply to any other challenges you are working on.
~ Choose a goal of reading 10, 20, or 30 essays, and then write a challenge post, linking back to this post. Feel free to copy and paste the above image into your challenge post.
~ Copy your challenge post’s link into Mr. Linky on the challenge post.
~ You don’t have to list your essays ahead of time – just have fun reading throughout the year.
~ I will put up a page for the challenge in my left sidebar, and add a Mr. Linky for essay reviews and wrap-up posts as the year goes on.
~ Everyone who completes the challenge and writes at least one review will be eligible for the giveaway prize: A copy of Best American Essays 2010.
~ New for 2010: You can earn extra credit – and an extra entry in the giveaway – by writing an essay of your own and leaving the link at the challenge page.
~ I will put up a wrap-up and giveaway post sometime early in December – that’s why the challenge only runs through November.