After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the EssaysFrom University of Georgia Press
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After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the EssaysFrom University of Georgia Press
Read and Download After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the EssaysFrom University of Georgia Press
Writers of the modern essay can trace their chosen genre all the way back to Michel de Montaigne (1533–92). But save for the recent notable best seller How to Live: A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell, Montaigne is largely ignored. After Montaigne―a collection of twenty-four new personal essays intended as tribute―aims to correct this collective lapse of memory and introduce modern readers and writers to their stylistic forebear. Though it’s been over four hundred years since he began writing his essays, Montaigne’s writing is still fresh, and his use of the form as a means of self-exploration in the world around him reads as innovative―even by modern standards. He is, simply put, the writer to whom all essayists are indebted. Each contributor has chosen one of Montaigne’s 107 essays and has written his/her own essay of the same title and on the same theme, using a quote from Montaigne’s essay as an epigraph. The overall effect is akin to a covers album, with each writer offering his or her own interpretation and stylistic verve to Montaigne’s themes in ways that both reinforce and challenge the French writer’s prose, ideas, and forms. Featuring a who’s who of contemporary essayists, After Montaigne offers astartling engagement with Montaigne and the essay form while also pointing the way to the genre’s potential new directions.
After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the EssaysFrom University of Georgia Press- Amazon Sales Rank: #1034849 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-15
- Released on: 2015-09-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.30" h x .73" w x 6.39" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 272 pages
Review Imagine the dinner party: not just Montaigne but many Montaignes, resurrected in these brilliant essays by twenty-eight of today’s most inventive writers. The table is crowded, enlivened by the paradoxical warmth of Montaigne’s detachment and by the parry and thrust of ideas, often tantamount to a kind of quiet eros. It’s a dinner full of random appetites, the kind of party we leave knowing ourselves a little less, which might mean a little better. What a feast this collection is. It satisfies a hunger―intellect meeting empathy―that enlarges us. (Barbara Hurd author of Listening to the Savage: River Notes and Half-Heard Melodies)A fascinating collection of essays that carries forward the omnidirectional momentum of the master. After Montaigne gives us grand examples of the essay as it lives today. (Ian Frazier author of Great Plains)Though Montaigne wrote more than 400 years ago, he feels ageless to these writers, who celebrate his 'drily mellifluous voice,' discursive style, and relentless curiosity. With flair, wit, and imagination, these writers embrace and often challenge their mentor, with results that will inspire readers to also seek out the originals. (Publishers Weekly)The collection is accessible and invites readers to dip in anywhere, to read all or only a few. Reading these "covers" alongside Montaigne's originals would make an engaging activity for aspiring essayists or composition students. (P.J. Kurtz Choice)
From the Inside Flap
Writers of the modern essay can trace their chosen genre all the way back to Michel de Montaigne (1533 92). But save for the recent notable best seller How to Live: A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell, Montaigne is largely ignored. After Montaigne a collection of twenty-four new personal essays intended as tribute aims to correct this collective lapse of memory and introduce modern readers and writers to their stylistic forebear.
Though it s been over four hundred years since he began writing his essays, Montaigne s writing is still fresh, and his use of the form as a means of self-exploration in the world around him reads as innovative even by modern standards. He is, simply put, the writer to whom all essayists are indebted. Each contributor has chosen one of Montaigne s 107 essays and has written his/her own essay of the same title and on the same theme, using a quote from Montaigne s essay as an epigraph. The overall effect is akin to a covers album, with each writer offering his or her own interpretation and stylistic verve to Montaigne s themes in ways that both reinforce and challenge the French writer s prose, ideas, and forms. Featuring a who s who of contemporary essayists, After Montaigne offers a startling engagement with Montaigne and the essay form while also pointing the way to the genre s potential new directions."
From the Back Cover
A fascinating collection of essays that carries forward the omnidirectional momentum of the master. After Montaigne gives us grand examples of the essay as it lives today. Ian Frazier, author of Great Plains
Imagine the dinner party: not just Montaigne but many Montaignes resurrected in these brilliant essays by twenty-eight of today s most inventive writers. The table is crowded, enlivened by the paradoxical warmth of Montaigne s detachment and by the parry and thrust of ideas, often tantamount to a kind of quiet eros. It s a dinner full of random appetites, the kind of party we leave knowing ourselves a little less, which might mean a little better. What a feast this collection is. It satisfies a hunger intellect meeting empathy that enlarges us. Barbara Hurd, author of Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts and What Remains
The University of Georgia PressAthens, Georgia 30602www.ugapress.org
ISBN 978-0-8203-4815-5"
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Homage and More By hh I feared this volume might prove to be un tout petit precious as notable essayists groovily riffed on the timeless pieces of MM (some of which are great, many of which are good but not spectacular despite the way people genuflect when the name is mentioned). But no. I was happily surprised to find that most of the entries were thoughtful with great meaning for modern readers. And oddly original (except where writers felt obligated to do the "ramble," which for the most part was too superficial an idea of how to pay homage to MM as well as somewhat annoying as line after line cascaded down the page naked of punctuation or with punctuation tossed in randomly like peppercorns in a beet salad then partially retrieved as the chef realized the fallacy of putting them in that kind of salad but of course some were left and those stand out,, precisely because they are left and we know the dog won't eat them so what to do with leftovers). Hence, if you can get beyond that misstep, there is much here worth one's time. Each entry begins with a quote that serves as an appetizer more than a referent. Following the essay is a short blurb in which the writer explains what was intended or how the piece took shape (think bonus feature on a DVD). Read the work with an open mind. If you simply want MM go re-read MM. If you want short, beefy bumps that leave you rubbing the spot then this collection is about as good as you are likely to get. In many ways it is actually better than just re-reading MM because the ensemble presents very differently from piece to piece, one can never tell what charming strangeness will be lobbed out from the pages. These modern pieces also do something that MM, Seneca or many other extinct palers can't quite achieve today: they make you pause between pages to ponder not just the ideas against self, but also timely applications in myriad ways tangible and poignant. Frankly, I found the best way to appreciate the collection was to read it a bit here, a bit there and during downtime throw in liberal soakings in audible.com's version of MM's originals. Like Chinese eye exercises, one focuses at a raised digit just past the nose then down several centuries and back. At times dizzying; sometimes you just notice some dirt under your thumbnail.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. strong collection--don't be put off even if you haven't read Montaigne By B. Capossere Read about the essay form for more than five or six minutes, and you’re almost bound to come across a reference to Montaigne. Write essays, and it’s almost incumbent upon you to at some point confront Montaigne, who began the whole thing so long ago. Which makes it surprising it’s taken so long for an anthology that asks contemporary essayists to do just that in blunt, precise fashion, as the editors Patrick Madden and Chris Lazar relate in their introduction, comparing the essays to cover songs: “We asked more than two dozen . . . essayists to give us their take on a Montaignean subject . . . [in an] attempt to reenvision Montaigne’s topics through a contemporary sensibility.” As an added bonus, the editors also asked the authors to include a brief coda “explaining the process through which the essayist translated, transfigured, reimagined, or rethought some of the essential ideas, figures, and motifs in Montaigne’s original” (and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I preferred a few codas to the actual essays themselves). Like most collections, After Montaigne has its hits and misses, but the former easily outnumber the latter, and the scales are also tilted by the fact that the excellent essays make the worst ones mostly forgettable.Similar to Montaigne’s originals, the essays range widely in subject and tone, range perhaps even more widely in style and structure, and finally also vary in their attitude toward their source material—some writing in concert with Montaigne, some against (some, as they tell us in the coda, began one way but ended the other), some yanking him forward in time, others content to let him remain in the past. This variety is a clear strength of the collection, as one is almost certain to find something (more than a few somethings more likely) that appeals.I confess the collection started a bit rough for me, but hit its stride a few essays in with Lia Purpura’s standout piece “Of Prayers,” concerning the murder on one of her students by the student’s father, funneling the incident through a sharp focus on the quilt found at the crime scene: “The quilt bore the weight of the act, of the bodies; and since such fabric isn’t given to absorbing, it must have made channels, and there the blood pooled. There were runnels. And chambers.” The murder is linked as well to the suicide of one of Purpura’s close friends, an act Purpura imagines again and again, as “a new piece of that scene fills in, suggests itself, makes a bid for inclusion.” I loved the movement within this piece, the vividness of its scenes and details, the fully introspective voice, and startlement of language. This was easily my favorite piece, but far from the only strong one. My other favorites were:Bret Lott’s “Of Giving the Lie.” I liked the way the essay was structure, along with its focus on story, use of third person, and strong sense of narrative and place.Steven Church’s “Of Idleness” makes use of photos, historical references, and news stories as he examines his own relationship to the idea of idleness and in particular the form it takes via the teenagers that loiter in stores and public areas, but especially just across the street from his home. Throughout, one has the sense that Church is unsure himself of what he’ll learn about his attitudes, and the end scene is pitch perfect.Barry Borich’s “Of Wearing My Red Dress” takes what could have been a breezy piece focusing on clothes and shifts quickly into a substantive, at times disturbing examination of how her social interactions and dress (the titular one in particular) intertwined.Judith Oriz Cofer’s “Of Books and Huecos” is a poignant, moving work that begins with the author disposing of her recently deceased mother’s goods, several of which becomes vehicles for her to come to understand her immigrant mother’s two-world existence, her longing for home, and the way the author herself has “no dream of home that can compare to hers.”In a somewhat different vein from the other essays, Chris Arthur’s “Of Solitude” is a nice overview both of Montaigne and his work and of the essay in general, bringing in his own experiences but in a less intimate fashion than many of the other writers.Marcia Aldrich has a painful (literally and otherwise) epiphany while on a horseback ride in Mexico, made perhaps even more agonizingly effective by the reader knowing just where this piece is likely to go.These half-dozen or so stood out particularly for me, but most others succeeded at least partially. Some I wholly enjoyed but felt they seemed not quite complete, some on the other hand went longer than I needed them to, but still had long passages that were moving or thought-provoking, and one or two didn’t compel so much in their content but were presented in an engaging voice. There were only a handful I didn’t much care for at all, and as mentioned above, these few were more than balanced by the stronger ones, making this an easy collection to recommend, whether one has read Montaigne or not.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Don't bother By Peter Morelli Poor attempt to mimic the master.
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