"Based on our backgrounds, I wouldn't expect to find much in common with Michel de Montaigne. He is permanently deceased in France; I am temporarily alive in Wisconsin. He was a nobleman born to nobility; I was born to a paper mill worker and a nurse. He was privately tutored in Latin from the age of two and enrolled in the University of Toulouse to study law when he was fourteen; I matriculated as a barn-booted bumpkin who still marks a second-place finish in the sixth-grade spelling bee as an intellectual pinnacle. And here's where the trail really splits: at the age of thirty-eight, Montaigne retired to the family estate, desiring, as he put it, to spend the rest of his days "in the bosom of the learned virgins." Gosh, I wish I'd have thought of that." -- Montaigne in Barn Boots by Michael Perry Michael Perry is a local to me author. It was so much fun to read about him getting cheese curds at the fast food drive through and name dropping a very specific, and expensive, local Italian restaurant. My younger brother has gotten food poisoning there twice, to the point that I refuse to go, even if it's very fancily decorated inside. 😑 In fact, I've been lucky enough to see Perry speak in person. He visited my high school, while I was a student, to talk about being a writer. I'm glad I finally picked up one of his books. This was entertaining, funny, and deeply thought provoking all at the same time. If you ever wanted to get an idea of what our lives are like in the rural Northwoods region of the US, this is a fun introduction. The premise is that Perry suffered a kidney stone. Being a self employed man in the US and needing to make some money quickly to pay the medical bills, Perry wrote an essay about it. During research for that essay, he came across Montaigne, who had also written an essay about his kidney stone centuries ago, and once Perry started reading Montaigne, he couldn't seem to stop. 😆

Posted by thewintersings at 2023-07-27 00:23:00 UTC