Outside Reading #3: 1/10/10

Book Review

Conversation across centuries with the father of all bloggers

Patricia Cohen.

Published on December 17^th, 2010

Book: How to live by Sarah Bakewell

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/books/18montaigne.html

This essay is about the Sarah Bakewell’s life and her book, “How to live”, which explains the nonfictional character, Montaigne.

Cohen lauds the book that Bakewell wrote by using several literary terms. For example, she praises the book as “a form of a delightful conversation”. She also states the book as a “superb, spirited introduction to the master”. In addition, she stated that the book got a “rare review” from Britain. Those dictions are positive, convincing readers to feel sympathy toward Bakewell’s How to live. Those dictions seem to be the strengths of this essay since it reinforces the praise that Cohen wants to make readers feel the same way as she does.

The critical perspective of this work seems to be New Historian since it Cohen focuses more on the Bakewell’s life rather than the book. For instance, Patricia discussed about Bakewell decided to write when she was living in London. Patricia rarely comments on the choices of the Bakewell had made such as syntax, diction, imagery, figurative language, and so on. This seems to be the weakness of this essay since Cohen rarely focuses on the book, thus readers have no idea why Cohen is praising the book for. Cohen should have listed the techniques that Bakewell have used such as diction and imagery in her book so that reads can have ideas of what the book looks like.

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The connection between this work and other course material is the similarity between Bakewell’s nonfictional person, Montaigne and Edgar Allen Poe. I have heard about Edgar Allen Poe on 8^th grade year English class. My teacher declared him as the eccentric horror fiction writer ever lived. Edgar Allen Poe’s life was eccentric, indeed. He was orphan at young age when his mother died and that his dad abandoned him. He married his 13 years old cousin. Cohen describes Montaigne’s life as eccentric, also. His dad forced him to speak only Latin, even though his native language was French. Even though their lives were harsh and unusual, they both had been able to produce great literary works that other people look up to.

For her conclusion, Cohen states that Montane, the nonfictional person in Bakewell’s book, did not accumulate the fact that he was lonely and not exposed to other people’s works. Bakewell proposed that he should have followed other people’s works, “which was all he really wanted to do.” Maybe that is how to live people’s lives, by following at other people’s works and try to make their works interesting.