Why Montaigne?

My recollection is that at some point when each of you left home, or departed on a journey of some significance, I urged Montaigne on you. I had read two books in which young men leaving home were given a single volume, Montaigne's essays, to help them find their way through life. Now, some years later Mike reports back that Montaigne is the shit. Bloom feels the same way, placing Montaigne in the Canon. And the common thread for these two critics is Nietzsche, who according to Bloom is a "professed disciple of Montaigne." So it's no secret why Mike took immediately to Montaigne. More Bloom: "Montaigne startles the common reader at each fresh encounter....No other writer overhears himself so acutely as Montaigne perpetually does;no other book is so much an ongoing process." Isn't that pretty much what we have here? An ongoing process? Perhaps a process separated by geography, at least for now, and by a few years in age, but still ongoing for all of us. So then the idea is to find out if Montaigne helps us in working out our own process.

pops