I have tried to read Montaigne’s Essays from the beginning more than once, and each time I stalled somewhere in the first book. This summer I tried the opposite: open the book at random, read whichever essay the page belongs to, and stop.
It works better than it should. The essays were written and revised over two decades, and they do not build an argument in order.1 Read at random, they behave like what they are: a long conversation with someone who changes his mind and says so.
1 The first two books appeared in 1580; an expanded edition with a third book followed in 1588. He went on revising after that.
Short ones first
The one rule I added after a week: if the random page lands in a long essay, keep turning until a short one begins. The short essays are where the voice is plainest, and they make the long ones easier to enter later.
Reading in no order turned the book from a project into a companion.
A month in, I have read perhaps a third of it, in an order no one would recommend, and I have never enjoyed it more.
Notes and references
- Michel de Montaigne, Essays. First published 1580; expanded edition with Book III, 1588. Any complete modern translation.
- The random method is not original to me, and I cannot remember who suggested it.