Master of the quotidian …

… Our Contemporary, Montaigne: He Pioneered the Personal Essay and Made Candor Literary | Humanities. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Someone writing randomly about what he’s thinking for hundreds of pages sounds pretty dull, but Montaigne pulls it off. “How does it happen that Montaigne is not ever, not on any of all those pages, even a bit of a bore?” [Lewis] Thomas asks, and then answers his own question: “He likes himself, to be sure, but is never swept off his feet after the fashion of bores.”