Phillip Lopate on Michel de Montaigne

I've started reading Phillip Lopate's Against Joie de Vivre: Personal Essays. I've been enjoying some of the essays, but others have left an unguent, unpleasant taste in my mouth. (Lopate is a bit of a confessionalist, which is a tricky mode to write in.)

However, I'm loving "What Happened to the Personal Essay?", especially the parts about Michel de Montaigne:

"It was Montaigne's peculiar project, which he claimed rightly or wrongly was original, to write about the one subject he knew best: himself. As with all succeeding literary self-portraits--or all succeeding stream-of-consciousness, for that matter--success depended on having an interesting consciousness, and Montaigne was blessed with an undulatingly supple, learned, skeptical, deep, sane, and candid one. In point of fact, he frequently strayed to worldly subjects, giving his opinion on everything from cannibals to coaches, but we do learn a large number of intimate and odd details about the man, down to his bowels and kidney stones. 'Sometimes there comes to me a feeling that I should not betray the story of my life,' he writes. On the other hand: 'No pleasure has any meaning for me without communication.'"

Ah, Montaigne, I want to be just like you when I grow up!  :)