HUNGRY GERALD

HG (a bit of an idiot savant) began serious reading at the age of five. The favorite place to read was the Highbridge Public Library near HG’s apartment home at 1210 Woodycrest Avenue in the southwest Bronx. By the time HG was eight, the precocious little fellow had read (and committed to memory) most major works of American and European history. Beloved late elder sister, Beulah Naomi, would dazzle her friends when HG would answer their history questions with precise dates, battles, narratives, etc.. Soon after HG’s eighth birthday, HG lost the photographic memory and swift reading skills of HG’s earlier years. Minimally recovered. HG still loves to read. Books, actual books, and not Kindles, computers, phones. Recently, HG reread Philip Roth’s novel, “The Counterlife.” This remains HG’s favorite novel, masterly work of imagination and fiction writing. HG continues to ponder the injustice that Roth never received the Nobel for literature. HG (when in New Mexico) reads from the collected work of Montaigne (the book is too thick and heavy to transport to PEI). However, HG has kept his love alive for the French master alive by reading Sarah Bakewell’s “How To Live or A Life of Montaigne In One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.” Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), a French nobleman, remains relevant today and is a comfort during a pandemic and a Fascist fool as a President. Montaigne lived under despots and experienced plagues, continuous bloody religious wars and multitudinous dangers. He has much to teach us. Bakewell’s book was best described by Evan Newmark of the Wall Street Journal: ” It not only takes a long-dead Frenchman and brings him back to life, it then beautifully relates how Montaigne’s philosophy can shape and affect our own lives today.”