Greetings, you barely sentient buckets of “progressive” filth. If you’re new here, or you’ve just blocked out the trauma of my past tongue-lashings, I used to write for Yr Wonkette. I have remained a loving subscriber all these years, because I’m a great person with a secure attachment style (to websites). Are you a paid subscriber? If not, it’s time to be more like me in this specific way.
Now I am back, because I asked really sincerely and Yr Wonkette is generous and kind. Drop whatever other bullshit you’re doing, put on the blue blocker glasses you bought with a podcast code, and settle in for a spectacular review of a fantastic book, Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry and Hope (Penguin Random House 2023).
I think I may need to hang out with author Sarah Bakewell. Is that weird to say about a woman I’ve never met? Whatever, let me have my goddamn feelings about a total stranger! Other Sarah and I have never spoken, and I have no idea what she looks like or how old she is. I don’t even care! I fully love this broad!
If you read nothing else in this review (selfish!) know this: Bakewell’s latest New York Times bestseller, Humanly Possible, is really, really great. I’ll get to that book in just a moment. But her most recent work of genius is not, in fact, my first time at the Bakewell literary rodeo.
Last year, I grew besotted with How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (Brilliance Audio 2011). Guess how many times I have listened to Bakewell’s biography of Famous Dead Frenchman™ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne? FOUR!
That’s due in part to narrator Davina Porter’s pleasant, veddy English voice. But what I love about How to Live is Bakewell’s writing. She takes a tender, empathetic, and devoutly nerdy approach to chronicling Montaigne’s every move as a humanist philosopher, loyal friend, semi-enthusiastic husband, and reluctant mayor. She tells you about his kidney stones! She tells you about his gay gay feelings for the love of his life, writer Etienne de La Boétie! She tells you even more about his kidney stones!
This brings us to Humanly Possible. Bakewell, herself a humanist, explains the many facets of a philosophy that centers values of compassion, interdependence, and kindness. Whether the individuals in question used the 19th century term “humanist” or not, Bakewell tracks the evolution of this school of thought through stories about such key figures as Petrarch, Erasmus, Christine de Pisan, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, Voltaire, E.M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, and many more.
Whether they are visual artists, authors, scientists, psychologists, or political leaders, Bakewell looks for the humanist spirit in standout individuals as well as in some extraordinary collaborative endeavors: libraries, schools, the United Nations (heard of it?) and others. She has the knack of taking seemingly disparate stories and weaving them together into a cohesive whole that makes you wonder why you didn’t see it all that way on your own.
Bakewell does not paint every humanist undertaking as a success or try to argue that there is one correct way to be a humanist. Secular, agnostic and religious humanists all get their moment in the spotlight. We even get to learn what the hell Esperanto is, and who came up with it and why.
She’s a scholar, but her work here is just as accessible as in her ode to Montaigne (he pops up in this book, too, although we don’t get to hear about kidney stones this time around). Her tone is often upbeat, even gently humorous, but she does not avoid diving into painful, frightening aspects of human history and contemporary society. There are, after all, plenty of reasons to believe that people are not fundamentally good or even just morally neutral. Some of the historical moments she recounts are deeply disappointing; others are incredibly sad; still others may evoke righteous rage or even despair.
As a fan and now-loyal reader, I really enjoyed the end of the book, where Bakewell’s own personality and life shine through a bit more. I loved the whole thing, but it’s nice to feel one is getting to know a little more of the person with whom one has, in a way, been spending so many hours.
Ultimately, Bakewell posits humanism as perhaps the most effective tool against fascism, both in theory and in practice. I hope you read this book and let it inspire the hell out of you.
Where to buy it!
It’s also available as an audiobook on Libro.fm right here (it helps support indie bookshops) and here’s my referral link if you want to get a Libro.fm membership.
HAHAHAHA I AM A MONSTER HAHAHAHAHA I AM BACK FUCKERS AHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA!
It is very cool that Sara Benincasa is back.
Now I feel all nostalgic for the W years.