The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Today is the birthday of the man who said, "Even on the most exalted throne in the world, we are only sitting on our own rear end." That's French author Michel de Montaigne (books by this author), born near Bordeaux (1533). He was a learned man, a lawyer and a statesman, but he retired from public life in 1571 — on his 38th birthday — to begin a life of study. His chief subject was himself, and he wrote about it in a series of essays called Essais, after the French word meaning "trial" or "attempt." He was revolutionary in his belief that, by examining one's own life, one could better understand the wider world and the human condition. His best friend, the humanist scholar and poet Étienne de la Boétie died in 1563, and Montaigne missed their conversations greatly. His essays were like letters, a kind of conversation between Montaigne and an unknown correspondent; perhaps he thought of his dead friend as he wrote them.

In the essays, he wrote, "Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved."

And "Not being able to govern events, I govern myself."

And "The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself."

And "I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself."

It's the birthday of Colum McCann (1965) (books by this author). He was born in Dublin, into a middle-class home full of books. His father was features editor at The Irish Press. He went to journalism school at 17, then went to work at The Irish Press himself.

When he was 19, he spent a summer in New York City. He loved it, and vowed to return to America, which he did when he was 21. He went up to Cape Cod, bought a typewriter, and spent a summer trying to write profound things. But at the end of the summer, he had not written an entire single page, and he couldn't even comprehend the few sentences that he'd tried to write. He decided he needed to go out and explore America, to add a different set of experiences to his young life.

So he hopped on a bicycle and pedaled across the country for a year and a half, winding through 40 states and traversing 12,000 miles on two wheels. In Texas, he went to college, and he met Allison Hawke, who would become his wife.

In 2009, he published Let the Great World Spin, and it was a huge success. The book is set in the 1970s and weaves together the stories of a dozen New York protagonists, including prostitutes, a young radical Irish monk, and a Park Avenue mother in mourning for her son killed in Vietnam. It also won the National Book Award for fiction in 2009.

"I believe in the democracy of storytelling," said McCann in an interview. "I love the fact that our stories can cross all sorts of borders and boundaries. I feel humbled by the notion that I'm even a small part of the literary experience. I grew up in a house, in a city, in a country shaped by books. I don't know of a greater privilege than being allowed to tell a story, or to listen to a story. They're the only thing we have that can trump life itself."