Essay collection captures essence of human life

Check out the titles of his “tries’’: “By diverse means we arrive at the same end’’; “How we cry and laugh for the same thing.’’ Candor and lack of pretension made Montaigne’s essays revolutionary. They still speak to us five centuries down the road.

From this well-trodden landscape now springs forth “The Chairs Are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City,’’ Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti’s collection of 72 essays, some petite half-pagers, others more lengthy, all mining the “what is it to be human?’’ Montaignian terrain.

Like Montaigne, the authors - friends and fellow Torontonians - provide insights into ordinary things: monogamy, e-mail spam, going to the gym, the role of art, how to build community, quitting smoking, and what to charge for charades classes (yes, Mr. Glouberman, a performer and impresario, teaches improv music and acting).

“People’s Protective Bubbles Are Okay,’’ the title of the lead-off salvo, is a succinct, hilarious manifesto against performance art on public transport. “[A] city is a place where you can be alone in public, and where you have that right. It’s necessary to screen people out. . So don’t try to fix this. There is no problem.’’ The shorter efforts fly better than the rambling ones. At just over a page, “Why Robert McKee Is Wrong About ‘Casablanca’ ’’ briskly skewers the screenwriting guru’s fondness for Rick Blaine/Humphrey Bogart’s idealized version of tortured love. “I think Robert McKee might be a very bad husband,’’ Glouberman dryly concludes.

Attention to classic movies aside, Glouberman’s concerns (and these are his observations, not Ms. Heti’s) shade more toward hipsterism than mass culture. He hangs out in bars (when he’s not sweet-talking them to turn down their music), drinks at parties, and rails against gentrification. To his credit, like Montaigne, he second-guesses himself and his own tribe, accusing the urbanist pedestrian/cycling subculture as privileged and combating political opportunism, even when it comes from the left.