For anyone who has ever kept a diary, Sarah Manguso\u2019s Ongoingness (first published in the US in 2015) will give pause for thought. The American writer kept a diary over 25 years and it was 800,000 words long. She elects not to publish a word of it in Ongoingness. It turns out she does not wish to look back at what she wrote. This absorbing book \u2013 brief as a breath \u2013 examines the need to record. It seems, even if she never spells it out, that writing the diary was a compulsive rebuffing of mortality. Like all diarists, she was trying to commandeer time. A diary gives the writer the illusion of stopping time in its tracks. And time \u2013 making her peace with its ongoingness \u2013 is Manguso\u2019s obsession. Her book hints at diary-keeping as neurosis, a hoarding that is almost a syndrome, a malfunction, a grief at having no way to halt loss.<\/p>\n
As an essayist (for the New York Times magazine, the Paris Review, the New York Review of Books), Manguso makes it plain she cannot forget the book she may never write \u2013 it haunts her like a long shadow. This is referred to more than once in 300 Arguments, which is even shorter than Ongoingness \u2013 a collection of aphorisms (\u201cThink of this as a short book composed entirely of what I hoped would be a long book\u2019s quotable passages,\u201d is one regretful example).<\/p>\n
A good aphorism is a raft: it carries you.<\/p>\n
Even \u2013 particularly \u2013 bitter and twisted ones should have a perversely feelgood factor. In its concision, an aphorism could not be further from the unexpurgated journal Manguso wrote in the present tense \u2013 another denial of passing time.<\/p>\n
The best aphorisms are witty.<\/p>\n
When Oscar Wilde writes: \u201cIt is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances\u201d, he delicately tilts a thought on its axis, turning the received wisdom inside out. Dorothy Parker turns the tables similarly when she quips: \u201cIf you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.\u201d George Bernard Shaw\u2019s \u201cThose who cannot change their minds cannot change anything\u201d is a playful reminder of the tyranny of certainty expressed without doubt.<\/p>\n
The need for comfort through language is implicit \u2013 and sometimes explicit \u2013 in Manguso\u2019s work. A good aphorism will comfort: you might want to stick it on the fridge \u2013 or in your memory. Although she claims to have no fondness for beginnings and endings, her fear of formlessness is apparent. Perhaps she seized on the aphorism as a form of elegant punctuation, a new way to stop time with the (in every sense) arresting line. Both books are written in protest at the void and in fear of insignificance.<\/p>\n
The fridge-sticking quality of the 300 is debatable: many would do better on a stove \u2013 to warm up. Melancholy runs through a lot of them: \u201cAfter I stopped hoping to outgrow them, my fears were no longer a burden. Hope is what made them a burden.\u201d This is more wise impasse than argument \u2013 and one is already struck by the unleavened quality to the prose. \u201cInner beauty can fade, too.\u201d Definitely not one for the fridge. Or: \u201cWhat fails to kill me will kill me eventually.\u201d And here is a stark provocation: \u201cYou\u2019ll never know what your mother went through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of the aphorisms seem like opening gambits \u2013 you half expect \u201cDiscuss\u201d after the full stop (\u201cYou can choose your friends but not your friendships\u201d). The extent to which this proves interesting will depend on where you take it and to whom you introduce it. There are some aphorisms with which one can partly disagree: \u201cProgress takes place in the dark, when you aren\u2019t trying.\u201d The unconscious may quietly excel \u2013 but there are other forms of progress involving blood, sweat, tears and ceaseless trying (ask Winston Churchill). Some read like indecently abridged short stories: \u201cThe most fervent kiss of my life was less than five seconds long more than 10 years ago with someone else\u2019s husband. It still hasn\u2019t quite worn off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several suggest status anxiety: \u201cInteresting people aren\u2019t interested in appearing interested.\u201d Or competitive insecurity: \u201cI read your work hoping to find flaws. I stop reading it, fearing its perfection.\u201d Whatever the flaws of this collection, it makes enjoyable reading (partly because it brings on a rash of answering aphorisms. It makes you think).<\/p>\n
The difficulty is the grey landscape against which Manguso\u2019s own thinking seems to take place. A lack of wit clips the book\u2019s wings. \u201cAm I happy? Damned if I know, but give me a few minutes and I\u2019ll tell you whether you are.\u201d Give yourself 300 Arguments and it will not take long to reach a verdict on its astute, questing, exposed author.<\/p>\n
stem: kate kellaway
\ntitel: ongoingness and 300 arguments
\nbron: the guardian
\nperspectief: haunted by one book she may never write, the American essayist has instead written two volumes of edited highlights<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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