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Il salto: Elegia per un amico
Il 23 luglio 2008, a New York, Harris J. Wulfson si getta sotto un treno della metro. Harris amava la musica e le donne, aveva un lavoro, un amore e una vita piena, a tratti felice. Soffriva, però, di episodi psicotici, ed è dopo uno di questi che fugge dall’ospedale dove è ricoverato e si lancia nel bagliore di un treno in arrivo alla stazione. Per Sarah Manguso la scomparsa di Harris è la perdita di un amico, il più caro, il più intimo. Ma l’autrice non vuole ricostruire le circostanze del suicidio e neppure scrivere la sua biografia.
Il salto è un memoir, una meditazione e un libro sulle parole: amicizia, memoria, dolore, morte. Parole sincere, perché precise e delicate. E immortali, perché materia della vita e di tutte le storie. Ma soprattutto parole coraggiose e necessarie, perché maneggiare il dolore è difficile e faticoso, a volte quanto provarlo, ma aiuta ad accettare il distacco, anche quello definitivo, e a fare il salto verso l’amore e l’infinito.
Questo libro è per chi si abbraccia, contano a cinque, e poi sceglie di andare a dormire sul divano, per chi piange cantando a squarciagola Forever young di Bob Dylan, per chi saltella di gioia a pugni stretti e per chi crede che la misura del passato sia la larghezza, che come un’ala porta con sé anche gli amici perduti.
Il salto è un memoir, una meditazione e un libro sulle parole: amicizia, memoria, dolore, morte. Parole sincere, perché precise e delicate. E immortali, perché materia della vita e di tutte le storie. Ma soprattutto parole coraggiose e necessarie, perché maneggiare il dolore è difficile e faticoso, a volte quanto provarlo, ma aiuta ad accettare il distacco, anche quello definitivo, e a fare il salto verso l’amore e l’infinito.
Questo libro è per chi si abbraccia, contano a cinque, e poi sceglie di andare a dormire sul divano, per chi piange cantando a squarciagola Forever young di Bob Dylan, per chi saltella di gioia a pugni stretti e per chi crede che la misura del passato sia la larghezza, che come un’ala porta con sé anche gli amici perduti.
112 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 2012
About the author
Sarah Manguso
23 books792 followersSarah Manguso is the author of nine books, most recently the novel LIARS.
Her previous novel, VERY COLD PEOPLE, was longlisted for the Wingate Literary Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
Her other books include a story collection, two poetry collections, and four acclaimed works of nonfiction: 300 ARGUMENTS, ONGOINGNESS, THE GUARDIANS, and THE TWO KINDS OF DECAY.
Her work has been recognized by an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. Her writing has been translated into thirteen languages.
She grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Los Angeles.
Her previous novel, VERY COLD PEOPLE, was longlisted for the Wingate Literary Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
Her other books include a story collection, two poetry collections, and four acclaimed works of nonfiction: 300 ARGUMENTS, ONGOINGNESS, THE GUARDIANS, and THE TWO KINDS OF DECAY.
Her work has been recognized by an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. Her writing has been translated into thirteen languages.
She grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 126 reviews
January 11, 2023
Not my favourite of Manguso's books but the final third was breathtaking. Her prose is just so sharp and perfect. She's so very good at what she does.
March 5, 2020
A giugno 2019 scrivevo solo questo:
“Questo libro è così toccante e struggente che non ho ancora le parole giuste per scriverne.”
Non ce le ho ancora le parole.
Questa più che una recensione, è la narrazione dell’incontro con questo libro.
Sono stata attratta da questo libro un’estate mentre ero alle terme.
Mi sembrava una lettura che si potesse fare in un paio di ore e fu così che scelsi quel libro dalla mia libreria Kindle. Quello tra tanti su cui ero indecisa.
I libri ci scelgono e ci vengono a trovare quando è il momento giusto per leggerli.
Inizio a leggerlo spensierata, perché tale era l’ambiente che mi circondava. E dalle prime pagine la scrittura mi è sembrata leggera, adatta a un clima di vacanza. Era giugno, ricordo. E nel pieno della mia ricettività, vengo travolta da un’onda d’urto a forte impatto emotivo.
E resto così, interdetta, travolta e stravolta da questo tsunami di emozioni.
Sul sito NN
🗞 https://www.nneditore.it/libri/il-salto/
“Questo libro è così toccante e struggente che non ho ancora le parole giuste per scriverne.”
Non ce le ho ancora le parole.
Questa più che una recensione, è la narrazione dell’incontro con questo libro.
Sono stata attratta da questo libro un’estate mentre ero alle terme.
Mi sembrava una lettura che si potesse fare in un paio di ore e fu così che scelsi quel libro dalla mia libreria Kindle. Quello tra tanti su cui ero indecisa.
I libri ci scelgono e ci vengono a trovare quando è il momento giusto per leggerli.
Inizio a leggerlo spensierata, perché tale era l’ambiente che mi circondava. E dalle prime pagine la scrittura mi è sembrata leggera, adatta a un clima di vacanza. Era giugno, ricordo. E nel pieno della mia ricettività, vengo travolta da un’onda d’urto a forte impatto emotivo.
E resto così, interdetta, travolta e stravolta da questo tsunami di emozioni.
Sul sito NN
🗞 https://www.nneditore.it/libri/il-salto/
February 14, 2016
I love small, perfect books. Books that can be read in one sitting, with enough time left over afterward, to bask in them, think about them, savor them. "The All of It," by Jeannette Haien. Penelope Fitzgerald's novels. "Fifty Days of Solitude" by Doris Grumbach. And this book, "The Guardians," by Sarah Manguso. Unlike many books about death, it is not also about affirming life. This is a book about someone dying, and how that death affects another. A man jumps in front of a train. A woman reads about it in the newspaper. The man turns out to be the woman's dear friend. This is not fiction. This is an essay about Manguso coming to terms with her friend, Harris, taking his own life. Manguso is a poet, and there is a poet's economy in the telling. But I would not call her writing poetic in any flowery sense of the word. She writes with great strength about how grief is individual and private. The beauty in this is that she captures its privacy so well that she spoke to exactly how I feel about my own experiences with grief: "Don't tell me about the rich variety of mourning customs throughout the world from the beginning of civilization to now ... I don't care to know how others act out the playlet of their ruination. I want to know about my particular grief, which is unknowable, just like everyone else's." Having devoured this book, I will go back and reread it slowly, and slowly again. Next up: Manguso's "Ongoingness."
March 7, 2015
You know how I feel about Sarah Manguso. Beautiful spare prose about losing a friend to tragedy. About loving people and meeting new people and loving them and time and grief and dybbuks and how no one can observe the colour of your grief but you. Beautiful and important.
November 30, 2020
A deeply compelling and nuanced grief memoir. It may not have been a great time for me to read this, as I'm currently grieving, but Manguso's poetic voice often brought me comfort. It also burrowed into my thoughts and made my heart heavy for her loss.
July 26, 2019
Kurt Vonnegut says the best thing a poet can do is write a poem and send it to a friend. Sarah Manguso did that here. She wrote a poem for Harris. We are lucky, we get to see it too.
October 26, 2017
I loved Sarah Manguso's book, The Two Kinds of Decay, but nowhere near as much as love this book, The Guardians, a sparse, but beautiful book about the author's investigation into the suicide of a friend. I could get lost in her prose and her raw emotions. There's just nothing more to be said.
June 17, 2012
The thing with death is that the solution key to so many mysteries, including the final whys and hows and “what does that feel like,” all get buried with the body. In the case of Harris, the inspiration for Sarah Manguso’s elegy “The Guardians,” there are an additional 10 hours worth of mysteries that occurred between when her friend left the hospital without money, a phone or identification, and when he tossed his own body in front of a train.
Manguso met Harris in college and was good enough friends with him to get invited to his family’s home for a holiday. They lived together with a handful of roommates for awhile in New York City in a loft with makeshift cubicle style rooms. And when the World Trade Centers fell, it was his arm around her and his out-of-town getaway stop where they took refuge in the aftermath. Between them they had inside jokes and a poem by Mangusos. They had drinks and birthday cakes and conversations about the size of his junk.
So what happened to Harris: He’d been hospitalized twice before and it’s his third stay when he walks out the front door, does something indiscernible for 10 hours, then jumps in front of a train. Manguso can’t remember exactly when she last saw him. She’d been abroad for a year. Now that he’s gone, he’s stuck in her craw. This story seems to be a way of exorcising him, or considering what happened.
Manguso isn’t interested in a journalistic account of events. She doesn’t want to interview the conductor from the train or Harris’s parents. She’s also not interested in writing fan fiction to invent the missing 10 hours. She has some hypothesis on the whys -- ranging from the side effects of his medication or being encouraged by a dybbuk. Manguso’s background is poetry, which she uses to create memory vignettes.
I don’t find this kind of writing lovely, I find it annoyingly coy. Her sentences dance around the edges of what she means. Like: She refers to her now-husband in memories as “The man who wasn’t yet my husband.” Occasionally all that swirling pushes out a great sentence or a great idea. But for the most part it feels like reading vague status updates from your most emo Facebook friend. Some people would like the way this is written and I can appreciate that. But it’s a stylistic issue for me and this just feels too super-serious and purposefully fuzzy.
Manguso met Harris in college and was good enough friends with him to get invited to his family’s home for a holiday. They lived together with a handful of roommates for awhile in New York City in a loft with makeshift cubicle style rooms. And when the World Trade Centers fell, it was his arm around her and his out-of-town getaway stop where they took refuge in the aftermath. Between them they had inside jokes and a poem by Mangusos. They had drinks and birthday cakes and conversations about the size of his junk.
So what happened to Harris: He’d been hospitalized twice before and it’s his third stay when he walks out the front door, does something indiscernible for 10 hours, then jumps in front of a train. Manguso can’t remember exactly when she last saw him. She’d been abroad for a year. Now that he’s gone, he’s stuck in her craw. This story seems to be a way of exorcising him, or considering what happened.
Manguso isn’t interested in a journalistic account of events. She doesn’t want to interview the conductor from the train or Harris’s parents. She’s also not interested in writing fan fiction to invent the missing 10 hours. She has some hypothesis on the whys -- ranging from the side effects of his medication or being encouraged by a dybbuk. Manguso’s background is poetry, which she uses to create memory vignettes.
I don’t find this kind of writing lovely, I find it annoyingly coy. Her sentences dance around the edges of what she means. Like: She refers to her now-husband in memories as “The man who wasn’t yet my husband.” Occasionally all that swirling pushes out a great sentence or a great idea. But for the most part it feels like reading vague status updates from your most emo Facebook friend. Some people would like the way this is written and I can appreciate that. But it’s a stylistic issue for me and this just feels too super-serious and purposefully fuzzy.
March 5, 2012
I found this beautifully written, and very, very moving.
The subject is the suicide of one of the author's closest friends... but as with almost all books I love, it's about much more: the meaning of family and relationship and marriage and friendship, and how slippery and undefinable, finally, those things are; grief and mourning and how undefinable they are, as well; how we try to understand our lives, and how impossible it is to do that, and the necessity of continuing to try.
The Guardians is brief, but intensely full of feeling. It's written in a series of episodes/fragments/snapshots that aren't chronological, and that seem completely appropriate to the author's process of trying to document, understand, accept something that is unacceptable to her in a fundamental way. There's nothing cliched about the writing or the feelings Sarah Manguso describes; I kept being surprised and startled, and completely believing in the truth of what she writes. I think this book will stay with me for a long time. And I'm happy I own it, because I know I'll want to read it again.
On a sort of side note, one of the things I most appreciated about the book--along with Sarah Manguso's intense honesty, and her graceful writing--is the fact that it's about what many people would consider a "secondary" kind of relationship: a friendship, not a marriage or intimate partnership or familial relationship. At one point, the author writes about the difficulty and confusion of grieving someone who isn't family or her husband. To me, the book is a gorgeous illustration of how much those other relationships can matter, if we're lucky enough to have them (and the last word of the book is "lucky"); they can be as rich and deep and essential as the relationships that we're often told should take priority over them. Sarah Manguso says this way more beautifully in The Guardians, of course, without actually saying it.
The subject is the suicide of one of the author's closest friends... but as with almost all books I love, it's about much more: the meaning of family and relationship and marriage and friendship, and how slippery and undefinable, finally, those things are; grief and mourning and how undefinable they are, as well; how we try to understand our lives, and how impossible it is to do that, and the necessity of continuing to try.
The Guardians is brief, but intensely full of feeling. It's written in a series of episodes/fragments/snapshots that aren't chronological, and that seem completely appropriate to the author's process of trying to document, understand, accept something that is unacceptable to her in a fundamental way. There's nothing cliched about the writing or the feelings Sarah Manguso describes; I kept being surprised and startled, and completely believing in the truth of what she writes. I think this book will stay with me for a long time. And I'm happy I own it, because I know I'll want to read it again.
On a sort of side note, one of the things I most appreciated about the book--along with Sarah Manguso's intense honesty, and her graceful writing--is the fact that it's about what many people would consider a "secondary" kind of relationship: a friendship, not a marriage or intimate partnership or familial relationship. At one point, the author writes about the difficulty and confusion of grieving someone who isn't family or her husband. To me, the book is a gorgeous illustration of how much those other relationships can matter, if we're lucky enough to have them (and the last word of the book is "lucky"); they can be as rich and deep and essential as the relationships that we're often told should take priority over them. Sarah Manguso says this way more beautifully in The Guardians, of course, without actually saying it.
July 12, 2023
I have no interest in hanging a true story on an artificial scaffolding of a plot, but what is the true story? My friend died- that isn't a story. p30
I didn't feel a thing. Not for years. p17
Sarah Manguso writes from heartbreak, from tragedy, from gathered wisdom. A good friend died and the light he brought into the world is transferred to the page in this tribute to their friendship. Did he fall or was he pushed by his inner demons who may have taken the form of Akathusia? This is a clinically (ill)defined medical condition (which can be a side effect of antipsychotic medication or some other neurological event) characterised by intolerable restlessness.
I am aware of accuracy as an abstract goal, but I don't know what it looks like or how to find it or how I would know it if I found it or what I would do if I did.p43
I have always gravitated to friends like Harris: funny, tender, creative, wise. A lot of these friends died early in the AIDS epidemic and over the decades there were overdoses, modern diseases; some did decide to suicide and some are now famous. I don't see much of them either.
This book is titled as an elegy and fittingly it is short, compressed with highlights. At he same time it is huge enough to encompass its subjects: life, loss, the mysterious threads of connection.
I often forget that I am a particle in a cosmic process that has nothing to do with human desire or justice. I forget that the world is chaos, that it is is incorruptible. p88
I didn't feel a thing. Not for years. p17
Sarah Manguso writes from heartbreak, from tragedy, from gathered wisdom. A good friend died and the light he brought into the world is transferred to the page in this tribute to their friendship. Did he fall or was he pushed by his inner demons who may have taken the form of Akathusia? This is a clinically (ill)defined medical condition (which can be a side effect of antipsychotic medication or some other neurological event) characterised by intolerable restlessness.
I am aware of accuracy as an abstract goal, but I don't know what it looks like or how to find it or how I would know it if I found it or what I would do if I did.p43
I have always gravitated to friends like Harris: funny, tender, creative, wise. A lot of these friends died early in the AIDS epidemic and over the decades there were overdoses, modern diseases; some did decide to suicide and some are now famous. I don't see much of them either.
This book is titled as an elegy and fittingly it is short, compressed with highlights. At he same time it is huge enough to encompass its subjects: life, loss, the mysterious threads of connection.
I often forget that I am a particle in a cosmic process that has nothing to do with human desire or justice. I forget that the world is chaos, that it is is incorruptible. p88
November 8, 2020
maybe my fav sarah manguso book. trying to solve the death of a friend in order to save them, to solve never-ending grief. but there is no clear equation, just guessing around abt what could've helped, and imagining dybbuks in the corner of rooms. manguso's love and devotion for her friend harris holds this book together like real flesh - i think we can all relate to how perfect it used to feel to stand on a train platform with a good friend, no hesitation or anxiety about when time will run out. when loved ones leave us with no warning, in that empty space, sometimes we fall for them harder.
Read
June 4, 2018I read this in one day, in couple of sittings, and I just didn’t get into it. I hate to say that a grief memoir left me cold, but it did. I’ve never lost a friend, so I’m going to hold onto it and perhaps it will mean more to me in future.
March 7, 2018
Manguso dissects her grief and friendship with gorgeous spare prose - this is 100 pages of pure, compressed power. Glorious.
March 6, 2014
Manguso, a fighter for the perfect and tiny and tight prose, is whirlwind of encouragement to work and always work and push to perfect writing. Having been to a craft talk and reading of hers, speaking to her of my own struggles as a writer, I look back on this book as an example of what I want my work to someday be compared to. I want my trials and tribulations worded so poignantly and clearly. I want someone to one day ask me, "How did you do it?" just as I did to Manguso.
She writes of her survivor's guilt when her friend Harris dies from jumping in front of a train after escaping a psych ward (his third admission to one). She feels partially responsible, unforgiving of herself for not noticing the signs and not being there for him when he needed her and everyone dear to him close by. It took her a few years to approach this event, too hard for her to touch and prod. But she fought through it, and you can see it in her writing: it is segmented, as if she is touching the pain and then baking off when it hurts too much.
I cannot wait to reread this book. And I look forward to meeting her again one day!
She writes of her survivor's guilt when her friend Harris dies from jumping in front of a train after escaping a psych ward (his third admission to one). She feels partially responsible, unforgiving of herself for not noticing the signs and not being there for him when he needed her and everyone dear to him close by. It took her a few years to approach this event, too hard for her to touch and prod. But she fought through it, and you can see it in her writing: it is segmented, as if she is touching the pain and then baking off when it hurts too much.
I cannot wait to reread this book. And I look forward to meeting her again one day!
February 21, 2016
"To claim oneself a writer when one is not a writer is an insult to writers, but to call oneself crazy when one is not crazy is an insult to crazy people. It belittles what they've accomplished." (91) -- As the title suggests this is in praise of a friend and of love. It is also in praise of the man who was sick and does not talk against his illness. This is a moving elegy about a woman's mourning and one of its biggest themes is journey and searching. Like Harris whose last ten hours consisted of walking Manguso writes in search of. She looks for closure, she looks for meaning, for coincidence, she especially looks for blame. Whether it's to blame herself, mental illness, psychotropic drugs, people, life, death, she writes and writes and writes in hopes that a thing will come out of this. That thing takes on the form of regret, of joy, of guilt and maybe resentment.
I loved this book. There were too many moments I softly gasped recognizing myself in her and her words. I'd imagine that there's no proper way to discuss a loved one's suicide but this comes pretty close.
I loved this book. There were too many moments I softly gasped recognizing myself in her and her words. I'd imagine that there's no proper way to discuss a loved one's suicide but this comes pretty close.
February 1, 2012
i thought this was so beautifully written.
it's about the death of Harris, a friend of the author, and even though it's a slight book, it also covers depression, intimacy, suicide, belonging, writing and 9/11.
it's a sad book about losing a friend 'It doesn't sound like much when I say my friend died. He wasn't my father or my son or my husband.'
I like how Manguso writes about grief:
'I can't measure my grief and I can't show anyone what color it is. I can offer testimony that others can reject or accept on faith, but my grief is always just my grief, unobservable by anyone but me, and then imperfectly. And maybe it isn't even grief anymore; maybe it's envy of people who aren't grieving, or shame that my grief is lasting so long when I'm not even part of Harris's family.'
The back of my proof copy compares it to Joan Didion's 'Year of Magical Thinking', which is kind of obvious but not far off - it has a similar writing style, but also felt much more raw.
it's about the death of Harris, a friend of the author, and even though it's a slight book, it also covers depression, intimacy, suicide, belonging, writing and 9/11.
it's a sad book about losing a friend 'It doesn't sound like much when I say my friend died. He wasn't my father or my son or my husband.'
I like how Manguso writes about grief:
'I can't measure my grief and I can't show anyone what color it is. I can offer testimony that others can reject or accept on faith, but my grief is always just my grief, unobservable by anyone but me, and then imperfectly. And maybe it isn't even grief anymore; maybe it's envy of people who aren't grieving, or shame that my grief is lasting so long when I'm not even part of Harris's family.'
The back of my proof copy compares it to Joan Didion's 'Year of Magical Thinking', which is kind of obvious but not far off - it has a similar writing style, but also felt much more raw.
January 29, 2021
This is as close to five star without me giving it that rating. The style of writing makes you want to just plow through, but don't. Each piece, whether paragraph or a few pages, is worth thinking about in its own right. The relationship with a friend that ends through suicide never really ends, though the echoes slowly fade.
June 12, 2016
The second book by Manguso that I have read. She is so good at brevity and emotional brutality. Like this is heartbreaking and so was Ongoingness: the End of a Diary. I think we share a lot of the same types of worries. Idk.
December 26, 2013
"Some parts of the story are gone, but they have left a heavy imprint, and even now I can detect the shape of what made it, the shape of what used to exist."
July 12, 2023
"L'amore rimane".
100 pagine di un libro intimo ed intenso.
100 pagine di un libro intimo ed intenso.
March 29, 2017
93 pagine che sono un condensato di dolore, amore, nostalgia, disperazione.
Non l'ho trovato molto distante dal nucleo profondo de "L' anno del pensiero magico" della Didion.
Il salto ti scava dentro con una prosa secca ma lirica, attraverso descrizioni che sono dei piccoli flash, isolati, anche graficamente, ma che assomigliano ai croccantini di cioccolato nello yougurt. Il dolce tuffato nella lattiginosa e densa crema acidula.
Un libro apparentemente ridotto all'osso come una poesia ermetica. In poco dice tutto.
E quel tutto tocca le nostre corde più profonde e ci porta con Harris sul binario dal quale ha spiccato il suo ultimo volo. Il suo salto
Non l'ho trovato molto distante dal nucleo profondo de "L' anno del pensiero magico" della Didion.
Il salto ti scava dentro con una prosa secca ma lirica, attraverso descrizioni che sono dei piccoli flash, isolati, anche graficamente, ma che assomigliano ai croccantini di cioccolato nello yougurt. Il dolce tuffato nella lattiginosa e densa crema acidula.
Un libro apparentemente ridotto all'osso come una poesia ermetica. In poco dice tutto.
E quel tutto tocca le nostre corde più profonde e ci porta con Harris sul binario dal quale ha spiccato il suo ultimo volo. Il suo salto
June 30, 2024
Manguso captures the emotions and questions that come with being a suicide loss survivor in a way that gave me an incredible amount of comfort. This book is so gorgeously written and provided me with a small amount of peace.
June 4, 2018
I love reading in bars and crying, see my highlights for some gems. Recommended to anyone who wants to explore grief and mental illness.
March 27, 2019
Incredible. Highly recommended.
September 23, 2013
In 2008 Manguso’s friend Harris, newly released from a mental hospital, jumped in front of a New York subway train. The previous ten hours, after a nurse opened the door for him, are unaccounted for. Manguso has come to believe that he was suffering from akathisia, a sort of unbearable all-over pins-and-needles feeling that makes people want to jump out of their skin (or jump out a window, or in front of a train, or commit a brutal murder). She had experienced a mild form of it after taking an antipsychotic drug that had also been prescribed for its anti-nausea properties.
This book is not a linear account of her friendship with Harris, or a journalistic attempt to document Harris’ illness or solve the mystery of his last hours. It’s instead a divergent series of vignettes from her life, Harris’ life, and their ten-year friendship. I have no problem with wandering, piecemeal memoirs, nor with the strategy of telling a life through tiny moments (e.g. Abigail Thomas’s Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life et al), but here Manguso’s fragments don’t add up to much.
I don’t feel I gained any insight into Harris’ life or illness; however, this may be a part of the point: proving that life is not a coherent narrative with a clear purpose and pattern (as Guardian reviewer Leo Robson notes here: “The intended effect is to kill off momentum, to deny a sense of comfortable, legible progress.”).
Nonetheless, this slim book felt light on content. For a truly great medical memoir, read Manguso's previous book, The Two Kinds of Decay - which I have also reviewed here.
(My favorite line was “Everyone alive on Earth is here, cheating death at every minute.”)
This book is not a linear account of her friendship with Harris, or a journalistic attempt to document Harris’ illness or solve the mystery of his last hours. It’s instead a divergent series of vignettes from her life, Harris’ life, and their ten-year friendship. I have no problem with wandering, piecemeal memoirs, nor with the strategy of telling a life through tiny moments (e.g. Abigail Thomas’s Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life et al), but here Manguso’s fragments don’t add up to much.
I don’t feel I gained any insight into Harris’ life or illness; however, this may be a part of the point: proving that life is not a coherent narrative with a clear purpose and pattern (as Guardian reviewer Leo Robson notes here: “The intended effect is to kill off momentum, to deny a sense of comfortable, legible progress.”).
Nonetheless, this slim book felt light on content. For a truly great medical memoir, read Manguso's previous book, The Two Kinds of Decay - which I have also reviewed here.
(My favorite line was “Everyone alive on Earth is here, cheating death at every minute.”)
December 31, 2012
If there you are mourning -- or need to mourn -- this is a brief but suitable companion.
Two sensations dominate this prose elegy: grief, obviously, and much less obviously, akathisia, a dauntingly abstract state of "torment, restlessness, pulling or drawing or twisting sensation." Akathisia is a known side effect of a range of anti-psychotic drugs, such as the one the narrator's dead friend was given the same day he jumped in front of a moving train. The narrator believes that it was akathisia that led her friend to jump, but akathisia's presence in the narrative is not the forensic solution to the mystery of her friend's death; its function is to mirror back the ineffability of grief itself. "If there were a way to describe the experience of this disorder (akathisia) more clearly, clinicians might better be able to diagnose it, treat it, and prevent its common outcomes" (37) she speculates at one point. But instead of performing this clinical task, her short work instead more precisely describes the processes of grief: "I want to set aside every expectation of how I should feel or act given that my friend had a bad death, and try to explain what has actually happened to me," she announces, quickly qualifying this ambition with "if, in fact, anything has actually happened to me at all." (86). Which is at the core of her anguish: grief can't be measured or accurately observed from outside. Grief, indeed, might not bear any logical relationship to the loss that prompts it. It is not, she observes, for the person who has died, and after a time, it is not even for the community of living who mourn him.
In attempting to communicate the mysteries of this suffering, Manguso veers close to hipster-twee in the first thirty or so pages, as she substitutes the observation of irrelevant details for statements of feeling. Hang in there. A deeper affect emerges in the last two thirds of the book, and it lends a resonance to the first thirty pages that they won't have on the initial read.
Two sensations dominate this prose elegy: grief, obviously, and much less obviously, akathisia, a dauntingly abstract state of "torment, restlessness, pulling or drawing or twisting sensation." Akathisia is a known side effect of a range of anti-psychotic drugs, such as the one the narrator's dead friend was given the same day he jumped in front of a moving train. The narrator believes that it was akathisia that led her friend to jump, but akathisia's presence in the narrative is not the forensic solution to the mystery of her friend's death; its function is to mirror back the ineffability of grief itself. "If there were a way to describe the experience of this disorder (akathisia) more clearly, clinicians might better be able to diagnose it, treat it, and prevent its common outcomes" (37) she speculates at one point. But instead of performing this clinical task, her short work instead more precisely describes the processes of grief: "I want to set aside every expectation of how I should feel or act given that my friend had a bad death, and try to explain what has actually happened to me," she announces, quickly qualifying this ambition with "if, in fact, anything has actually happened to me at all." (86). Which is at the core of her anguish: grief can't be measured or accurately observed from outside. Grief, indeed, might not bear any logical relationship to the loss that prompts it. It is not, she observes, for the person who has died, and after a time, it is not even for the community of living who mourn him.
In attempting to communicate the mysteries of this suffering, Manguso veers close to hipster-twee in the first thirty or so pages, as she substitutes the observation of irrelevant details for statements of feeling. Hang in there. A deeper affect emerges in the last two thirds of the book, and it lends a resonance to the first thirty pages that they won't have on the initial read.
August 27, 2012
"I want to set aside every expectation of how I should feel or act given that my friend had a bad death, and try to explain what has actually happened to me—if, in fact, anything has actually happened to me." (p. 86)
This brief book is Manguso's attempt to make sense of the death of her close friend Harris. When she had been out of the country and hadn't seen him for a year, he escaped from a psychiatric hospital and threw himself in front of a train. But the Harris she knew had not been troubled or crazy or suicidal, certainly not at first, and Manguso parses every step in the evolution of her feelings toward the Harris she remembers and the Harris, perhaps somehow a different one, who committed suicide.
At the start, in its portrait of young people feeding and feeding on the artistic energy of New York, it reads like Patti Smith's Just Kids; in its later search for an authentic expression of her grief, it reads like Peter Handke's A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. It's not quite as resonant as either of those, but then that would be a very tall order.
This brief book is Manguso's attempt to make sense of the death of her close friend Harris. When she had been out of the country and hadn't seen him for a year, he escaped from a psychiatric hospital and threw himself in front of a train. But the Harris she knew had not been troubled or crazy or suicidal, certainly not at first, and Manguso parses every step in the evolution of her feelings toward the Harris she remembers and the Harris, perhaps somehow a different one, who committed suicide.
At the start, in its portrait of young people feeding and feeding on the artistic energy of New York, it reads like Patti Smith's Just Kids; in its later search for an authentic expression of her grief, it reads like Peter Handke's A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. It's not quite as resonant as either of those, but then that would be a very tall order.
February 12, 2017
In brief paragraphs, images, and sections, Manguso explores the grief of losing a friend to suicide. And the grief of her still being "lucky". Of her making it through her own life, despite her own bouts of mental illness. I was moved by the content and engaged with her spare style. The reader can see both Sarah and Harris through Manguso's eyes. The joy of what these two people were together. And the deep, deep grief of what they didn't have. Maybe what no two human beings can have.
May 9, 2012
V. quiet and beautiful. Not as sparse as The Two Kinds of Decay (one of my favorite pieces of non-fiction ever), partly because it's longer and partly because the book is formatted with less white space, which, despite my best efforts, made me speed up as I read. There is so much pain in this book--her friend's suicide, her own illness struggles, 9/11, etc.--but there is so much lightness, as well. I admire Manguso's refusal to place herself at the center of it all but, rather, to grieve long and openly for what has been lost. Manguso's return to the night of her friend's suicide is a really strong and sad pull throughout the book, and reminds me so much of the obsessiveness of poems. That's why I love Manguso, I think: in many ways, her prose is poetry.
I told my mom I wasn't sure about the book title, but she said she thought that it was about guardians, about how we all are here to watch over each other. And I thought that was perfect.
I told my mom I wasn't sure about the book title, but she said she thought that it was about guardians, about how we all are here to watch over each other. And I thought that was perfect.
June 30, 2012
Beautifully written mini-memoir about a suicide (a close friend of the author left a mental institution and killed himself before the day was out). I was not surprised to find this writer is a poet. Her feelings, conflicted and straight-up, are palpable. “I tell everyone I know that my friend threw himself under a train.” It’s a simple fact yet conveys so much. She also touches a bit on 9/11 and there are some parallels between the grief felt that day on a massive level and her own, more localized grief. In one part she talks about all the people who went into the city to give blood: “Everyone gave blood then, too. It felt so good to help the dead people who weren’t coming.” A very powerful sentence, at least for me.
I’m not sure why I don’t rate this higher than three stars, perhaps because of the length, perhaps because it seems so deeply personal that it’s hard to “enjoy” it per se. I think this would be a worthwhile read for anyone affected by suicide or mental illness.
I’m not sure why I don’t rate this higher than three stars, perhaps because of the length, perhaps because it seems so deeply personal that it’s hard to “enjoy” it per se. I think this would be a worthwhile read for anyone affected by suicide or mental illness.
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