a lovely essay on memory and writing. ( )

Sarah Manguso has the ability of thinking and writing about memories in a sensible an profound way. Since Agostino from Ippona, our relationship with time is an open issue. ( )

Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso, is all about brevity, being less than 100 pages of what I found to be pure fascination. I almost finished it in one night, but when I felt my consciousness slipping, I saved it for the next day, as I didn’t want to miss anything. This is an interesting takeoff on the diary that she kept for twenty-five years. That monster had grown to over 800,000 words. In writing these reflections on the diary, she didn’t check it for anything. This book is about memories and impressions based on the original happenings, as well as her memories of recording things in her diary entries. Her passages/paragraphs rarely reach a half-page in this small-format book, and most are six lines or less.

I wholeheartedly agree with one reviewer who said, “Nearly every page of Ongoingness has a line that knocks the wind out of you a little.” Writer David Shields ended his blurb with this simple phrase, “I am in awe.” Individual entries are strong enough on their own, but it is truly impressive when there are pages and pages of them.

The following are a few lines quoted from the book.

“Marriage isn’t a fixed experience. It’s a continuous one. It changes form but is always there.”

“My life, which exists mostly in the memories of the people I’ve known, is deteriorating at the rate of physiological decay. A color, a sensation, the way someone said a single word—soon it will all be gone. In a hundred and fifty years no one alive will ever have known me.

“They were the moments when I was forced to admit that beginnings and ends are illusory. That history doesn’t begin or end, but it continues.”

Very often I would find myself reading a line or segment over and over in an attempt to see just how she constructed them, how she was able to make those few words do so much to my mind.

I am extremely taken with her writing, having been introduced and bowled over by her in the pages of the Paris Review. This book was a memoir (of a memoir) and she does short stories, essays, and poetry. I find myself quickly devouring many of her books. She is fascinating. ( )

Mostly about the natural waning of solipsism (of an extreme variety, in her case), although I’m not sure if she knows this (page 76, z. B., [slightly, I’m sure, downplaying the actual vehemence of her “pssh, parents are insufferable” stance at the time]). Pg 57: jesus. The “goodness” of the immediately following page a nice summation of the books roller coaster between overwrought and insightful self-obsession. ( )

Her writing is beautiful but there wasn't much to this - I wanted more; wanted the real diary entries instead of what she distilled from them. ( )