Manguso - 300 Arguments

SARAH MANGUSO

Graywolf Press

Copyright 2017 by Sarah Manguso

The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Parts of this book were previously published in slightly different forms in the Believer , the New York Ghost , the New York Times Book Review , the Paris Review , and Unsaid.

This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and through a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

Published by Graywolf Press

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Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

All rights reserved.

www.graywolfpress.org

Published in the United States of America

Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-55597-764-1

Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-959-1

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

First Graywolf Printing, 2017

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937638

Cover design: Kyle G. Hunter

A great photographer insists on writing poems. A brilliant essayist insists on writing novels. A singer with a voice like an angel insists on singing only her own, terrible songs. So when people tell me I should try to write this or that thing I dont want to write, I know what they mean.

You might as well start by confessing your greatest shame. Anything else would just be exposition.

It can be worth forgoing marriage for sex, and it can be worth forgoing sex for marriage. It can be worth forgoing parenthood for work, and it can be worth forgoing work for parenthood. Every case is orthogonal to all the others. Thats the entire problem.

I wrote my college application essay about playing in a piano competition, knowing I would lose to the kid who had played just before me. Even while I played knowing I would lose , I wrote, still I played to give the judges something to remember. I pretended my spasms of self-regard transcended the judges informed decisions about the pianists who were merely the best. I got into college.

I assume the cadets are gay, but then I see they are merely unafraid of love. They are preparing to go to war, and with so little time to waste, they say what they mean.

At faculty meetings I sat next to people whose books had sold two million copies. Success seemed so close, just within reach. On subway benches I sat next to people who were gangrenous, dying, but I never thought Id catch what they had.

Whats worse: Offending someone or lying to someone? Saying something stupid when its your turn, or not saying anything? Tell me which, and Ill tell you your problem.

The trouble with comparing yourself to others is that there are too many others. Using all others as your control group, all your worst fears and all your fondest hopes are at once true. You are good; you are bad; you are abnormal; you are just like everyone else.

Some people ditch friends and lovers because its easier to get new ones than to resolve conflicts with the old ones, particularly if resolving a conflict requires one to admit error or practice mercy. Im describing an asshole. But what if the asshole thinks hes ditching an asshole?

Inner beauty can fade, too.

The waterbirds near my house are in middle school. The coots voices crack; the seagulls bully the ducks; the egret just got braces and stands, humiliated, by himself.

Many bird names are onomatopoeticthey name themselves. Fish, on the other hand, have to float there and take what they get.

I used to avoid people when I was afraid I loved them too much. Ten years, in one case. Then, after I had been married long enough that I was married even in my dreams, I became able to go to those people, to feel that desire, and to know that it would stay a feeling.

In a dream my friend and I begin the act and both immediately want it to be over, but we have to continue, impelled by some obscure reason. I wake wondering whether we could ever enjoy it. I think about it all day, really dedicate myself to it. I think about it for two more days, and thats how I fall in love with my friend.

Like a vase, a heart breaks once. After that, it just yields to its flaws.

In the morning I wake amid fading scenes of different characters, different settings, all restatements of that first desire, a ghost who haunts me as the beauty he was at sixteen.

My friend learns Chinese and moves to China, but her limited vocabulary is good for grocery shopping, not for falling in love. When her heart breaks she is obliged to ask, Why wont you fuck me?

Ive put horses in poems, but Ive never ridden one. They just seem like such a good thing to put into literature.

Biographies should also contain the events that failed to foreshadow.

Facility means prison (building), lifelessness (art), or grace (athletes). Within a gesture of apparent perfection, a mortal heart must beat.

I remember a girl who was famous in school for having woken from a drunken blackout and said to whoever was there, Are you my judges?