The Guardians: An Elegy

The Guardians: An Elegy - Paperback

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The Guardians: An Elegy
  • The Guardians: An Elegy
The Guardians: An Elegy - Paperback

The Guardians: An Elegy - Paperback

by Sarah Manguso
$18.00
$18.00

Book Overview

by Sarah Manguso (Author)

The Guardians opens with a story from the July 24, 2008, edition of the Riverdale Press that begins, "An unidentified white man was struck and instantly killed by a Metro-North train last night as it pulled into the station on West 254th Street."

Sarah Manguso writes: "The train's engineer told the police that the man was alone and that he jumped. The police officers pulled the body from the track and found no identification. The train's 425 passengers were transferred to another train and delayed about twenty minutes."

The Guardians is an elegy for Manguso's friend Harris, two years after he escaped from a psychiatric hospital and jumped under that train. The narrative contemplates with unrelenting clarity their crowded postcollege apartment, Manguso's fellowship year in Rome, Harris's death and the year that followed--the year of mourning and the year of Manguso's marriage. As Harris is revealed both to the reader and to the narrator, the book becomes a monument to their intimacy and inability to express their love to each other properly, and to the reverberating effects of Harris's presence in and absence from Manguso's life. There is grief in the book but also humor, as Manguso marvels at the unexpected details that constitute a friendship.

The Guardians explores the insufficiency of explanation and the necessity of the imagination in making sense of anything.

Author Biography

Sarah Manguso is the author of several books, including the memoir, The Two Kinds of Decay; books of poetry, Siste Viator and The Captain Lands in Paradise; a short-story collection, Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape, and the novel Very Cold People.

Number of Pages: 128
Dimensions: 0.5 x 8.3 x 5.4 IN
Publication Date: March 05, 2013
ISBN9781250024152
Author Sarah Manguso
PublisherPicador USA
GenreBiography
FormatPaperback
PublishedMarch 2013
LanguageENG- English
Pages128
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography Nonfiction

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About Sarah Manguso

Sarah Manguso is the author of nine books, including the novel Very Cold People, a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Manguso is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. She lives in Los Angeles.

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