The Riveter Talks With Sarah Manguso

The Riveter is a new online magazine for "Riveting Storytelling By Women." In a recent post, Daley Farr speaks with poet and novelist Sarah Manguso about her newest book, 300 Arguments. It's Manguso's seventh: "hard to describe but equally hard to resist: a collection of cutting aphorisms that read both like shrewdly dispensed advice for the reader and a cooly exacting interrogation of the writer’s most personal experiences," writes Farr. Let's pick up with her introduction to their conversation, from there:

Like an exceptionally angular play on a gift book of quotes, the standalone passages are fully formed ideas, each reduced to its essence. But as the book rolls on, the aphorisms form a thematic arc, and each added argument resonates beyond the book’s 90 pages. Manguso says she is re-immersed now in work on a longer book, but we can expect her devotion to razor-sharp sentences –– the ultimate short form! –– to endure.

From her home in California where she writes and teaches, Manguso shared with me details of how her arguments project developed, the fundamentals of her writing process, other writers who possess the gift of perfectly turned sentences –– and the arguments she continues to write on the side.

Daley Farr: Your writing is so disciplined and precise — is your process for making your books that as well?

Sarah Manguso: I would not call my compositional process disciplined at all, because my sense is that discipline refers to some practice that you’re following not out of pleasure but out of virtue, and I simply don’t work that way. I’m not a good student; as soon as I receive an assignment I find myself looking for some scheme to avoid actually fulfilling it. Despite that, I would say that I definitely work consistently, but I work on what I want, when I want.

DF: Sure.

SM: The fact that I work consistently is not a sign of discipline. I’m never going to run a marathon. But I have only respect for people who are able to. It seems to me you’d have to apply discipline to run a marathon. Although, I do have this serious runner friend and it’s very interesting to listen to compulsive runners talk about what they do. There’s as much overlap I think between any kind of compulsive behavior and the kind of writing that I do.

DF: It feels more like a compulsion?

SM: It’s pleasure. It’s not like a compulsion like washing my hands until they bleed. It’s more like I give in to a desire to try to make sense of something.

Read on at the Riveter