300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso (Non-psychedelic book review)

‘Talking with someone who reveals nothing, I hear myself madly filling the emptiness with information about myself’

Words by Ross W. Marriott

300 Arguments: Essays is a fantastic collection of realist musings by American writer, Sarah Manguso. At just 104 pages long, its brevity is part of its beauty.

Manguso is a Harvard-educated writer and poet who specialises in an introspective form of contemporary philosophy.  Her style is brutally autobiographical and (in her own words) 300 Arguments... often reads like a detective inspecting a crime scene.

In the collection, she oscillates between subjects like motherhood, mortality, the writing process, health problems, luck, society and ageing with wisdom and authority.  If you think that all sounds a bit heavy, you'd be both right and wrong.  300 Arguments... is heavy in the sense that Manguso is philosophising about deeply existential issues, but the breezy formatting of the book makes the whole endeavour feel light and accessible.

Many of these existential daydreams read like pieces of advice or calls-to-action - I found myself staring into lines like ‘If you go to Paris, you won’t find Paris; you’ll find yourself in Paris’, and ‘We hide in plain sight, in our bodies’, tracing around them in my head, linking them to my own life.

How quickly you'll finish 300 Arguments will depend entirely on your age, your background and your life experiences. You might find that you can fly through three or four pages before you slam to a halt at the foot of an aphorism that seems to have a direct connection to your own day-to-day existence.

The genius of the collection is how she moves seamlessly between lighter entries like ‘I fret about my lost scarf. Then I miss my flight. The scarf is no longer a problem’, and ones that convey a darker sense of existential examination (‘I look at young people and marvel at their ignorance of what’s coming, and the old people look at me’).  The effect is stark and lucid.

  

It’s a daring feat, to write what is essentially a book of philosophy in an age of anti-intellectualism.  We spend most of our lives being encouraged not to look around us - to fear silence.  

What I really liked about the format was that I could read as much as I wanted, at any time of the day, without feeling pressured to "finish" anything.  The kettle is boiling: read a line.  You’re stuck in traffic: read a line.  The text is there. 300 Arguments... is non-linear and confessional, yet sardonic and light enough not to feel too daunting.

This being said (and I am aware I've been gushing thus far), I did find myself rolling my eyes once or twice at Manguso's occasional lapses into what you could call 'macchiato philosophy' (aka, woke middle-class revelations).  Lines like ‘It’s so boring to be a soprano, shackled to the melody, ineluctably noticed’ are so removed from my personal existence that they might as well have been written by a banker talking about swimming in an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with ten-pound-notes.

For the most part, however, this window into contemporary middle-class America is illuminating.  One entry talks about how her friend, a widely published author, deals with idealistic writers: ‘People like to tell my very successful friend that they, too, intend to write some books. He always answers, with big eyes and a ghoulish smile, ‘how hard could it be?’'

There are other moments when you forget that Manguso is only in her early forties – the wisdom seems uncharacteristic (or worse, affected) until you learn that she was diagnosed with a serious autoimmune disease in college. 

The author's reflections on a ‘lost youth’ will resonate with anyone who feels as though they missed out on their younger years – be it due to health reasons, commitments or financial issues.

[4.5/5] 

A few more of my favourite entries from the collection:

‘A nonspecific wish to change the world isn’t about the world. It’s about you.’

‘When the worst comes to pass, the first feeling is relief’

'My first dozen romances weren’t interesting because I wasn’t learning - because I was trying so hard not to.  I was trying to stop time.'

‘The phrase ‘great woman’ sounds strange because it’s seldom used outside the phrase ‘behind every great man is a great woman’'

‘You can choose your friends but not your friendships’

‘Interesting people aren’t interested in appearing interesting’

 ‘My least favourite received idea about writing is that one must find one’s voice, as if it’s there inside you, ready to be turned on like a ‘player piano’.  Like character, its very existence depends on interaction with the world’ 

‘Outsiders pretend to be insiders, and it makes them unlikeable. Insiders pretend to be outsiders, and we love to play along' (Hi, Nigel Farage).