Ongoingness: The End of a Diary

by Sarah Manguso

“[Manguso] has written the memoir we didn’t realize we needed.” ― The New Yorker In Ongoingness , Sarah Manguso continues to define the contours of the contemporary essay. In it, she confronts a meticulous diary that she has kept for twenty-five years. “I wanted to end each day with a record of everything that had ever happened,” she explains. But this simple statement belies a terror that she might forget something, that she might miss something important. Maintaining that diary, now eight hundred thousand words, had become, until recently, a kind of spiritual practice. Then Manguso became pregnant and had a child, and these two Copernican events generated an amnesia that put her into a different relationship with the need to document herself amid ongoing time. Ongoingness is a spare, meditative work that stands in stark contrast to the volubility of the diary―it is a haunting account of mortality and impermanence, of how we struggle to find clarity in the chaos of time that rushes around and over and through us. “Bold, elegant, and honest . . . Ongoingness reads variously as an addict’s testimony, a confession, a celebration, an elegy.” ― The Paris Review “Manguso captures the central challenge of memory, of attentiveness to life . . . A spectacularly and unsummarizably rewarding read.” ―Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Essays, Poetry, Writing, Biography, Biography Memoir

104 pages, Hardcover

Published March 3, 2015

About the author

Sarah Manguso is the author of nine books, most recently the novel LIARS.

Her previous novel, VERY COLD PEOPLE, was longlisted for the Wingate Literary Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.

Her other books include a story collection, two poetry collections, and four acclaimed works of nonfiction: 300 ARGUMENTS, ONGOINGNESS, THE GUARDIANS, and THE TWO KINDS OF DECAY.

Her work has been recognized by an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. Her writing has been translated into thirteen languages.

She grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Time punishes us by taking everything, but it also saves us—by taking everything."

Gulp.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adored this. When it arrived, I just wanted to have a peak at the first page and suddenly I was a third of the way through. There is just something hypnotizing about Sarah Manguso’s writing and I cannot wait to pick up more of her books.

This is a book about a diary, without any quotes taken from that diary at all. As such it is obviously an incomplete text – but some reason I cannot even put into words it spoke deeply to me. Sarah Manguso kept a diary, obsessively so, for years: “I wrote about myself so I wouldn’t become paralyzed by rumination – so I could stop thinking about what had happened and be done with it.” Until she stopped. She writes in short, fragmented paragraphs about a text the reader cannot access – and everything about that just worked for me so very well.

I found this book mesmerizing and deeply moving; her language is precise and no word is obsolete, which is often my favourite type of language. I cannot quite give it five stars, as it is super short and maybe could have been fleshed out more. But on the other hand, every sentence of this book hit home.

You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ongoingness is difficult to talk about, because the book is essentially a document talking about another document, so any review of it is a document talking about a document talking about a document. The farther one gets from the original document, the more abstract the whole thing becomes. I’ll do my best.

Sarah Manguso kept a daily diary for many years; then she stopped keeping one. This book is about both of those things. No excerpts from the diary are included--Ongoingness is simply about the issues keeping a diary raised for Manguso, and why she finally quit. Recording daily events was Manguso’s way of making sure that she was paying attention; that she was remembering things; that she wasn’t letting life pass her by. But you simply cannot record every element of your life; you pick and choose what to include and what to leave out, and thereby shape your memory and your past whether you mean to or not. And what of all those moments that don’t get included? Maybe things unrecorded and forgotten would have actually been more significant if they had been saved somehow instead of being lost. One thing that occurred to me is that all this time spent recording events and thoughts, and fretting over whether the recording is being done right, could prevent a person from actually living the life that’s in front of them. Strangely, this doesn’t seem to occur to Manguso, although many other things do.

As for why she stops, I won’t give it away except to say that it was a bit unsatisfying for me, a bit heard-it-all-before, and at that point I began to get a little annoyed and started scribbling responses to Manguso in the margins. So oddly, when the book became less interesting to me is when I started having a more passionate response to it. I guess that’s a good thing.

A warning: This book is extremely short. It’s about 90 smallish pages, and most of them contain only a paragraph—indeed, if the book hadn’t been laid out this way, it would probably have had too few pages to bind or sell. Beyond that, the form reminded me of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets in its apportioning of brief interconnected items.

I wavered in my rating of Ongoingness. Ultimately, I think the book could have done more with the topic. There’s a bit of a “who cares” quality to reading about someone else’s diary-keeping when no attempt has been made to make the whole thing less insular. But I still find myself thinking about the book and turning it over in my head several days later, and that’s rare enough that it wins my respect.

[Lee Klein · Rating 2 out of 5]

So short and spare it felt good to read in a day and write a review, adding to my "2017-read" list. But it's so unspecific in its language (definitely hurt my estimation of it that I read this after KOK's perfectly descriptive, world-evoking, utterly more animated and alive Autumn) -- and for a book about memory (always fertile ground for literary agrarianism) it underwhelms (let's just say that the patron saint of memory, Monsieur Proust, compares favorably to this). Pregnancy brain bits were interesting but, from experience, I know the phenomenon also applies to fathers, in that the brain cannot handle the accumulation of so much primary-colored plastic on the floor and having to wash all those sippy cups. Absolutely unlike William Gaddis's Bernhard-inspired Agapē Agape that also explores an enormous long-time project off stage (Gaddis's unpublished novel on the player piano). Maybe 9K words stretched over 92 spare pages, selling for $14 in paperback. Sheesh. Not worth it unless you want to get a little closer to your yearly reading-challenge number ASAP. Would've preferred to read the 8k-page memoir, although not if it's animated by the same spare expression and not particularly enlivening perception. If the unanalyzed life isn't worth living, a weakly analyzed life (or, more accurately, representation of life) sure ain't worth reading: ". . . when your job is to think and write about yourself, the stakes start to appear artificially, comically high. And they must, for without them I wouldn't write at all. I'd spend the day reading the internet. I'd be half done by now." This tent definitely feels pitched on artificial, unnecessary stakes. I feel bad giving it two stars -- especially if the author ever gets around to reading this corner of the internet -- but it'd be rude to other books I've rated three stars to knock this up a bit for the sake of brevity.

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living in a dream of the future is considered a character flaw. Living in the past, bathed in nostalgia, is also considered a character flaw. Living in the present moment is hailed as spiritually admirable, but truly ignoring the lessons of history or failing to plan for tomorrow are considered character flaws.

I still needed to record the present moment before I could enter the next one, but I wanted to know how to inhabit time in a way that wasn’t a character flaw.

[Gretchen Rubin]

More Manguso (I love her work!). I'm very interested in unconventional formats, so this was of great interest to me.

[Lucy Dacus · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a life-long compulsive journaler, this got to me. It's a short read, full of insight about time, motherhood, memory, love, meaning, aging, writing, all sorts of good stuff. I'll be revisiting.

[Come Musica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lei è così per me: scardinante. Non so dirla diversamente. Lei scava dentro di me, mi aiuta a far riemergere ciò che ho provato a soffocare. E affiora in superficie tutto in modo così naturale, che quando me ne accorgo è già troppo tardi per fermare il flusso e non mi resta altro che abbandonarmi. E l’inizio è sempre così: inizio a leggerla e mi dico “Ah, sì. È tranquillo, niente di che.” e abbasso le difese e mi lascio guidare dalle parole e alla fine del libro mi ritrovo sempre in lacrime.

Avevo bisogno di lei, oggi, ecco perché tra tanti libri in lettura, la mia mano ha preso uno nuovo e (il mio subconscio) ha scelto lei, di nuovo. Avevo bisogno di “andanza” oggi. Ho cercato e ho trovato ciò che cercavo.

“Il problema essenziale dell’andanza è che bisognerebbe contemplare la continuità del tempo proprio mentre quel tempo, soggetto stesso della contemplazione, scompare.“

“Il ricordo germoglia. Lasciato nel tempo cresce.”

“La sensazione si rafforza a mano a mano che ricordo. Non si logora. Cresce, un germoglio di nuovo amore.”

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful book about writing diaries, memory, loss, motherhood and time. Profound but also slight and short, reminded me a little of Rebecca Solnit - will be reading more.

[philosophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someday I might read about some of the moments I've forgotten, moments I've allowed myself to forget, that my brain was designed to forget, that I'll be glad to have forgotten and be glad to rediscover as writing. The experience is no longer experience. It is writing. I am still writing.

Όντας μανιώδης καταγραφέας της καθημερινότητάς μου, όσο ευχάριστη ή δυσάρεστη κι αν τυχαίνει να είναι, όντας εμμονική στην αποτύπωση στο ημερολόγιο των μικρών και μεγάλων συμβάντων και της πρόσληψής τους, το συγκεκριμένο κείμενο ήταν απολύτως ταιριαστό με την ιδιοσυγκρασία μου. Η Manguso εκφράζει τους συλλογισμούς της για την τέχνη του να κρατάς ημερολόγιο, την ανάγκη να διατηρήσεις αναλλοίωτες, έστω στο χαρτί, ορισμένες αναμνήσεις, να αποδώσεις με τη γλώσσα τα όσα αποτελούν άυλους παράγοντες της ζωής, τη μνήμη στην καθαρότερη μορφή της.

I didn't want to lose anything. That was my main problem. I couldn't face the end of a day without a record of everything that had ever happened.

Παράλληλα η συγγραφέας διερευνά τις έννοιες της μητρότητας, με τη γέννηση του γιου της να είναι σταθμός στην ημερολογιακή ζωή της, και της θνητότητας, άρρηκτα συνδεδεμένη με τη μνήμη, προβληματίζεται με τη φθορά των αναμνήσεων στο χρόνο και τη μετατροπή τους σε περιληπτικά highlights αλλά και με τη σκέψη της συνέχειας.

Soon after his mother died, my husband's dead father's best friend's ex-wife died. The best friend is the only one left. My husband said the man's name.That leaves him, my husband said. That leaves him, of the people who have known me since I was born. And then my childhood will be truly gone.

Στον επίλογο η Manguso σχολιάζει με ειλικρίνεια την επιλογή της να μην παραθέσει αποσπάσματα ημερολογιακών της καταγραφών, γράφοντας

I was afraid that if I read the diary, I'd have to change what I'd written about it from memory. And producing even those few thousand words had been so arduous, I couldn't bear the thought of having to rewrite them. But I was even more afraid of facing the artifact of the person I was in 1992 and 1997 and 2003 and so on. Time punishes us by taking everything, but it also saves us - by taking everything.

[Elizabeth A · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a person who has kept a journal since I was a young girl, and I am convinced that to non-journal keepers, keeping a journal for long periods of time must feel like a Jedi Knight skill. It might well be, I don't know. I'm too close to the pages to be able to make an objective assessment. I know many people who struggle with keeping a journal, and personally I cannot imagine why they do. But then, I also cannot imagine why people who can read don't. All this means is a lack of imagination on my part maybe. I am a reader, and I am a journaler. Oh sure, we could use that lofty term "Writer", and it would apply, but why be so formal when we're among friends?

Journalers write for all sorts of reasons, and I love reading published journals - May Sarton's for example are wonderful - so I was expecting to love this one. Alas, I did not. The author has kept a journal for twenty five years with this objective: "I wanted to end each day with a record of everything that had ever happened." Well, as those of us who keep journals know, that is a tall order indeed. This little book is not a published journal, it is more an essay on keeping a journal, and not even an essay, but a collection of very short musings on the topic.

What I did like was that the author goes back and looks through all her entries, and in these musings meditates on her personal journey. There are some wonderful insights, and some well crafted sentences that are made me catch my breath, but overall, this one just left me wanting more.

[Darcy Woodring · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could have written this book. Not in the way that people claim that anyone can write a book, but in the sense that every word of this book felt as true and as real to me as if I had written them myself. Forty pages in and tears were rolling down my cheeks because I felt like I understood myself better than I ever had before, understood life like I never had before. "I knew I was grown up when I spent time with them and felt not just the weight of my old memories but the weight of theirs, from when they were children."

The astonishingly brief time that we spend in this world, and how quickly we forget and are forgotten pained me. "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. Being forgotten like that, entering that great and ongoing blank, seems more like death than death."

[marcela]

«Ahora entiendo el diario como una compilación de instantes que olvidaré, recuerdos trasladados al lenguaje de la mejor forma posible: de forma imperfecta.

[...]

Sigo escribiendo.

Y me estoy olvidando de todo»


Bueno, como gran amante de los diarios y la escritura de diarios y obsesa del archivo de vida en todas sus formas, en general, se me ha clavado mucho la lectura de este libro. Cuando iba por la mitad, me puse a releer mi diario actual y el anterior. Me parece gracioso (a la vez que evidente, para cualquiera que lleve uno) que haya aquí reflexiones sobre el olvido que comparto con Manguso pero en las que diferimos por completo. Principalmente, ella habla de la obsesión por retenerlo todo, por abarcar con el lenguaje cada momento, poner en palabras todo recuerdo, y yo, por citarme en mi diario (mucho más simplón que esto), en mil momentos me digo a mí misma que hay cosas sobre las que no quiero escribir porque sé que las voy a recordar de cualquier forma (quiera o no; siempre tiene un matiz como negativo). Durante mucho tiempo, me negué a mí misma esta pulsión que he tenido desde niña por la escritura diarística porque me daba miedo enfrentarme a mí misma —ella escribe que parte de la rutina del diario conlleva enfrentarse «al artefacto de persona que era»—, vergüenza quizá, y porque no quería que quedara constancia de muchas cosas vividas (o pensadas) para no revivirlas (o repensarlas). Creo que, en este sentido, ahora puedo ver que la escritura de un diario te puede convertir en alguien más valiente. El grado de exposición más difícil de conseguir muchas veces es con nosotros mismos. Dice Manguso, en esta línea: «Quería acordarme de lo que podía soportar recordar y convencerme a mí misma de que era todo lo que había» y «Escribir un diario es hacer una serie de elecciones sobre qué omitir, qué olvidar».

Creo que de los diarios (y de las reflexiones sobre ellos) que he manejado, es el que más hurga en esta cosa que tanto me ha rondado en la cabeza, no tanto en el diario como herramienta de ayuda/apoyo o como reto o lo que sea, sino en su vinculación con el olvido (más que con el recuerdo). Por una parte, la aceptación de que vivir plenamente, estar presente, conlleva un olvido irremediable del detalle con el paso del tiempo (por mucho que nos fastidie a las nostálgicas del futuro): «llegué a comprender que los momentos olvidados son el precio de la participación continua en la vida, una fuerza indiferente al tiempo»; por otra, la escritura del diario como selección > como ficción: filtramos lo que queremos contar, seleccionamos lo que queremos que perdure, como si eso nos definiera (¿esperando que solo eso nos defina? ¿autoconvencernos? ¿edulcorar el qué, de cara a un yo futuro?). Es una clave que me parece potentísima. Escribir para nosotros mismos lo que nosotros mismos queremos recordar como escribir para nosotros mismos la persona que queremos ser; lo contrario es lo que requiere un esfuerzo real, y es lo único que nos puede hacer querer abarcar la vida como realmente merece.

Al final, más que el olvido como frustración, lo que me lleva a apreciar profundamente lo que hace este librito es, justamente, su honestidad al aproximarse a ese olvido irremediable, pese la obsesión por el archivo, y su celebración de una vida formada por todos esos momentos que solo existen en continuo. Ahora me quedo pensando que cada momento vivido se autodestruye, y que aceptar eso es amarlo, haberlo amado.

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book shockingly short, given its subject matter. The author keeps an obsessively meticulous 800,000 word journal for 25 years, then writes a book about it that's only 100 or so pages long?

The author was fixated on the need to document every detail of her life, and seemed terrified about the passing of time and the chance that she might forget something.

I assumed she had some sort of mental disorder. I read on to discover what had finally allowed her to loosen her grip on the all-consuming need for remembering/documenting. I figured she had tried therapy or had a spiritual awakening of some sort.

Nope. She had a baby.

"I had no thoughts, no self-awareness, just an ability to sit with a little creature who screamed and screamed."

Ugh.

"One of the great solaces of my life is that I no longer need to wonder whether I'll have children."

Bleh.

At least it was a quick read.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm left a bit speechless. I couldn't stop reading, and I couldn't stop thinking "this is too much, you need to stop and think about some of these things".

[H.A. Leuschel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, elegant and packed full of deep thought on memory and its elusiveness in very short paragraphs. It made me very curious to read more by the author!

[Kathrin Passig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es war durchgehend sehr gut. Der fünfte Stern ist aber vor allem für die Überlegungen im Nachwort, warum das Buch überhaupt keine Auszüge aus ihrem Tagebuch enthält. So geht's! Absage ans Füllmaterial!

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortly after the turn of the millennium, I read the diary from beginning to end. Finding nothing of consequence in 1996, I threw the year away.
I’d already shredded the volumes I wrote in high school—not to keep them from others but to keep them from myself. So it seems I didn’t want to remember everything.
I wanted to remember what I could bear to remember and convince myself it was all there was.

As a faithful diarist since the age of 7, I read this little book quickly and with great interest. Sarah Manguso writes beautifully, reflecting on her obsessive diary keeping and its implications for her identity as a writer, a mother, and a person coming to grips with mortality. It is an uplifting and seriously sincere book. Recommended to writers and diary keepers of every ilk.

(With gratitude to Celeste, who is my personal lending library for All Things Good.)

[Amar Pai · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was bummed when she has her kid (midway through the book) and then stops writing about anything else

Though I try to log only the first time he does yet another extraordinary thing, the diary is now mostly about my son

I found this very depressing.

Like when people set their profile picture on Facebook to a picture of their kid. UGH I find that depressing as well

It's as if your friends have been bodysnatched and replaced with their spawn

[Maddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The striving to remember always amazes me, because I spend so much time trying to forget.

[Sigrun Hodne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea better than the result.

[amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

the main hook of this book for me was that it’s about manguso’s diary but she never once quotes it. it’s an interesting concept even though maybe it doesn’t sound that interesting. her writing is beautiful and well constructed and honest without taking itself too seriously. i need to read more from her!

[Briana · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first manguso... brilliant. I cannot wait to read more of her work. Read in one sitting. I wish to quote the whole book but instead I will leave you with this,

“Maybe the trouble is that the shape of life is elastic, that it can feel and be full at variable levels of fullness. Or maybe we’re poor judges of our own lives’ fullness. Or maybe the concepts of emptiness and fullness are poor metaphors for happiness, if in fact happiness is what we’re talking about.”

“I used to harbor a continuous worry that I’d forget what had happened, that I’d fail to notice what was happening. I worried that something terrible would happen because I’d forgotten what had already happened.

Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments- an inability to accept life as ongoing.”

[Francesca · Rating 1 out of 5]

Depressing and painfully pretentious.

[gaudeo · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are many words of wisdom in this book. Here are two thoughts:

"Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments--an inability to accept life as ongoing. . . . Then I came to understand that the forgotten moments are the price of continued participation in life, a force indifferent to time."

I've given the book only three stars simply because I didn't feel a deep-enough connectedness to this writing: I don't keep a diary, and I am not a mother. Both of these experiences are of great import in this book. I did, however, like the author's writing as writing, and I look forward to reading more prose and poetry by her.

[Kaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I started keeping the diary in earnest when I started finding myself in moments that were too full.”

Same.

“The diary was my defense against waking up at the end of my life and realizing I’d missed it.”

I feel this anxiety everyday.

“Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments—an inability to accept life as ongoing.”

I’ll meditate on that.

“Look at me, dancing my little dance for a few moments against the background of eternity.”

Oof.

[☄ · Rating 4 out of 5]

and then i think i don't need to write anything down ever again. nothing's gone, not really. everything that's ever happened has left its little wound.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

At this point I can’t imagine not finding one of Manguso’s works intelligent, interesting, original. This book has lots of interesting things to say about time, diaries, motherhood, mortality, memory, and plot.

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slurped this down in an hour at the beach, feels like part of my spine. Wanna read this whenever something Happens to me

[Amelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMG so scary and soothing at the same time