There’s always a “book of the summer,” usually a lighter beach read, something snackable, read in the same fashion as watching a summer blockbuster, popcorn in hand. Instead, this year’s book of the summer in my circles–and seemingly in every train car on the subway–was the equivalent of sweetbreads, a literary post–mortem of a marriage, toiled over and presented to us in the form of Liars by Sarah Manguso. First, my friends were texting me about it, then my Mom was, and then the New Yorker published its controversial review of the book and set Twitter ablaze for days. Though Manguso has been publishing astonishingly personal works since 2002, giving readers her guts (The Two Kinds of Decay, 2008) her grief (The Guardians: An Elegy, 2012), even her diaries (Ongoingness, 2015), something about Liars hit a different nerve. The Guggenheim Fellow made time to discuss her experience writing the autobiographical novel, releasing it to the world, and the reactions to it after taking some time to reflect post-book tour. Liars comes out on paperback on May 13th.

Lexi Kent-Monning:
This is our “Reality” issue, and I can think of no better interview subject for it than you, someone who has shared her reality with readers through poetry, nonfiction, and even through fiction over the years. Your new novel, Liars, is fiction with many elements seemingly drawn from your own life. I’m curious what the experience has been for you releasing this particular book into the world — how did the reality of your book tour and the book’s reception with readers compare with what you’d envisioned? Has it been a different experience than with your other books? I feel like every time I get on the subway, I see someone reading it, not to mention Goodreads and the Twitter discourse. It really seems to have hit people strongly.

Sarah Manguso: 

I live in California and seldom take public transportation, but for a little while after the book came out I read readers’ responses to it on Goodreads. It was both buoying and depressing to see how many women identify strongly and gratefully with Jane.

LKM: Jane, the narrator of Liars, takes us through a relationship seen in hindsight, and even says “Elegies are the best love stories because they’re the whole story.” She’s speaking from the perspective of getting divorced, but she’s so easily able to access her now ex-husband’s early red flags. I love how this speaks to the idea that we never know what’s going on in someone’s relationship, the perception of a relationship from the outside versus the reality of it on the inside. Can you talk a bit about the universality of perception and reality? Did you go in with the intention of the elegiac element of this story, or did it show itself as you wrote?

SM: When I wrote that line about elegies I was riffing on Solon’s adage Call no man lucky until he is dead, which I read many years ago in first-year Latin. As for perception and perspective, I knew that I wanted to give the book a caesura, and I wanted Jane to tell the two parts of the story from different vantage points. She narrates the first part of the book retrospectively, and she narrates the second part from inside the whirlwind. And sure, other people’s relationships are opaque to us, but so are our own! Jane doesn’t have any idea what’s going on in hers.

LKM: I relate to this so strongly! The caesura is such a powerful structure, really delineating the before and after of this cataclysmic event for Jane. When you’re approaching a new project, do you tend to go in with an intention [as in knowing you wanted to give the book a caesura] on the craft level? Do you outline work before fleshing it out, or just jump right in? I feel like my writing projects are as opaque as my relationships, I don’t know what’s going on until later! I started reverse-outlining after learning that practice from Chelsea Hodson.

SM: I work on the smallest forms first, the sentences, and then work up to paragraphs. It might be slower than starting with the big forms and filling them in, but it’s the only way I know how to write. When I begin, I’m face-down in the material. I have no idea what the larger structure is. My awareness of the caesura came only after most of the sentences were written.

LKM: As a fellow divorced person who also wrote a divorce novel, I resonate so deeply with the line “Half of my friends’ marriages suddenly appeared to be on the cusp of shattering. I felt clairvoyant.” I always say my superpower is that I can spot a divorce or breakup 3,000 miles away, it’s like radar I can’t turn off. You’ve also written about illness, death, and sexual assault. Do you find yourself immersed in those particular lenses when writing, seeing them everywhere?

SM: I do seem to gain a heightened sensitivity to whatever it is I’m writing and thinking about, but it feels less like affixing a lens than removing a blindfold. While writing Liars I saw domestic violence everywhere because I was finally ready to see that it is everywhere.

LKM: I find it so interesting how many women in particular don’t realize or identify that they’ve been in a position of victimhood, and once they cross that mental threshold, there’s no going back. I’m curious how you handled the reality of writing a book inspired by what you’ve been through when you have a child who may read it some day. I think sharing your truth as a human being with kids is so vital, but this is such hard territory and I imagine full of a lot of decisions along the way.

SM: Liars is a work of fiction, and I don’t publicly share any details about my marriage or divorce that my kid doesn’t already know; those decisions make me feel that he’s sufficiently protected. Regardless, the harm that has already come to him in real life is greater than any harm he might suffer by reading my book.

LKM: This mostly fictional novel has the most realistic portrayal of a woman I’ve read in a long time — masturbating, shitting, the constant mental tally of all the fucking chores, the horrific language of the marriage (like using the word “session” for sexual interactions with John), finances, the balancing act of Jane quelling some of her own success and pride so as not to make John feel inferior. Jane is portrayed so holistically and readers really get a fly-on-the-wall view of her. I’m wondering if writing Liars as fiction felt more liberating than memoir in some ways? Writing a character with some shared experiences and characteristics as you, but not specifically “Sarah”?

SM: I’d written fiction before, but I’d never felt as free as I felt when I was writing Liars. What distinguished it from my other books is that it’s the first one I’d ever written as a single woman. I felt a liberation that was new to me.

LKM: I’m generally much more interested in readers’ responses than critics, but I have been surprised by some critical reviews who wanted to know more from John’s side of the story. I don’t give a fuck about John’s perspective. I don’t even have a question, I’m just angry about this and wanted to bring it up to see if you’d like to talk about it.

SM: Thank you, Lexi. It’s been interesting to think about some of the negative reactions to the book.

Those who refuse to take Jane’s story at face value, who require that a man validate it or correct it or neutralize it, are reading the book through a misogynistic lens, whether they realize it or not. Theirs is the same sort of bothsidesism that got Trump elected.

By the time John leaves Jane, he’s systematically destroyed her career and her health. She’s almost fifty years old, and she will likely never recover financially. She will likely never recover emotionally. Readers and critics who claim that cheating and other forms of subviolent abuse don’t qualify as abuse, who think Jane should just shut up and take it, are also reading my book through a misogynistic lens, whether they realize it or not.

Finally, there are those who argue that Liars is not a credible story because a woman like Jane—smart, educated, white—should be immune to patriarchal abuse. Their belligerent “why doesn’t she just leave then” echoes the jingoistic cruelty of “America, love it or leave it.” As if the whole world isn’t mirroring Jane’s marriage back to her as normal. As if leaving is easy, affordable, or safe for her or for her child. Those who find Jane’s choice to stay with John incredible (all together, now!) are also reading my book through a misogynistic lens, whether they realize it or not.

It makes me sad—not for myself but for the world. Some of these people might be tolerating or witnessing subviolent domestic abuse that they don’t want to acknowledge. Or they might be inflicting it.

LKM: Thank you — this blowback has been so blatantly gendered to me; we would never see these critiques of a book written by a man. It would simply not happen. And I was horrified over the claims that manipulation, financial abuse, and sabotage aren’t abuse. It’s one of the many ways we seem to have regressed in society since Trump was in office.

SM: Yes, those criticisms are blatantly gendered. Women blame other women for being abused by men because the alternative, admitting that no woman is truly safe—that they themselves aren’t safe—is terrifying and infuriating. On top of that, it’s second nature for people to direct their anger at the nearest woman. Right now, for some women, I am that woman. I’m fine; I can take it. But as I said before, it makes me sad for the world.

LKM: I’m curious about a few very specific writer realities in your life. First, I know you’ve gotten a lot of emotional reactions from readers and critics alike to Liars, which shows how much you’ve struck a chord. I’m wondering, though, how you handle or manage the inevitable oversharing or even trauma dumps from strangers that can result from publishing such an intimate portrayal of a person and a relationship? You were so kind and took so much time with people in the signing line when I saw you in New York! I imagine your email is also full of unburdenings from readers, and that can be a lot to navigate.

SM: I’ve written books about illness, grief, suicide, and abuse, and over the years I’ve been lucky to meet a lot of people who initiate brief moments of authentic connection. No unburdening is unwelcome. I try to respond to everyone who reaches out in good faith.

I also receive the obligatory emails from people demanding that I provide substantial editorial work for free, meet them in real life, answer personal questions, or respond to sealioning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning). I save those emails. For what? I don’t know, but they could fill a book.

LKM: Your openness and generosity of spirit in this regard remind me of the musician Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files (https://www.theredhandfiles.com/), a letter correspondence with the public that he started after an unthinkable tragedy in his life. It seems his connection with the public about grief has really been a lifeline for him, almost a communal act. Have you found comfort or healing in that connection with readers who resonate with your work on these subjects? Do you ever write to artists you don’t know whose work has resonated with you? 

SM: I do find comfort in community, and I do reach out to other artists sometimes, when the connection feels profound. One of my favorite parts of the Jewish liturgy is the Kol Nidre service before Yom Kippur. At one point the mourners, those who have lost someone in the previous year, are invited to stand. When I lived in New York I used to go to services at the Javits Center, and one year I stood. It felt incredible to be among so many people, anonymous but held up, recognized, by all these strangers who were doing exactly what I was doing.

LKM: When Jane says “I couldn’t write, couldn’t even think, for in order to think or write I needed time to fight my natural buoyancy and swim effortfully down to the bottom of the sea, where no light is, where I could live in my mind’s eye, and where nothing mattered except the thought,” and “No time for deep attention, just a thousand tasks,” I want to cry! It’s so hard to get to a place to access and dwell in that mental territory, which to me is essential for creative work. What do the logistics of your writing life look like these days? Do you have a writing routine? Do you have old faithful writing exercises or pieces of literature that you can fall back on to get you going? How do you reach that deep focus?

SM: California is a state where 50/50 custody is legislated in almost all cases, and that’s the arrangement I currently have with my kid and his father. I used to write whenever I could, and I still do. I just have so much more time now that in the four years since my divorce I’ve started and finished three books. I don’t have any routines, just to-do lists that I reprioritize daily. I don’t read in order to write, and I don’t do exercises. If I don’t want to write, I don’t write. But I usually want to.

LKM: Perhaps related to reaching deep focus: you don’t appear to be on social media. Are you ever tempted to dip your toe in it? How have you found a literary community outside of social media? Do you think that’s attainable for newer writers?

SM: I enjoy meeting people in real life and via email, and I’m lucky to have started publishing books before social media became an implicit requirement for writers. I also enjoy subscribing to Substacks, which I guess counts as social media, but I consume them asocially.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a newer writer, but there’s always been more than one way to build a writing career. I’ve heard that (some?) Zoomers consider it a status symbol to have a negligible online presence, which I find appealingly Gen X-y.

LKM: Are there any cultural touchstones that you consumed during the writing or editing of Liars? Movies, books, podcasts, songs? I’m trying to picture you writing this book and I’m just seeing smoke coming off your fingers as you type, with noise canceling headphones on and nothing playing through them, just scenes playing in your head.

SM: I watched all of the Barbara Stanwyck movies and studied all of the police interrogation videos that Jane watches. Other than that, I don’t know. It was a wild time, and I don’t remember much.

LKM: You’re such a measured, calm reader – it’s really a pleasure to listen to you read. I’d love to know how you prepare for a reading, both bodily and in terms of deciding what passage to read from. What is your relationship like to doing public readings? And for Liars specifically, how did you prepare for the wild card of the Q&A portions? In New York, the questions really ran the gamut, from incredibly personal questions about your life to gender theory.

SM: Thank you. If I sounded calm it’s because I was; I feel much more relaxed speaking to a crowd of any size than I feel at, say, a dinner party. And I feel much more relaxed responding to questions, from a crowd of any size, than I do facilitating a small class discussion. I enjoy speaking with one person at a time, which is why signing books is such a pleasure. Cross talk makes me antsy.

LKM: For all of his more clandestine, sinister behavior, John is blatantly egregious when he sits down uninvited and repeatedly interjects in Jane’s meeting with a student. I was absolutely horrified. But you so brilliantly placed early in the book one of my favorite lines about John: “I noticed that he used the word phenomena as a singular noun.” Remembering that line during the interruption of the student meeting served as a release valve for me. It’s so funny, and it also gives Jane more power in that moment. People have had emotional reactions to this book, but do you feel like you’ve also gotten responses about the humor you wove into it? I think it’s incredibly funny and I want that element to get its due!

SM: I watch a lot of comedy and deeply admire and appreciate funny people. Every so often I think about trying to tell a funny story onstage, but I’d have to read it off my phone. I have no idea how comedians remember everything.

LKM: Between Liars and The Guardians, you’ve published two elegies. Who would you want to write yours? Or is that something you wouldn’t let anyone else do? I know writers who wouldn’t let anyone else write theirs, and other writers who are glad not to have to do that one last assignment, and I'm wondering where you fall.

SM: I’m vain as hell, but even I know I can’t control what strangers say about me when I’m dead—or when I’m alive, for that matter. I trust the people who know me to remember me as I am.

LKM: “I trust the people who know me to remember me as I am.” What a beautiful note to end on. Thank you so much, Sarah.

SM: Thank you, Lexi.