Sarah Manguso, 50, is the author of nine books, including two volumes of poetry, four nonfiction books, a collection of short stories and two novels. Her darkly comic memoir The two types of decay (2008) described her experience with a rare autoimmune disease and the years of treatment that severely affected her mental and physical health in her twenties. Continuity: The end of a diary (2015) is a report about her obsessive diary writing and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s selection. 300 arguments (2017) – a collection of aphorisms about desire and failure – was named the best book of the year by more than 20 publications, and her first novel, Very cold people (2022) was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Prize. Manguso’s new novel, Liardocuments the end of a marriage. She was born and raised in Massachusetts and now lives in Los Angeles.
LiarYour second novel was not the book you expected to write…
My next book should be a historical drama set in New England in the 1940s. The aim was to examine the complex and turbulent history of the question of who in America received the predicate “white” and after how many generations. It was loosely inspired by some things I discovered about my own family, such as the interesting fact that I was not born white according to the census, but became legally white later in life. That’s what happened to my parents. I’m the first person in my family to be born white. My parents look white, but there are certain ethnicities that were not considered white when they arrived.
What was your family heritage?
My mother’s family is Ashkenazi Jewish; my father’s father, although a foundling, was raised Italian, and his mother was an Irish immigrant. Teddy Roosevelt said in the first half of the 20th century that these southern and eastern Europeans, after living in America for three generations, could count as white on the census, and that just seems crazy to me—that there were different times when an Irish person could be white in some states and not in others. There were all kinds of laws in the different states, and I thought there were so many ways to write about that in fiction. Then, in November of that same year, 2020, my former spouse left me without any warning—he announced his departure and was gone the next day. Three or four days later, I started writing, and what I ended up finding was Liar.
That’s what you said Liar is fiction, except for the parts that are true. Did you have any concerns about writing something so personal?
It wasn’t that it was personal – I was mostly concerned that my son would never have the opportunity to go online and be bombarded with a lot of information about his family that he wouldn’t want to deal with in that way, so I was very cautious about what I revealed about that area of my personal life. My son was eight when his father left, and he knows his father cheated on me; beyond that, there’s really nothing more from my personal experience that I wanted to add to this cauldron of facts on the internet. I made some changes to the book to appease some very cautious lawyers, but I’m lucky that I was already a novelist when this material fell into my lap. What’s important to me as a writer is that I had complete freedom to write anything, and I don’t think I would have felt remotely free if I’d chosen to write it as an autobiography.
You described the book as “a place where you can express your anger.” Were you surprised by the reaction of the women who recognized themselves in this story?
I have to confess that I did something I’ve never done with my other books: I went to the Goodreads page and looked to see how the average avid reader reacted to this book. It is equal parts the greatest validation I’ve ever received and the most terrifying cultural report I’ve ever read. It’s incredibly disturbing that in the first week of release, hundreds of people said of this novel about domestic violence, “This is exactly what all women struggle with, thank you.” Overall, it was really interesting to see that I seem to have hit a cultural sore spot.
It is said that your books are difficult to categorize because of the genres you cover: poetry, memoirs, essays, fiction. How do you define yourself as a writer? Or not?
At the beginning of my career I just said I was an editor, which was my day job. I don’t think I was really keen to present myself as a literary writer; I found the whole thing embarrassing. I think you’re seen as quite an oddball if you publish a couple of books in one genre and then another in another; but once you’ve got 10 books you just start approaching it in all sorts of different ways.
What are you working on next?
It is an erotic novel about aging, obsession and freedom.
Is the historical novel still falling by the wayside?
That’s a good question. My editor recently asked me very gently, “So is the next one going to be that book we bought?” and I had to say no, but I promise I’ll write something beautiful for you. I have no idea if I’ll ever write that novel. I’m not sure I’m the right person for it. But I never really know what I’m going to write until I actually write it.
Which book did you first fall in love with?
It was an old edition of GrimmS’ and AndersenFairy tale. Half of the book was by the Grimms, then you could turn the pages and the other half was by Andersen. My son has it now, it’s in his room.
These are dark stories for a child. Has that influenced your work?
No, I think growing up in New England gave me a pretty healthy acceptance that the Gothic is alive and well.
Which author do you think is most unfairly underrated?
I’m tempted to just say “all women”. I’d say Colette – I think she’s greatly underrated by English-speaking readers because her name sounds like a little girl’s.
Which Which modern authors do you read most?
Some authors I particularly love at the moment are Claire Kilroy, Myriam Gurba, Patricia Lockwood and my good friend Sheila Heti.
