At twenty-one, just as she was starting to comprehend the
puzzles of adulthood, Sarah Manguso was faced with another: a
wildly unpredictable autoimmune disease that appeared suddenly and
tore through her twenties, paralyzing her for weeks at a time,
programming her first to expect nothing from life and then,
furiously, to expect everything. In this captivating story, Manguso
recalls her struggle: arduous blood cleansings, collapsed veins,
multiple chest catheters, depression, the deaths of friends and
strangers, addiction, and, worst of all for a writer, the trite
metaphors that accompany prolonged illness. A book of tremendous
grace, "The Two Kinds of Decay "transcends the very notion of what
an illness story can and should be.
Sarah Manguso is the author of two books of poetry, "Sist""e""
Viator" and "The Captain Lands in Paradise, "and the short story
collection "Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape."" "In 2007 she was
awared the Rome Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
A "New York Times Book Review" Editors' ChoiceA "Time Out Chicago"
Best Book Book of the YearA "San Francisco Chronicle "Best Book of
the Year
"The events that began in 1995 might keep happening to me as long
as things can happen to me. Think of deep space, through which
heavenly bodies fly forever. They fly until they change into new
forms, simpler forms, with ever fewer qualities and increasingly
beautiful names.
There are names for things in spacetime that are nothing, for
things that are less than nothing. White dwarfs, red giants, black
holes, singularities.
But even then, in their less-than-nothing state, they keep
happening.
"
At twenty-one, just starting to comprehend all the traditional
puzzles of adulthood, Sarah Manguso was faced with another
unexpected challenge: a wildly unpredictable disease that appeared
suddenly and tore through her twenties--vanishing and then
returning, paralyzing her for weeks at a time, programming her
first to expect nothing from life and then, furiously, to expect
everything. Manguso recalls her nine-year struggle with Chronic
Idiopathic Demyelinating Polyradiculoneuropathy, or CIDP, which
disintegrates the myelin coating that protects the nervous system.
She endured arduous blood cleansings, collapsed veins, multiple
chest catheters, the deaths of friends and strangers, addiction,
depression, and, worst of all for a writer, the trite metaphors
that accompany prolonged illness. A book of tremendous grace and
self-awareness, "The Two Kinds of Decay" surpasses the expectations
for a story about illness; Manguso trains the eyes anew on the
notion of illness and survival. "In her second year of college, the
poet Sarah Manguso developed a neurological disease so uncommon it
doesn't even have a real name. The autoimmune condition, a rarer
form of the already rare Guillain-Barre syndrome, is known as
chronic idiopathic demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy, and it
took more than four years to run its course . . . In her sharp,
affecting new memoir, "The Two Kinds of Decay," Manguso writes from
the far side of a long period of remission . . . From an original
welter of experience, she has carefully culled details that remain
vivid. Filtered through memory, events during her illness seem like
'heavenly bodies' that 'fly until they change into new forms,
simpler forms, with ever fewer qualities and increasingly beautiful
names.' Manguso is acutely interested in these processes of
renaming and remembering, the way time changes what we say about
the past. Her book is not only about illness but also about the
ways we use language to describe it and cope with it.As much as
anything, this book is a search for adequate descriptions of things
heretofore unnamed and unknown . . . Through her own attentiveness,
Manguso has produced a remarkable, cleareyed account that turns
horror into something humane and beautiful."--Emily Mitchell, "The
New York Times Book Review" "In her second year of college, the
poet Sarah Manguso developed a neurological disease so uncommon it
doesn't even have a real name. The autoimmune condition, a rarer
form of the already rare Guillain-Barre syndrome, is known as
chronic idiopathic demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy, and it
took more than four years to run its course. For several of them,
Manguso had to undergo periodic treatments in which her plasma was
completely removed and replaced. The treatments worked, but
sometimes only for a few days. Later, she moved to steroid
treatments, which restored a degree of physical well-being but
created complicated side effects. In her sharp, affecting new
memoir, "The Two Kinds of Decay," Manguso writes from the far side
of a long period of remission. 'For seven years I tried not to
remember much because there was too much to remember, ' she writes.
From an original welter of experience, she has carefully culled
details that remain vivid. Filtered through memory, events during
her illness seem like 'heavenly bodies' that 'fly until they change
into new forms, simpler forms, with ever fewer qualities and
increasingly beautiful names.' Manguso is acutely interested in
these processes of renaming and remembering, the way time changes
what we say about the past. Her book is not only about illness but
also about the ways we use language to describe it and cope with
it. The author of two books of poetry, Manguso brings the virtues
of that form to the task of writing memoir. Her book is divided
mostly into one- and two-page chapters titled like poems. She mixes
high and low language, the crass and the scientific, with a lyric
poet's sure-handedness. The chapters themselves--among them 'The
Hematologist, ' 'The Forgetful Nurse, ' 'Corroboration'--resemble
her own poetry, broken into aphoristic, discrete sections on the
page. This disjointedness gives the prose a rhythm that mirrors the
confusion and fragmentation of illness. It also clears space for
one of the book's most remarkable aspects: its dark humor. What
makes this account both bearable and moving is Manguso's keen sense
of the absurdities that accompany severe illness. Often these come
from its odd proximity to ordinary life . . . Manguso was already a
writer when she became ill, and her obsession with words, their
capacities and limitations, permeates her book. The world of
hospitals and doctors has its own language, which she translates
for the uninitiated reader. Her plasma replacement treatment is
called 'apheresis, ' which she notes is 'from the Greek aphairein,
to take away.' She is amused that hematologist-oncologists
abbreviate their titles to '"hem-oncs" (pronounced almost like
he-monks).' But her interest is more than literary curiosity. When
she has a line implanted directly into her chest so her plasma can
be replaced more easily, she parses her reaction: "I had read Freud
in school. He distinguishes fear, a state of worrying anticipation
. . . from fright, the momentary response of our mind to a danger
that has caught us by surprise but is already over.' For hours, she
writes, 'I lay there, weeping in fright. Not fear. Fright.'
Manguso's desire for precision is urgent, even if it cannot always
be fulfilled. 'I need to describe that feeling, ' she says of the
deep cold induced by apheresis. 'Make a reader stop reading for a
moment and think, Now I understand how cold it felt. But
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