Manguso specializes in these tiny books. This was by far my favorite of the 3 I’ve read so far, a “short book composed entirely of what [she] hoped would be a long book’s quotable passages.”
The snippets appeal to minuscule attention spans like the one I’ve developed that keeps me tossing book after book into the reject pile. Somehow I made it through this unscathed.
A smattering of samples:
- “For a little attention, complain a little. For a lot of attention, stop complaining.”
- “The greatest commitments are to experiences with no known end points: friendship, marriage, parenthood, one’s own life.”
- “Bad art is from no one to no one. “
- “The difference between writers under thirty and writers over forty is that the former, like everyone their age, already know how to act like famous people: people whose job it is to be photographed.”