300 Arguments (Graywolf, 2017)
Australian Book Review 2017 Books of the Year •A.V. Club 24 Favorite Books of 2017 • Book Riot Best Genre-Bending Nonfiction of 2017 • Buzzfeed The Year's Best Books • Electric Literature 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2017 • Entropy Best Nonfiction Books of 2017 • Indiebound Indie Next Pick • Irish Times Best Books of 2018 • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Books of 2017 • NPR Best Books of 2017 • Nylon Favorite Sentences of 2017 • Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Best Books of 2017 • Prism Best Books of 2017
About the book
300 Arguments, a pocket-sized foray into the frontier of contemporary nonfiction writing, is, at first glance, a group of unrelated aphorisms. But the pieces reveal themselves as a masterful arrangement that steadily gathers power. To read them is to witness acrobatic acts of compression in the service of extraordinary psychological and spiritual insight. Manguso’s arguments about desire, ambition, and failure add up to an unexpected and renegade wisdom literature.
Praise
“Almost mathematical in its precision.” (San Francisco Chronicle)… “I wanted to gift it to everyone I know, read it aloud to strangers on the bus, and transcribe it by hand in its entirety like a holy text.” (Portland Mercury)… “So good that I keep throwing it across the room and going to pick it up again.” (Entropy)… “If there were a literary equivalent of the debate as to who is the best pound-for-pound boxer currently fighting, then word for word, Sarah Manguso’s 300 Arguments would surely emerge as one of the smartest and most stimulating books of recent years.” (Geoff Dyer)… “Every era has its wise aphorist. Sarah Manguso is ours and joins Marcus Aurelius, Thomas à Kempis, Montaigne.” (Edmund White)
Reviews