The Guardians: An Elegy for a Friend

The Guardians: An Elegy for a Friend

<DIV><DIV><DIV><P>“An unidentified white man was struck and instantly killed by a Metro-North train last night,” reported the July 24, 2008, edition of the <I>Riverdale Press</I>. This man was named Harris, and <I>The Guardians</I>—written in the years after he escaped from a psychiatric hospital and ended his life—is Sarah Manguso’s heartbreaking elegy.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV><P>Harris was a man who “played music, wrote software, wrote music, learned to drive, went to college, went to bed with girls.” In <I>The Guardians</I>, Manguso grieves not for family or for a lover, but for a best friend. With startling humor and candor, she paints a portrait of a friendship between a man and a woman—in all its unexpected detail—and shows that love and grief do not always take the shapes we expect them to.<BR>