I suspect that many people who don't keep a diary worry that they ought to， and that， for some， the failure to do so is a source of incomprehensible self-hatred．What could be more worth rememberingthan one's own life? Is there a good excuse for forgetting even a single day? Something like thisanxiety seems to have prompted the poet Sarah Manguso to begin writing a journal， which she haskept ever since．'I wrote so I could say I was truly paying attention，' she tells us early in hermemoir （回忆录） 'Ongoingness'．'Experience in itself wasn't enough．The diary was my defenseagainst waking up at the end of my life and realizing I'd missed it．'

The journal， first imagined as an amulet （护身符） against the passage of time， has grown tooverwhelming proportions．'I started keeping a diary twenty-five years ago，' Manguso writes．'It'seight hundred thousand words long．' And the memoir， a kind of meta-diary， is her attempt toquestion her crazy drive to maintain a record of her existence．Of all the psychological conditions tobe burdened with， the crazy impulse to write is hardly the worst， and Manguso doesn't quitesucceed in eliminating the suspicion that she is a little proud of her weird habits， perhaps evenexaggerating them．But she seems genuinely not proud of the diary．'There's no reason to continuewriting other than that I started writing at some point——and that， at some other point， I'll stop，' shewrites．Looking back at entries fills her with embarrassment and occasionally even indifference．Shereports that， after finding that she'd recorded 'nothing of consequence' in 1996， she 'threw theyear away．'

In her memoir， Manguso makes the striking decision never to quote the diary itself．As she started tolook through the old journals， she writes， she became convinced that it was impossible to pull the'best bits' from their context without distorting the sense of the whole: 'I decided that the onlyway to represent the diary in this book would be either to include the entire thing untouched——whichwould have required an additional eight thousand pages——or to include none of it．' The diary， sheobserves， is the memoir's 'dark matter'， everywhere but invisible， and the book revolves around acenter that is absent．

Manguso， whose previous books include two other memoirs and two books of poetry， grew upoutside Boston．Now in her early forties， she teaches writing in Los Angeles， at Otis College of Artand Design．But for most of the book we come away with only the roughest outline of Manguso'slife．She's married， with a son．Her son is young; her husband is from Hawaii; she was once veryill．The individual memories she chooses to share often don't link up to produce a continuousnarrative．We get Manguso， at fourteen， looking through a telescope for a comet （彗星）， failing tosee it， and not caring; Manguso， in 1992， writing mostly about hating her mother; Manguso， incollege， discovering that a boyfriend has read her diary; Manguso， in her late thirties， drinldng teain an attempt to trigger early labor， hoping that her husband can be present for both the birth of hisson and， an ocean away， the death of his mother．

The memoir， rather than being a summary of the life recorded by the diary， is mostly a set of deepthoughts on the fact of the diary's existence．The tone is matter-of-fact， and the controlled， evendull sentences seem deliberately to reject the wild， exaggerative quality of a diary．The bookproceeds in rare， brief fragments， almost like prose poems．None are longer than a page， and someare just a single sentence．

Manguso seldom reveals any particularly sensitive information， and yet her material is， in a sense，vastly more intimate than what we usually think of as private．Her impressions， while clear， are trueto the vague mental life as we experience it．'Ongoingness' is an attempt to take， as Virginia Woolfwrote， 'a token of some real thing behind appearances' and 'make it real by putting it intowords．' It's hard to think of a riskier way to write．

The great merit of the book is that it succeeds in not feeling abstract， even though it frequentlyavoids specificity．There is， in fact， a narrative here， although one that functions without thenormal signposts （明显的线索或迹象） of life-writing．Instead， it is a narrative about the gradual shift， as Manguso gets older， in her relationship to time．It is telling that motherhood receives themost attention．'Then I became a mother，' she writes．'I began to spend time differently．' Sheknows that this is something all parents discover——' this has all been said before '——but theconsequences are nonetheless immense．'Nursing an infant creates so much lost， empty time，' shewrites．

As Manguso's sense of time dissolves， so does her devotion to the diary．In her twenties， she wrotedown her experiences constantly and in minute detail．In her thirties， the diary became more of alog: 'The rhapsodies （狂想曲） of the previous decade thinned out．' As she entered her forties，'reflection disappeared almost completely．' Manguso doesn't say that she intends to stop keepingher diary， but the subtitle of the memoir——' The End of a Diary'——implies that the habit may haveoutlived its usefulness．Another meaning hides， too: Why does one keep a diary at all? As she looksback on the huge project， she feels its uselessness．

One could argue that reading memoirs comes more naturally to us now than ever before．Our criticalfaculties are primed as they've never been．Social media annoy us daffy with fragmented first-personaccounts of people's lives．But what constantly self-reporting your own life does not seem to enablea person to do——at least， not yet——is to communicate to others a private sense of what it feels like tobe you．With 'Ongoingness' Manguso has achieved this．In her almost illusive deep thoughts ontime and what it means to preserve one's own life， she has managed to copy an entirely interiorworld．She has written the memoir we didn't realize we needed． 'Ongoingness' describes how Manguso gradually changes in her relationship to time as she grows old． 查看材料