The Two Kinds of Decay

About halfway through Manguso’s new memoir, she recounts eating a hamburger. “I’m not talking about the way ketchup and mustard taste in general,” she writes. “I mean I can taste the particular condiments that were on that particular hamburger I ate in 1995.”

You can forgive Manguso for pausing over the memory of that burger; it was the first one she’d eaten in a long time, and some of the first solid food she’d eaten after months of medical treatment left her on a liquid diet. Manguso was diagnosed in 1995 with CIPD, a rare blood disease that sets the immune system to attacking the nervous system, causing paralysis that begins in the extremities and encroaches in to the vital organs. As the Rome Prize–winning poet writes, “My immune system was trying to destroy my nervous system. It was a misperception that caused me a lot of trouble.”

With two books of poetry and one short-story collection under her belt, Manguso brings both of those influences to bear in this stunning story of illness and recovery. She divides the book into short chapters, most dealing with the literal pain of the disease, but many tackling the broader implications of suffering. Her deadpan tone works equally well in service of the painful and funny moments, or when the two meet, as when Manguso writes, “There are two kinds of decay: mine and everyone else’s.”