Liars
Liars is about a long-in-tooth marriage that becomes that way ostensibly because the husband is a jackass. And he absolutely is. John is first and foremost a liar, and having observed similar nasty situations over the years, I have to say that Sarah Manguso’s illustration of John is pitch-perfect. (It’s like these things … follow a pattern or something?!) I feel like critics/reviewers and maybe even Manguso herself want readers to then question whether or not the wife, Jane, is a liar as well — “unreliable narrator” and all that. That’s fair, and maybe she really is lying to herself sometimes. (We all do on occasion, yes?)
What interests me more, though, is Manguso’s focus on work and the delineation between physical and mental labor. As John becomes more and more sociopathic, their homes — meaning, the cleaning of them — become important characters. (Sooooo many deceptively throwaway lines about Jane cleaning the house.) But there’s also a child in this situation, and if you’ve been a longtime caregiver to one or more you KNOW that is physical work. “Then I went into the bathroom and stood up straight at the mirror and remembered that I was a mother, a person who could lift a truck off a child with her bare hands.” And despite the physicality and necessity of both these jobs — house maintenance and childcare — we classify them as unimportant if done by their “owners.” As Jane spends more and more of her time on this physical labor, her writing (mental labor) takes a major backseat. Never mind that she has multiple books as well as a fellowship under her belt — it’s like a ”never the twain shall meet” situation between these two types of labor. Is it because this is just “how it is”? Or is it solely because of John?
Maybe labor/work is on my mind because I’ve been dipping in and out of Eula Biss’ essay collection Having and Being Had. (Highly recommend!) But also, maybe, it’s because sometimes getting the job done — whatever it may be — requires creating our own narratives. Maybe even lying. “I began to understand what a story is. It’s a manipulation. It’s a way of containing unmanageable chaos.”
originally published on instagram