The Guardians An Elegy for a Friend Author:Sarah Manguso ?An unidentified white man was struck and instantly killed by a Metro-North train last night,? reported the July 24, 2008, edition of the Riverdale Press. This man was named Harris, and The Guardians?written in the years after he escaped from a psychiatric hospital and ended his life?is Sarah Manguso?s heartbreaking elegy.Harris was a man who ?p... more »layed music, wrote software, wrote music, learned to drive, went to college, went to bed with girls.? In The Guardians, 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.« less