Customer Reviews

Friendship: An Expose

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

'Friendship' is one of the most important elements in human life. I know people usually without strong family ties for whom friends matter more than anything else in the world. Now Joseph Epstein one of the sharpest and most insightful of contemporary observers of human character has written a work in which he analyzes and seeks to encapsulate the wisdom of his own experience in Friendship. He does many different things in the nineteen essays which constitute this book, one central one is to tell the story of a major friendship in his life at length. He also does other less congenial things like keeping a diary in which he lists all the inconveniences and problems maintaining his friendships cause him. Epstein in his previous works on 'Snobbery ' and 'Envy ' has been no stranger to seeing the less - attractive sides of mankind, and he does this here. In his favor it can be said that he is most candid about his own foibles.
As Epstein sees it , like many other things, Friendship is not what it used to be. Our E-mailing speeded up world has made Friendship seem to many more of a quick fix and a burden. In talking however about his own estimated seventy- five friendships, including those with such luminaries as Saul Bellow and Ralph Ellison Epstein also indicates how Friendship can broaden our perception and perspective. He analyzes in the work a whole variety of different kinds of Friendship, and tries to as it were create a personal Taxonomy of the subject.
Towards the end of the book catches himself and says that his critical remarks about friendship have not been made in order to discredit the institution.

" At moments in the course of writing this book I had the staggering thought that I seemed to be coming out against friendship .... That is not at all what I had in mind when I began .... What I wanted was to take some of the air out of the idealization of friendship, so that a friend, like a teacher or a clergyman, need not always feel that he or she is falling short of an impossible ideal."

Ideal or not , this book is rich with material for reflection upon one of the most important subjects of human life. It is one of those kinds of books which even when disagreed with provides inspiration for thought, and insight into our own personal realities.

This book stimulated me to think about the nature of friendship, but ultimately it was somewhat unsatisfying because the author did not seem to have any special insights of his own.
For a person who clearly considers himself to be rather reserved, the author was very candid about his own friendships and attitudes towards his friends (leaving me glad I am not among them!), but he seemed too quick to generalize without any apparent basis. There also seemed to be a tendency to "name drop", as if he felt the quality of his Friends List would give stature to his conclusions.
Nonetheless, the book was an interesting exploration of an important subject that most people do not think about. Many of Epstein's pronouncements made me ponder about my own concept of friendship, which was a worthwhile experience, even when I ultimately found many of his ideas inaccurate or unconvincing.

An unusually insightful read about a surprisingly neglected topic. Aristotle and Montaigne both had a go at it. Recent entrees are all self-help books - heavy on the mystical and the idealistic. In "Friendship: An Expose," Epstein analyzes his own experiences and methods in friendship, making this a personal memoir of surprising candor: "When I was a boy, I took on and scraped off best friends the way a careful boat owner does barnacles. Most were, with time, demoted to friendships of lesser intensity."

He started out with a subject, but no theme. As he progressed, his theme solidified - that his friends weren't perfect, but neither was he a perfect friend to them. "Perfection in friendship just isn't on the menu. To idealize friendship, in general, is a serious error." Epstein didn't want to write the glorified version. Whether he knows it or not, Epstein's personal anecdotes could have come straight from textbooks on game theory and evolutionary psychology. Some of the themes he develops are:

Friendships entail obligations - sometimes ample, sometimes miniscule and subtle. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair. Reciprocity is the heart of friendship.

Friends keep updated tally-sheets on each other. "Score-keeping - I wish to root such behavior out of myself. I can't." Detecting who's in business solely for himself can be a subtle matter. Fortunately, we come from the factory with a good cheater-detection module.

Some openly prefer acquaintances to friends - more variety, less baggage - "They're too much on their good behavior to exhibit their weaknesses."

Maintaining too many friends at one time on a regular basis turns you into a professional friend.

We enter friendships mainly through instinct.

New Yorker cartoon: man coming out of church saying, "How can I love my enemies when I don't even like my friends?"

Epstein apparently has the natural ability to put others at ease. "As part of my prowess at making friends, I had at my command a small gift for implying an intimacy that often wasn't there. I have it still, and it sometimes gets me into difficulty - making people think I have stronger feelings for them than in fact I do."

This intermittent theme of the book may turn people off, but as revealed in his diary, he obviously does his part as a friend. It comes natural to him to massage and maintain his relationships. He may not always want to listen, but he listens anyway. As the story unfolds, it turns into a self-help book without meaning to, by virtue of his example.

Epstein is admirably honest about his own shortcomings, and while his opinions of his socialization abilities may sound arrogant, it doesn't keep me from liking him. His insights are profound, the book is original, and there is nothing frivolous about his approach. I highly recommend this book to anyone who would wish to know more about themselves and their friendships.

If, as Joseph Epstein writes, friendship can rest on nothing more or less than liking someone enough to see him again, one wonders how he can elsewhere say that spouses or romantically engaged people aren't really friends, at least in the early days of their relationship. I'm sure this is true for many people (who may in fact never be good friends and require other supports), but it is certainly not true for the rest of us. Early married friendship as friendship may have its deficiencies, but surely those deficiencies vary in number and gravity with each couple; and on his own showing, friendship itself has deficiencies. Aiming too high or asking too much may mean that one doesn't have friends at all.

But that raises another question: is friendship a thing in itself, with standards or criteria that must be met in order to be friendship, or is it something that we can squeeze and shape and reduce as opportunity or lack thereof requires, a sort of Procrustean thing? In other words, friendship may be swell, but maybe the real thing is just rare, and no amount of longing can make it less rare.

An interesting question, also (for me at least), is how Epstein's friends have received this book. Epstein makes it clear, in different places, that he has more friends than he really wants; he is someone presented with a huge chocolate box of friends, but he really only likes the hazelnut ones, and then even these must have hard centers. All his friends must be wondering: am I the hazelnut with the hard center or the mint one he could do without? And if so, can I do without him? He may be the only person in history that has written a book not to make more friends but to have fewer.

So, if Epstein is unlike most people in that instead of wishing that he had the right sort of friends, or real friends, or more friends, he is not very needy of friends, does he shed light on what gives a person that lack of neediness? Not directly; but it seems as if some of the very qualities that make one a good friend are the same qualities that make one not very needy of friends. An interesting paradox, perhaps, pointing to quality over quantity.

Further, Epstein's self-described ability to draw people to him, and to flatter them that he likes them more than he does (a revelation that itself is very unflattering), raises the question of why, other than vanity, he has persisted in the same behavior for so long. If (at least before publishing this book) he has ever answered the phone and smiled down it audibly, as customer service people are sometimes trained to do, did he genuinely smile in each case or did he know that he was doing his customer-service thing, his people-love-me-because-I'm-so-lovable thing? I'm not saying this to "go after" him, but these questions come up in the course of reading his book. In other words, can one really have "a lot" of friends, however defined and whatever the number, if one doesn't really want them? Expose, indeed.

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a teacher of the art of talk, a Roman rhetorician, a lecturer, an admirer of Cicero. While his theories on education during the first century remain largely true even today, Joseph Epstein quotes him on friendship:

"The name of the friend seems to me even holier than that of relative. For the one comes from the intellect, comes from a decision; the other chance bestows, circumstance of birth and things that are not elected by our will."


I do appreciate Epstein's tackling of such an important topic as friendship that has been a source of consternation to myself. Before the book my definition of `friendship' was someone whom I would like to be with. After the book this definition changed to: someone who motivates me to be myself. Yet they all influence who I am.

This is not to say spending time with someone whom I would like to be with is not worthwhile. Perhaps I am learning something new, or just awed by an aura of charisma, yet none of which fuels friendship, rather acquaintance that may takeoff to friendship. It is important, as Epstein encourages the reader, to recognize the difference and save the paean tendencies.

Dictionaries are not very helpful to define what a friend is: a comrade or a companion. Equality in `comrade' is challenged because friendship is preferential and by its very nature it is discriminative. A `companion' is "too neutral" as Epstein puts it. It is nearly non-preferential because it means someone who happens to be in one's company.

Epstein attempts to distinguish between the "kinds' and "degrees" of friendship, a taxonomy, or science of friendship by the following categories:

Old Friends
Out-of-Town Friends
Professional Friends
Secondary Friends (friend of a friend)
Male-Female Friends
Ex-Friends

Marriage is more than a friendship and it is in a class of its own, although nearly all of the characteristics of friendship are inherited perhaps with the exception of guy-talk.

Epstein devotes an entire chapter on the Best Friend. He quotes George Santayana's definition for this phenomenon: "the person with whom you can be most human." Epstein interprets `human' in this context as the state of being "most yourself".

A characteristic of friendship is giving back and you take, but how to measure? Top bean counter who wrote the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, had thought of the notion of reciprocity in friendship to be unreckonable. The author amusingly calls the "theme" of his family as "ingratitude" because his mother and father didn't forgive one they lavished generosity with and did not receive a thank-you card. Epstein is quick to note that he has to "guard against fresh outbreaks of this family trait."

Epstein quotes Aristotle in the Nichomachean Ethics where friendship is based on one or two purposes: pleasure and utility. This is the reason I find professional friendship at work. There is pleasure because we do what we enjoy doing (software development) and there is utility because we help each other. There is also the pleasure of conversing about many different things with like-minded people. Since so much of my time is spent with people I work with, it is no wonder our friendship spills outside of work into poker nights. But these friendships always remain, and must remain, within the "professional friendship" category. While business is good, people at work are as Alexander Dumas's D'Artagnan exclaims "All for one and one for all!" But when it turns sour it's more like Napoleon's cry "Every man for himself!" at Waterloo. Of course in theory and practice good synergies don't allow for a business to crash and burn. While loyalty is a characteristic of friendship, Epstein asks, but to what degree? In marriage--as I see it--this is at infinity.

Aristotle, according to Epstein's research, had said the prerequisite to a friendship is that a person must have good character. This is very basic, true, and more or less ubiquitous among people most of us like to be with. A much subtler point to friendship is probably the requirement that a person be intelligent. F. Scott Fitzgerald offers a clear and unambiguous definition to what an intelligent person is:

"The sign of an intelligent person is the ability to keep two contradictory ideas in his head at the same time and still function."

In other words agreeing to disagree is extremely crucial to the sustenance of friendship.

Delineating the scope, variety, and limits of the human relationship subsumed under the name of friendship, Epstein again touches on one of the charged aspects of life. Having covered envy and snobbery, he focuses on the history, psychology and personal experience of that ambiguous connection. He brings the reader into contact with the ancient and great by quoting their conversations and describing their friendships. His insightful observations that articulate the guilty and repressed emotions associated with the dark side of friendship legitimizes them. For that alone, it is worth reading!

I can fairly be described as a card-carrying Epstein fan. I rued the day he was ousted from his editorship at the American Scholar, and over the years have purchased multiple copies of his "Narcissus Leaves the Pool" for friends (a book worth its price for the title essay alone, to say nothing of "Will You Still Feed Me" and others).

I mention this to color the huge disappointment I felt upon reading this, his latest book and the most disappointing of those I've read. It is devoid of his usual wit, and offers little in the way of genuine insight. This would be fine -- the lack of any novel apercus -- if along the way we were treated to the usual digressive and aleatory delights of Epstein's mind, caught mid-wander and mid-wonder; but much of the time in "Friendship" one feels as though one is wading through a rather tedious litany of the friends that fill his days (at one point we're forced to read an actual log of the amount of time he spends/wastes on friends in a week), replete with self-justifications (when he worries we might indict him) and self-aggrandization (when he doesn't).

The book sometimes feels less like an examination of friendship and more a defense of reticence and an argument against confessional culture; a defense of small talk and an attack on the notion, ascendant in our time, that friends must perforce share feelings (I can practically see Mr. Epstein recoiling at the very word) with one another.

I can imagine a book with this thesis making a nuanced, humorous and convincing argument about, say, how far our notions of friendship have been debased by our tell-all age. This is not that book. He lodges his complaint and moves on, rarely taking his points much further than merely stating, for the record, that he's not much interested in examining these things further, that he likes things just the way they are. This is the stuff of curmudgeonry -- not at all the stuff of good books.

He lodges his distaste for "intimacy" and the "putative need" for it, for example, and manages to lump hugs, therapy, gay culture, and Bly's "Iron John" together as bugaboos united in their opposition to an ideal (his) of a deep friendship in which no demands are made, no information of any depth is exchanged, and a pleasant equipoise is maintained over a long period of time.

Again: I can imagine an essay on this notion that was both revealing and amusing; I could have imagined Epstein having written it. This ain't it.

Now, it's not a total wash -- it'll make you want to read Robinson Crusoe, for one thing, and it may have you once more nodding in pleasant approbation at the wisdom of Samuel Johnson. It will also have you recalling friends you haven't thought of in years as you conjure up your friendships, in all their modes and modalities, and compare them against Mr. Epstein's -- so it *does* serve as a stimulus to rumination... but then so might your high school yearbook.

The author did a great job examining all aspects of friendship, using personal examples of his own experiences and using examples from literature. It is a delightful read, it was entertaining and I looked forward to relaxing and reading more of it each day. All areas of friendship are examined with the eye of a professor, friendships between wife and husband, long distance friendships, friendships between the opposite sex, inter racial friendships, etc. The author examines what history and literature has to tell us from Plato, aristotle, Montaigne, Mark Twain, Nietzche, etc. You will leave this book understanding that friendship, while at times is demanding, it is one of life's greatest pleasures and well worth any inconvience and effort.

In Joseph Epstein's conclusion to Friendship: An Exposé, he states that he 'began with a vague sense that the standard idealization friends was somehow false to the truth of friendship'. Indeed Epstein does not during the conclusion, the introduction, or throughout the novel, claim to have solved the riddle of what a friend is and what a friend is not, rather he puts forth examples of friendships he has had, and examines them in an attempt to explain the varieties of friendship. This approach, while overall quite successful, does leave one with the sense that his book applies perhaps only to himself, or to the current age, or to an American, rather than being a grand, overarching discussion on the concept of friendship. Perhaps it would be impossible to write the final word on friendship, at any rate, that has not been achieved here.

Joseph Epstein is modest, but he has had many friends throughout his life. He recalls when he was a schoolboy how he would actively cultivate friendships with people from the different social groups, partly ingratiating himself, partly by being a 'good guy'. This ability to create friends is something he has carried with him throughout his life until now, when he is in his sixties (Joseph Epstein recently celebrated his seventieth birthday, but the point remains - here is a man adept at creating friendships). He began to realise, however, that, try as he might, he could not fashion an adequate definition of friendship that would include every single person he believed was his friend. On top of that, he had many different levels of friends, which he compares in a running metaphor as possessing different 'seats' in a football game, with the best seats going to the closest friends.

All of this is fairly obvious, and it is good for the novel that these points are raised in the introduction where they belong, rather than taking up space in the main thrust of the work. But what is literature, or indeed essays, about, other than in part the clear, concise explanation of what is obvious to us already, though we have never managed to articulate it so? Reading Epstein's introduction - and I have read most of the historical authors he mentioned who have written briefly on friendship: Aristotle, Plato, Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld - it became clear how necessary it is that we have a great book on friendship.

For what is friendship? We have friends we wish to see regularly. We have friends who we do not care to see, but enjoying talking on the phone with, or emailing. We have friends we don't see for years, friends we live cities, states, countries apart from. We have friends of the same sex and we have friends of the opposite sex. Friends from similar social, economic backgrounds, friends with the same level of education, intelligence, wealth, prospects, political ideas, philosophical ideas, aesthetics tastes. We have friends who are the complete opposite of us in these areas. All of these things, and yet each one is a friend. What, then, is a friend? Epstein provides two dictionary definitions, neither of which suffice.

The main thrust of the novel, then, comes from an examination of the different aspects of friendship as he sees them, using the particular lens that is Joseph Epstein's very own friends. He says that, 'My friends will recognize themselves in these pages...some to their pleasure, some to their chagrin, and a few to their strong distaste,' and it is true that some come off poorly, but most do not. Rather, it is Epstein who allows the probably guilt, the likely negligence, from the friendship. By using his actual friends as examples, Epstein has created a potentially dangerous exercise for himself, but reading the novel never feels like a dirty exposition but a celebration, examination and critique of the different levels of friendships he has known. Even the 'sordid' tales - stories of friends who were not good friends, or friendships that end badly - are told with tact.

Epstein notes while explaining his methods for dealing with friends that, 'If this all sounds rather cold and calculating, this is only because it is - or at least it's calculating.' However, none of his stories but two comes across as anything but carefully explained with an eye for discussion, not blame. Examination, not airing dirty laundry. The first is a 'friendship diary', a record of a week's worth of activities involving his friends. This comes across as little more than boasting, which may be an unfair accusation against what is largely a tasteful, moderate novel, but the comment stands. The greater point of the article in which the diary is placed would stand without this endlessly busy week of Epstein's. The second is a confused story involving Saul Bellow - presumably not Epstein's favourite person - and Edward Shils. At its core, Epstein chose Shils as his friend - or was chosen - and naturally became an 'enemy' of Bellow when the two older men had a falling out. Perhaps because Epstein is concerned with preserving his friends reputation, and given Bellow's immense standing in American literature, Epstein's walking on eggshells way of explaining his story means, essentially, that we are left scratching our heads as to why it was told at all. The novel would have lost nothing by its omission, and certainly has not gained from it.

Excluding these admittedly minor flaws, Epstein's work is intelligent, reasoned, well articulated and entertaining. References to works ancient and contemporary are rife throughout the novel, but never in a way that detracts from the experiences of readers who remain ignorant to the primary works. Epstein draws heavily from his own friendships, painting most of them with tenderness, care and consideration, and the wide range of his examination leave little left unexplored. Because the stories of friendship are mostly his, and thus not necessarily immediately identifiable to everyone, the book remains a collection of stories about Epstein. It rises above this due to his erudition, wit and willingness to examine what his friendship mean beyond what they are. At the end of the novel, no suitable definition for friendship has been found. We remain where we have begun, though now we have learned Epstein's take on friendship. His is not - and nor does he profess it to be - the last and only word in friendship. What it is, however, is a collection of intellectual examinations on a topic that should be, but isn't, exhaustively examined by literature. A beginning point, then.

Boring! What got "expose'd" here was Mr. Epstein's narcissism and the lack of depth in his own friendships. By page 83(the height of his self-hugging,)I wanted to puke all over his cashmere.Better writers at least cloak their egotism in reasonably sincere humility
so that readers don't gag. And his chapter on the friendships of women was threaded with such sweeping stereotypical broadstrokes as to be completely laughable when read by this woman....