Old Friends

by Stephen Dixon

A Village Voice Best Book of 2004, this stunning and often hilarious tour-de-force by the master of the American avant-garde traces the friendship of two writers over the course of a lifetime.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

220 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Stephen Dixon was a novelist and short story author who published hundreds of stories in an incredible list of literary journals. Dixon was nominated for the National Book Award twice--in 1991 for Frog and in 1995 for Interstate--and his writing also earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters Prize for Fiction, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize.

Reviews

[SStefano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quella di Dixon è la voce di una generazione non ancora ossessionata dalla stesura del Grande romanzo americano. Il suo ritmo suona lento : due amici, insegnante altruista e gioviale il primo, sedicente e umbratile benestante il secondo. Una passione in comune : la scrittura. Un incontro casuale. Un'amicizia lunga una vita. Niente alcool, fumo, droghe, sesso viaggi, solo la vita raccontata attraverso la macchina da scrivere. Gli inesauribili dibattiti tra i due e le interminabili telefonate tracciano i lunghi anni di vicissitudini attraverso una lenta struttura epistolare che dona al testo una patina di antichità. C'è una certa delicatezza da commedia, una leggerezza del quotidiano che rende la medietà dei suoi protagonisti tanto vicina al lettore da potersi identificare con la banalità della loro vita e la quotidianità del loro dolore. Risentimento e beatitudine, affetto e colpa : tutto un mondo di normalissima normalità.

[Bud Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much to admire about this novel. First of all, the writing is the stuff of genius: immersive, peculiar, uncomfortable, seemingly casual but anything but.

I loved the stylistic choices too, the novel starts out in straight third person, with an odd paragraph breaks, pages and pages long containing off-kilter dialogue tags, a sentence often having one character speaking and then also the answer by the other character.

The novel then shifts to letters, which we only get to read one side of, the gaps of life left out.

At another point a day is told in reverse.

A wife in a wheelchair, and the day to realities of growing older; literary ambition; dreams; the history of scars; visits to the homes where we keep those who have lost their minds.


Old Friends is one of the most human pieces of art I’ve ever come across.

[Jeff Laughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book. Dixon is a deep hue of red in a world of whitewash. Realistic and gritty, this book is stylistically perfect though he is a writer's writer, if you will.

[Franco Romero · Rating 5 out of 5]

this isn't so much a book about the length of a friendship as it is about a friendship beginning, a friendship ending and a friendship remembered as old age and life's sorrows settle in. every line was great. few books have made me laugh so much or feel so sad.

[dead letter office · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everyone likes to say that Stephen Dixon is a writer's writer. I think the politest things I can say about this book are (1) I guess I'm not a writer and (2) as a reader I prefer writers who write things that readers might also enjoy.

Boring, self-indulgent, awkwardly constructed, and stiltedly-dialogued. Told entirely from two characters' perspectives, the other characters (wives, children) fail to come to life at all. I found the focus on Irv and Leonard suffocatingly narrow. It's like somebody picked the most tedious characters from a Phillip Roth novel and was like "what if we took these guys, stripped the plot and circumstances and the incidental characters that add some interest and diversity of perspective away, and just zoomed in on them for a couple hundred pages." Because what's missing from Phillip Roth novels is decent representation of crusty old male intellectuals on the Eastern seaboard waxing lyrical about their problems.

[Bahman Bahman · Rating 2 out of 5]

کاتیا به ایرو گفت: «اگه بیشتر از یکی دو روز اینجا می‌مونی، بهتره برای وقتایی که من سرکارم و توی خونه تنهایی، همین دوروبر برای خودت هم‌صحبت دست و پا کنی. یه نویسنده‌ی دیگه رو همین نزدیکی‌ها می‌شناسم که دست و دلش برای داشتن هم‌صحبت فرهیخته و علاقه‌مند به ادبیات می‌لرزه. پدر یکی از شاگردامه. پسرش می‌گفت فقط دو مایل با اینجا فاصله دارن. رانندگی و دوچرخه‌سواری نمی‌کنه. می‌تونی با دوچرخه‌ی من بری خونه‌شون یا اگه هوا خیلی سرد و بارونی نباشه، قدم زنان با پای پیاده. شاید بتونید با هم اخت بشید، مطمئنم تو می‌تونی.»

ایرو یک ماه پیش با کاتیا آشنا شده بود. همدیگر را در کتاب فروشی دیده بودند و سرکتابی که کاتیا می‌خواست در کلاس به شاگردهای دبیرستانی‌اش درس بدهد، حرف‌شان گل انداخته بود. کاتیا به جای اینکه شماره‌اش را به او بدهد، از او شماره گرفته بود و چند ساعت از دیدارشان نگذشته، با تماسش ایرو را غافلگیر کرده بود. ایرو آپارتمانی در نیویورک داشت. کاتیا خانه‌ای کوچک را راکلند کانتی اجاره کرده بود که نزدیک بیست مایل با خانه‌ی او فاصله داشت...

[B Crews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is written mostly in dialogue -- not in snippets, not in realistic dialogue at all, really -- in dialogue where the characters go on so long it's dueling monologues, and also through letters one character is sending the other. There's also a long part where Dixon tells the story of one character's day going backwards: going through a scene, then jumping back to the one before, and so on. At times it seems hurried, like someone rambling on speed. It was interesting to see it done, and to see that a novel could be done this way, and I suppose the method frequently worked to reflect the subject and "themes" (to put it in a ninth grade sorta way) of the novel, since a lot of the story is about the loss of communication ability, due to disease, of one friend in a pair of writer friends. The story also hits on: disease more generally, the loneliness of a life without family v. the hard work required to keep a family healthy, the isolation and poverty of the writing life. Some dashes of funny, some parts that seemed very true. I also appreciated Dixon's ability to capture his characters' frustrations with people and cynicism without apology -- they seemed real in their complaints, very real as people.

[Ian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stephen Dixon likes miso soup, holy shit.

[Mikael · Rating 4 out of 5]

do you really wanna take care of other people even when being needed is nice but the responsibility really and your life disappears gone

[Melville House Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Stephen Dixon is one of the great secret masters." --Jonathan Lethem

*A Village Voice Best Book of the Year*

[Miles Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

'now that is what i am talking about'

[Paolo Dell'Oca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Letto in italiano.

[David Markwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dixon writing in the year 2036 as an old man. We remember our friends, we remember ourselves. Is there anything we remember at all?