Friendship: An Expose – A Wickedly Entertaining Anatomy of the Relationships We Call Companions

by Joseph Epstein

Is it possible to have too many friends? Is your spouse supposed to be your best friend? How far should you go to help a friend in need? And how do you end a friendship that has run its course?

In a wickedly entertaining anatomy of friendship in its contemporary guises, Joseph Epstein uncovers the rich and surprising truths about our favored companions. Friendship illuminates those complex, wonderful relationships without which we'd all be lost.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Essays, Memoir, Friendship, Relationships, Cultural Studies

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Joseph Epstein is the author of, among other books, Snobbery, Friendship, and Fabulous Small Jews. He has been editor of American Scholar and has written for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Commentary, Town and Country, and other magazines.

Reviews

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have more friends who are younger than me. The reason is that, someday, when I die, I would like to be surrounded by their friendly faces. Towards the end of this book, the author recalled the survey ran by Dorothy Rowe, an Australian psychotherapist and author of the book, Friends and Enemies: Our Need to Love and Hate. In that survey, Rowe asked her workshop participants to complete the sentence: "After it's all said and done, what matters most in life is..." She notes: "What was listed most often was loving relationships. What most people feared was dying unloved and alone."

My father-in-law is now 94 and my mother is 76. Both of them have outlived most of their friends. Especially my father-in-law, all his childhood and school days' friends are now demised. My mother lives in the US and during her early years in that foreign land, I used to tell her news about her friends here in the Philippines. Now, after 20 years, I have no news to tell because most of her comadres are gone. I tried to get news about these friends' sons and daughters but my mother seems to have forgotten them already.

This explains why I prefer having friends younger than me. I want to make sure that I have more visitors in my wake if not during my hospitalization days. I don't want to outlive my friends. I do not expect them to be sad or cry for me when I am gone. Maybe say a positive thing or two about how much they enjoyed my company or the good things we shared together.

I had my share of friends during my younger years. I had both from each of the sexes but most of my best friends were male. I had Claro during my elementary days. Claro was this friend of mine who was always willing to partake my baon especially if it was maja blanca (steamed corn cake). During my high school days, I was part of a big circle of friends, but I could pinpoint Obet as my male best friend. Obet lived comfortably nearby so at some point we were always together. During my college days in Baguio, my best friend was Peter who was with me for 4 years in block section and we even had our hospital internship together. Peter left me his color pencils and told me to hand it back to him when we see each other someday. I still keep those color pencils hoping to fulfill that promise.

After college, I got close with a number of male friends and female friends. However, thought of sex always get in the way so I admit that I believe with the basic premise of the 80's movie When Harry Met Sally that a male and a female cannot be real friends because the male will always think of having sex with his female friend. We all know that we normally become friends with people we admire (physical or non-physical). Especially if it is physical, sexual attraction will definitely create a tension between friends of different gender.

These are some of the things about friendship that this book covers. I am still in search of a male friend that I hope to keep till I come to my deathbed. However, it seems that having one true best friend becomes harder and harder to find as you grow old. True that my wife is my best friend but the way we communicate to a friend belonging to our own gender is always different from a friend on the opposite gender. A male best friend is like a buddy who you can hang out to enjoy without opening yourself up and be sentimental or emotional.

What for you is a true friend or a best friend? We normally don't choose who we become friends with. I am now 48 years old and I still wonder what made David and Jonathan clicked as friends in the Old Testament or how Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were able to get along through thick or thin and even up to that tragic end. Since I was a kid, I always dream of having a true and lasting male best friend. Maybe because I grew up as the youngest in the family and had no chance to take care of a younger brother and I was also not fortunate enough to be blessed by God with a son.

Anyway, this book recalls some long-lasting friendships and there are those that lasted till death of either one of them. I drooled reading those. I was mesmerized to read even those with friends with 30+ years age difference. I still hope that it is not too late and there is somebody I can truly call my true male best friend.

If you really want to know more about friendships especially those famous friends in the history and literature, go for this book. If you are still in search for that one true friend, I am sure you will find yourself on one of the pages of this enlightening and inspiring book.

Well done, Joseph Epstein (the best friend of one of my favorite authors, Saul Bellow).

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author's style was pleasant enough, but he was mostly recounting the friendships in his life. There wasn't enough detail about the friendships to be satisfying, so really it seemed the whole book was building to two chapters that would have been interesting essays- The Broken Friendship and The Art of Friendship.

I should have skipped to the end of the book, read those two chapters, and spent some time contemplating my friendships, instead of spending so long on the author's.

[Youndyc · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd say 2.5 stars. I found certain parts of this book to be so wonderfully honest and astute - commentary by the author about his thoughts on this or that friendship break or start. But I couldn't escape feeling through many of his anecdotes that Mr. Epstein is a bit of a pompous ass, and the sensation distinctly diminished my enjoyment of the book. I don't think I could recommend this book.

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some piquant observations, but I wouldn't want to be friends with this guy.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

Notes:
15… Carnegie’s How to Win Friends one of most the blandly wicked books –F Raphael
20… Shared core of belief .. manly stoicism
24… Montaigne introduced first person singular
29… a decent listener, not much of a confessor
32… Edward Shils a pious agnostic, respected religion, but could not make the leap into faith
49… father inner-directed, didn’t need friends
89… X’s late-life crisis, regrets > achievements … Don’t lose the time that is left in sadness and further regret
109… Larkin, Amis, Conquest gigglesome in their obscenity remained schoolboys Guy stuff
120… Reticence is the essence in masculine friendship
173… A person’s opinions are the least important thing about him
188… Fitz: the natural state of a middle-aged man should be one of mild depression
203… He was, my dear old father, clearly under new management.
235… Pascal –all misfortunes derive from one single thing, the inability to be at ease alone in a room.
238… Barth’s ailments –events unavoidably controlled by the less honorable members of my body
248… Epstein –a gregarious melancholic, a highly social misanthrope, a laughing skeptic.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew -- finally finished it. A funny thing to say about a four-star book, which this was. On the positive side, and the reason for the four stars, this book was really everything non-fiction should be -- readable and well-written, educational, well-researched, thought-provoking, and highly entertaining at times. Because it was all those things, its negative qualities only cost it one star.

Among its negative qualities were the fact that it was repetitive at times, and that despite all its virtues, I sometimes got tired of reading it. After a while, it felt like a monologue on one long topic which demanded too much from my attention span at times -- a good monologue, but a monologue nonetheless. (Kind of like spending a lot of time with a friend who's interesting and intelligent, but does all the talking and after a while you want to either interrupt or space out, not because they're boring, but because endlessly listening is boring.) Also, despite all the interesting questions this book posed and tried to answer about friendship, there was one important one (at least, important to me) that did not get addressed: when your friend does something that hurts others, even if it has no impact on you, is that something that should break up the friendship?

For example, a relative of mine lived in a small college town (no, this is not a disguised story about me) for several years. There was only one other Orthodox couple, and naturally, the two were great friends, especially the husbands who would probably have hit it off anyway. One day, the wife confided to my relative that she was having an affair. My relative's response was, "That's disgusting!" and she promptly told this woman she could no longer be friends with her. A brave move, made even braver by the fact that this meant she now had absolutely no friends in this small, isolated town.

I think about this story a lot, especially since I have one friend whom I suspect (thank G-d, it was never proven to me and I hope it stays that way) of doing something pretty bad that affected a lot of people. I always wonder -- if my suspicions are ever borne out, do I need to stop being friends with this person over what she did, even though I was not at all personally affected by it? The short answer for me is, it depends on her attitude -- if she is sincerely remorseful and regretful, I can deal with that, but if she's convinced that she was right and unresponsive to criticism, I'm not sure whether we can stay friends. But that's a big question I have -- how far does loyalty to a friend go? If you are supposed to help your friend bury a dead body, no questions asked (see comments), should you also remain loyal to your friend if they did something morally wrong which hurt lots of people?

I don't know whether or not to hold it against the book that he did not address this, because it's almost a personal concern for me and may not be a universal question about friendship.

In any case, like most friends, the book was largely enjoyable in measured doses. I particularly admired his writing. There were so many amazing quotes that I would have loved to record, had I not done most of my reading on Shabbos or at night in bed.

[Randy Mcdonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read only one book by American writer Joseph Epstein–his 2006 Friendship: An Expose–but the strength of this work was enough to make me a convert. His writing style is superbly, elegantly constructed, intellectual in the best sense of the word, possessed by an inimitable wit and an ability to share the most telling anecdotes at just the right time.

Reviewers at Slate and the New York Times weren’t kind to the book, mainly because of the way they felt that Epstein related his friendships, his explicit lack of personal revelations. That’s a fair criticism; I felt it too. For me, though, that was secondary, Friendship‘s value as a sort of typology of friendships, as an examination of friendships both personal and historical and the ways in which differences and similarities can bring people together. The perspective of time that Epstein brings to friendship lets him conclude that the possibilities for friendship across once impenetrable barriers have increased greatly.

That’s too true. Slate recently had a series remarking on the novelty of male-female friendships, possible only after the 20th century saw something closer to equality of the sexes and female autonomy. The Christian Science Monitor covered how heterosexual men found–find–it difficult to form friendships for fear of being identified as effeminate or even gay. I know that quite a few older gay friends of mine are surprised that most of my male friends are straight. My entire social life, really, would have been impossible even a generation ago. It’s still impossible in most of the world, probably even in some parts of Canada. The amount of pleasure, support, happiness that people have deprived themselves of on account of these barriers saddens me.

Epstein's book is a challenging, engaging primer to a theme of social relations that needs to be explored at length. Read it.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joseph Epstein's book on friendship is not the best thing he has ever written. It is the personal essay made too personal, focused too much on the limits and small pleasures of his own friendships, not as evenly balanced with literary examples as his finest work. He is a likable observer but his complaints (too gregarious, too many demands) are not mine, so he seems a bit more distant from me. But the book did get me thinking about the hard work of friendship, the way the modern demands of marriage and family limit friendship, the differences between men and women in pursuing friendship, and the way friendships change as we age. If all of his examples did not ring true to me, he did get me thinking about friends and friendship with both nostalgia and resolve and that is a good thing.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was recommended to read Epstein as a model of great writing. I found myself conflicted about this example. In parts I found it insightful, amusing and impressive, in others repetitive and a bit of a slog to get through. The man is clearly very widely read, impressively so, and a witty communicator. But this book could have been much shorter and had less random musings. I certainly have learned things in reading it and had cause to ponder friendship but the book was almost distractingly too self-indulgent

[Amy Plitt · Rating 1 out of 5]

While there are many books I can't put down once I start reading them, this one I could not pick up. I got no more than halfway through it and just couldn't bring myself to finish it. I have no interest whatsoever in the Greco-Roman history of friendship. I found no rhyme or reason to the book at all, really. I enjoyed the stories Epstein told of his own friendships, but still, I could not describe to friends where the book was going. B-O-R-I-N-G.

[Mimi Watson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Chose this after reading review in the Wall Street Journal. Apologized to my reading group afterward. It is terrible! A couple members disliked it so much they didn't even finish the book, which is not typical of our group.

[Raina · Rating 2 out of 5]

most interesting are the chapters on male - male and female - female friendships.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second time through this selection of learned, often witty, sometimes snobbish, but always interesting, essays on friendship.

[Barbara Sibbald]

The cover blurb touts this book as “smart, delightfully literate and sophisticated.” In part, perhaps, but mostly it is repetitive with small nuggets of wisdom buried in the substrata. I thought it would have made a dandy magazine article. It’s not a self-help book, nor is it a thorough exploration of this complex, nuanced subject. After differentiating between friends and various types of acquaintances, he delves into essential aspects (mostly rough reciprocity) and the resulting main benefit: easy conversation due to the comfort of a common outlook. Candor, confiding? Well, that’s something women do with their friends, not men. At least not men of a certain age (he’s 67). This is clearly offensive. He claims that the subtext of the book is the need to limit the number of friends (polyphilia). He suggests that at most, one can have only 7 good friends, yet confesses in the dying pages of this tome that he has 75. How can someone with this many friends, yet no confidants, offer me anything worthwhile about friendship? There were a few things: don’t try to help friends change for the better (it creates resentment); don’t feel obliged to be friends (guilt buddies); and realize that not all friendships need to be, or can be, deepened. Not exactly rocket science, and certainly not worth the time invested reading this book. I should have gone for coffee with a friend. 2/5

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are an old curmudgeon like me who has seen friends come and go, or has had a complicated relationship with a friend, or has geographically diverse friends, or a friendship with someone of the opposite sex, or felt rejected by someone you thought might be a friend, then you might like this very candid 'expose' of friendship. I found that it helped me understand why friendship can be challenging sometimes.

If, on the other hand, you are turned off by discussions that might involve Montaigne, Samuel Johnson, or ancient Greek philosophers, then this book is probably not for you. (Or you can just skim those parts).

To me Joseph Epstein is smart, wise, funny, charming, very down to earth (despite his intellect) and an excellent writer. I can understand why he has lots of friends. I'd like to be his friend.

[Tom van Veenendaal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Epstein is an excellent essayist but somewhat of a bore in longer books. Consequently this book is hard to finish and required several long pauses. Luckily the last chapters are the best. Many of the anecdotes in this volume were previously recounted in his essays, especially in the shorter ones collected in the (great) volume titled "Wind Sprints", which you should read instead of this. If I wanted to hear an old man ramble on about his lunch meetings with friends at inordinate length I would have just visited a retirement home.

[Ali · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up randomly a few years ago and have finally read it! I did not really like it. I found Epstein’s style and content arrogant and egotistical. He gives many examples from his life and I found myself disliking the person he showed himself to be. I also did not understand his humor. However I did like thinking about friendship as a topic. Another critique: his sources are virtually all western and it left me curious about friendship in the rest of the world.

[K Thibault · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book about friendship from an ungrateful curmudgeon who has so many of them he doesn't know what to do with them. He resents the sheer number of them. Can you f***ing believe it? Did you know 25 to 40% of Americans suffer from chronic loneliness? And that guy writes a book like this? The f***ing nerve.

I did not gain a single insight from this pointless pile of grumpy old man ramblings.

[Ally Silas · Rating 2 out of 5]

oh MAN this took me forever to read. the writing was dense and antiquated, and the author spent a lot of time detailing his own friendships to no particular end. in most chapters, i found myself skimming through unimportant blocks of text just to get the book over with. with all that being said, there were some interesting bits of wisdom that earned an annotation, so i’m grateful for that

[Larry Koester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting discussion of friendship from one man's life.

[Fred Eisenhut · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a keeper. I will wait for awhile and read it again. Friendship is complicated. We are often confused by our own and others expectations. Epstein has cleared up many of my concerns.

[Nanaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s not as good as his snobbery book but definitely better than narcissus leaves the pool. A bit repetitious and too long.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a slower read than I thought it would be, given its book jacket claims to humor. There are many good insights, but you have to keep in mind that this is non-fiction philosophy and social commentary, and thus more like academic study than reading, say, Dave Barry. I'd recommend reading it a little at a time--perhaps one chapter at a time as you're interested. Good topics include friendships among men, friendships among women, marrying your friend, friends with benefits, best friends, obligations of friends, and lack of friends. My copy is heavily underlined with interesting quotes, though. I found a lot that rang true. On the downside, the book contains A LOT of personal talk by the author about his particular friends, which is less interesting but does illustrate the point sometimes (other times I felt like he was just telling us to tell us). Anyway. Here are some of my highlighted (funny or interesting) quotes:

- "I sometimes felt I was the perfect customer for a much-needed but never produced Hallmark card that would read, 'We've been friends for a very long time,' followed on the inside by 'What do you say we stop?'"
- "Few things are likely to kill a friendship quicker than a careful and strictly adhered-to theory of what qualities are needed in a friend."
- "As the sociologist Ray Pahl puts it, 'If we feel obliged to be a friend, then it is no true friendship.'"
- "Reciprocity is at the heart of friendship."
- "As I grow older, I find fewer and fewer men who truly listen to one another. Usually they more or less politely wait for the next man to cease talking so that they can have their go."
- "...to cite Sue Limb again, at the heart of most female friendships is 'a mixture of sympathy and instruction: of a loving heart and a shrewd eye.'"

Borrow my copy if you're interested, but I will want it back.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A followup to his earlier book about Snobbery, and it's similarly witty, perceptive, and engaging, even if -- not unexpectedly -- the book is more about the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of Epstein's own friendships than it is about friendship in general. Epstein is shockingly well-read but periodically sounds as if he's dug through a Bartlett's book of quotations about anything related to friends, just to toss in well-polished bons mots. That's ok. Some of the explorations are of friendships from childhood, and how/if they last to adulthood; friendships mediated by technology; friendships formed around a single common interest that have no other venue for expression; and the conflicting ideals of friendship and family. He is quite unsparing about the conflict between marriage and maintaining friendships, for example, and points out that males in this society now are expected to make contributions to domestic life and childrearing that once were deemed "women's responsibilities;" to the possible detriment of male friendships. Epstein fills the book with allusions to classical friendships in the Greek and European literary tradition, and as a lit crit, he has a lot to dwell on. A fun although, in its way, frivolous book.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Epstein's Expose of Friendship. I was able to digest it slowly since the chapters serve as articles examining one aspect of frienship. One of Epstein's purposes in writing the book was to demystify frienship. In friendships we tend to idealize what a friend should be. Sometimes these expectations are unrealistic. Some friends come and go due to work, circumstance or because of an unpleasant falling out of favor. Furthermore, the telephone, the airplane, email, and online social networks have changed the way we relate to each other. We can have friendships with people online or by telephone that we rarely see. He also touched on friendlessness & the affect that marriage & children have on one's friendships. Reading this book made me want to think about the friendships I have had and still have. He also reminded me that making friends with people can be a life-long practice. Epstein gave several anecdotes of elderly persons who formed deep friendships later in life. I recommend this book to those who enjoy thinking about friendship & who desire to be considered a "good friend."

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this one up at the library. When I started reading it, I realized that I had already read it. I remember thinking that the writer has very loose definitions of friendship and considers many interactions with other humans "friendship," even though many people including myself would not see those interactions as friendship. To each his own. I do like that the writer acknowledges that friendships come and go and that that is okay. I also like that the writer acknowledges that our friendship needs are often best met when we use many people who share an interest in something to fill our friendship needs than trying to make one person fill ALL of our friendship needs. I'd read it again if I had the time, as it is an interesting little book.

[Annabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine my delight in having found this at Booksale. That Mr. E now details his eclectic friendships (my last one by him was Snobbery) proves once more how congruent our schools of thought have been. But that's mostly my own thinking of course, as I can very much be of the herd mentality. Speaking of which, as I went through the pages I was mentally dropping and dragging my own friends (and often much-better acquaintances) into their respective folders. Prone to logorrhea? Alas, those too. If I had not learned my lesson (to my detriment, as always), I would lend this book 5 or more times. Instead, what I can do is quote Mr. E on his various observations and nuances of friendship, and come off as that "most flattering entertainer at a party!" My apologies for my twist on the blurb.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Filled with wonderful little tidbits, like this:

"Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache," wrote William Blake. "Do be my enemy--for friendship's sake."

Though Epstein complains a little too much about his uncanny ability to have and keep friends (such an inconvenience, he says; geez, how tiring to have so many people like him; why, why must he suffer through it?), this is a highly readable blend of academic/historical cases and modern analysis of the complexities of friendship. I'll check out his Snobbery next.

PS: Available at the Mid-Manhattan branch (40th and 5th) on the first floor. Lots of copies available.

[Callie · Rating 3 out of 5]

nothing earth shattering here, yet Epstein's tone is delightful and he's so incredibly well read. i found lots of references to other books that I definitely want to check out.

quote from Cesare Pavese: "one stops being a child when one realizes that telling one's troubles does not make things better"

"Seriousnesshasto do with recognizing that the human drama is about trying to determine what is and is not significant in a finite life. Seriousness has to do with attempting to make sense of one's experiences, not least one's sufferings and setbacks. Seriousness lends gravity to a man or woman, gravity tha, if this not be a physical contradition, does not weigh them down.

[Travis Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joseph Epstein inspires me, in a non-dogmatic way, to be a better and more thoughtful person than I would be by natural inclination. He and I come from backgrounds about as different as can be imagined but I'd like to think that under the right circumstances we could be at least warm acquaintances. May he long enjoy the vibrant social life that gives him so much obvious pleasure and provides so much food for thought, the fruits of which have enriched at least this reader. Peace!