Friendship: An Exposé

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.

Joseph Epstein's book is an introspection that, for me, gives a sense of normalcy (removes some of my guilt) about a few of my "relationships." I am not in his intellectual class, but this topic evidently--he proves--transcends such a distinction. Though quite an interesting, philosophical view of just how friends can be categorized and liked (or not), this is not a book one can not put down for a day or two: It is insightful--not pedantic--but not a gripping read. It is a personal documentary (and quite revealing), not a novel. There is much name dropping (perhaps unavoidable), but this may be balanced by his self deprecation. Only parts of the book will have to be plowed through ("Broken Friendships" comes to mind for its wordiness); most of the book is written in a leisurely, conversational, disclosive style which makes the book engaging because of those very virtues. In spite of its perceived shortcomings (a personal opinion, of course) it is a book I am glad to have read and will be glad to recommend.

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!

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.

'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.