July 14, 2008

Dear Colleague:  

    I bought Joseph Epstein's book, Friendship, in 2006, the year of its publication, but left it on my bookshelf unread, my excuse being my enthrallment by the less demanding medium of movies in my declining years. As to why I bought the book in the first place, well, I have always admired the learning and wit of Epstein, long-time editor of The American Scholar, and also because friendship, for a single unmarried person like me, means more than for the married and family-centered. (I was tempted to say, "family-crazed," but that's just my envy showing through!)

    So what have I learned from the book? A lot—but not anything I can easily summarize, a reason being the surprising variety of conditions under which friendship is possible: it flourishes between social and intellectual equals, which I have always understood to be the case; but, from what Epstein says, it apparently can also flourish between unequals, but that's only because, in the final analysis, "unequal" turns out to be "equal"—a balancing of virtues and gifts—after all.

    Friendship between equals builds on a sharing but not an overlapping of world-views. Conversation stops when there is total agreement. It also stops when one says to the other, "I disagree," or that " I don't get your viewpoint at all." Ideally, one friend simultaneously corrects and adds to what the other says, and if this is done with  wit, we have real, rewarding exchange. The topic itself doesn't have to be earth-shaking. It can be just gossip, but gossip with style. Epstein provides a number of examples. Here is one drawn from his own life. "When (my friend) told me that an acquaintance of ours, a man of cold personality, had a detached retina, I asked him how the doctors could be sure that his retina wasn't firmly in place and everything else about him was detached." Now, I wish I can be that witty! Amazing how friends stick with me even when I am as dull and becalmed as the Horse Latitudes.

    Friendship between unequals? Contrary to received wisdom, most friendships are between unequals. David and Jonathan? Jonathan may be the son of Saul, but David was without doubt the dominating figure. Montaigne and Etienne de la Boetie? Would we even have heard of Etienne without the genius of Michel? The Greeks were passionate about friendship, but those between equals were overshadowed by those between unequals—outstandingly, between Socrates and his ephebes. I can support the notion from my own experience. In the ten years of my retirement, I have formed friendships with students young enough to be my grandchildren. The inequalities in our relationship are striking: given the chasm in age, I do most of the talking and I foot the bill. Yet I feel that I am the one in debt, that I am the lesser partner, for whatever I offer them, I get in return—incommensurably—infusions of life.

    Only last week, I picked up Friendship and browsed through its pages. Astonishingly, I find on page 162:

"In an excellent essay titled 'Community, Society, and the Individual,' Yi-Fu Tuan of the University of Wisconsin, writes that 'I am a man who identifies with Beethoven's symphonies, Mozart's piano sonatas, certain arias from Peking opera, Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych, the aphorisms of Simone Weil, Steven Underhill's photographs, the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, my Doty School condominium, kung pao chicken and fried potsticker.' Reading that list, I feel that Professor Tuan and I might do business as friends."

Well, what can I say—that this single crossing of paths between a passage in a book and an impersonal "Dear Colleague" letter is also friendship, 21st century style?

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu