Friendship
Story Stream
My Friendship with James Salter December 04, 2024
Life passes into pages if it passes into anything.—James SalterI glanced up from my desk as an attractive couple came into the gallery. We exchanged greetings. They made a cursory tour of the space. I’d seen only a postage-stamp headshot on the back ...
A Question November 13, 2024
Something I’ve been thinking about for the past several years but that I’ve been fully brooding about since the election (and the attendant flurry of takes about “polarization”) is this: when and under what circumstances is it possible to be friends ...
We Need Raw Awe November 12, 2024
What if I told you – like the eerily moving Control Voice in the 1960s TV show The Outer Limits – that ‘you are about to participate in a Great Adventure’, that ‘you are about to experience the awe and mystery’ of the Universe on this journey. And wh...
How to Understand the Election Results November 11, 2024
I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about college students reacting to the election, which has made me think about my own college days, which coincided with the 2008 presidential election. This was a pretty happy time for me. No one I knew was terribly i...
Bolaño in Girona: A Friendship October 16, 2024
I have written about this before, but I want to tell the story again. It happened, I figure, around 1981 or ’82, outside the doors of the Bistrot, a bar in the historic center of Girona, Spain. I was walking up to the university with my classmate Xav...
'Detroiters' Is One of the Best Sitcoms of the Decade October 16, 2024
Tim Robinson’s ascent to the highest echelons of comedy stardom is one of the more unexpected and gratifying cultural developments of recent years. Robinson’s Netflix series I Think You Should Leave premiered in 2019 and became an out-of-left-field, ...
The Greatest Knicks Team That Never Was October 11, 2024
For a few months this summer, it seemed as if the New York Knicks had done something remarkable. By bringing together Villanova University teammates Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Donte DiVincenzo, and Mikal Bridges in the professional ranks, the team was...
Imaginary Friends September 27, 2024
In January of this year, 21-year-old entrepreneur Avi Schiffman told FastCompany that he wanted his wearable AI pendant, then still called Tab, to fill the role God used to, but, in his words, “no longer does.” His goal for the relationship between w...
Celebrating the Centennial of the Most Underappreciated American of Our Time September 06, 2024
The following essay is adapted from the recently released book Lessons in Liberty: Thirty Rules for Living from Ten Extraordinary Americans (HarperCollins) September 7th marks the one-hundredth birthday of one of the most extraordinary and inspiring...
Friendship and Social Fitness July 22, 2024
A while back I spoke with one of my best friends from childhood. Tom and I met when I was 8 years old, shortly after I’d been adopted from foster care. Back then, all of my worldly possessions were regularly stuffed into a single garbage bag as I pre...
How Charles Williams Indirectly Saved Lord of the Rings July 15, 2024
J. R. R. Tolkien blamed two events for the end of his intimate friendship with C. S. Lewis: “We were separated first by the sudden apparition of Charles Williams, and then by his marriage [to Joy Davidman],” he explained. While Tolkien was well aware...
On Good Parties February 13, 2024
A few years ago, in the middle of a surprisingly sedate breakup conversation, I tried to explain what it was I wanted out of a relationship, out of marriage, out of life. It wasn’t simply that we weren’t right for each other, I tried to say; it was t...
In Praise of Male Friendship February 08, 2024
Men have fewer friends than ever. Be it in the US or the UK, male social circles have been shrinking. Millions of British men have no close friends at all. Three decades ago, more than 50% of American men claimed to have at least six close friends. N...
Home Is Where the Hedgerow Is February 06, 2024
Though its sincere title, if it promises anything, promises sentimentality, Hisham Matar’s new novel, My Friends, tries to serve a more refined taste for preciousness. The qualities are surely related, but precious writing enjoys ambiguity, and withh...
The Adventures of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins December 13, 2023
In February 1837, budding writer Charles Dickens moved into London’s 48 Doughty Street with his wife and six-week-old baby. In just two furious years, he would author The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby—three imperishable novels ...
Friendship as Soulcraft December 04, 2023
Nobody wants to be a type. Types stand in as substitutes for what’s there—they dull or deaden others’ perceptions of who we are. The discovery that someone transgresses type, or even plays against it—this football player does ballet!—is a delight so ...
Judd Apatow’s “Bob and Don: A Love Story” November 29, 2023
Bob Newhart and Don Rickles occupied separate spheres in the comedy world of the nineteen-sixties and seventies, or so it seemed to viewers and listeners at home. Newhart achieved success overnight—not literally, of course, but about as close as anyo...
The Last Jewish Intellectuals November 28, 2023
“Have you ever been given an order and just followed it? Or are you incapable of keeping your mouth shut and doing what you’re told?” Susan Sontag said to a cab driver who proposed a faster way to get downtown. His response was predictable: Get out o...
You Should Have More Friends of All Ages November 27, 2023
In his first few months at Drexel University, Devin Welsh made some lifelong friends, as many first-year college students do. Unlike many collegiate friendships, his just happened to include a nearly five-decade age gap.It all began when Welsh, an as...
The Best Books of 2023 (So Far) November 22, 2023
While we enjoyed summer (and all the best beach reads that went with it), we’re now in the midst of an even better time of year for books: fall. There’s no better feeling than getting cozy and curling up with a great book — and 2023 has had plenty of...
Spinning Through Time November 17, 2023
The following is a condensed version of "Spinning Through Time" by Asheesh Agarwal, published at Law & Liberty.What would it feel like to live in Middle Earth?In its adaptation of Robert Jordan’s classic series, Amazon Prime immerses viewers in the w...
Can a Soldier Ever Go Home From War? November 13, 2023
Home: What does it mean? Homecoming football games, going home for the holidays?For most of us, home is a refuge, a sanctuary, an escape from the world. Home is a fortress worth protecting from intruders and trespassers, an ideal dating at least to t...
Rushdie on Peace, 'Barbie' and What Freedom Cost Him November 10, 2023
To begin with, let me tell you a story. There were once two jackals: Karataka, whose name meant Cautious, and Damanaka, whose name meant Daring. They were in the second rank of the retinue of the lion king Pingalaka, but they were ambitious and cunni...
Basic Behavior November 09, 2023
During the summer of 2022, a troubling suspicion began to take root in my mind. It was June, and ever since I’d left my news blogging job the previous year, the compulsion I’d once felt to stand stalwart and hypnotized at the gates of global content ...
