I did something I’d never done before during the reading Great Friendship: I took photos of all of the pages and sent them to friends. I have sent the photos along with a one-word statements. “To us!” “THIS.” “YES.” In a very short time, the book and I were in a honeymoon phase not unlike that shared by the writers of Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman at the beginning of their friendship.
When I first heard of the Sow and Friedman was writing a book with one about the friendship, no less — gives me the turn. I’ve been a fan of your podcast, Call Your Girlfriendover the years, and while I was eagerly reading your point of view on, well, anything, I’m happy to report that his philosophy on friendship is so insightful, hilarious and touching as I expected.
De la cerda, a writer and cultural commentator, and Friedman, journalist and entrepreneur media, who met when both lived in Washington DC in their mid-20s. I’m not going to spoil the details, the perfection of 2009, the night of them came to be friends, but I’m going to share a couple of potent lines that you wrote about it: “We’ve changed each other in a number of ways, from the profound to the negligible. We didn’t just know each other that night. We began the process of elaboration of each one of the other people that we are today.”
Great Friendships: How To Maintain The Confidentiality Of Each Of The Otherexit 14 of July, opens with the couple of the definition of what they call the Great Friendship. It is “a bond of great strength, force, and meaning that transcends the phases of life, geographic locations, and emotional changes.” Sow and Friedman note that a Great Friendship is active, “full of meaning and resonance,” and ” reciprocal, with both parties feeling worthy of each other, and willing to give of themselves in generous ways.”
It is impossible to read the passages of his description, without thinking of the people in your life who fit the bill, just as it is impossible to read the book without seeing the pieces of their own relationships reflected in the described. But while many of the readers are sure to have the “YES!” experience of relatability as they learn about friendship and Sow and Friedman, the beating heart of this book comes from the very specific to the love between the two writers. Is there, in every word they wrote together, from their early G-chat exchanges for the celebration of their friendiversary. The magic of the book is about the ways in which they have welcomed the readers in, weaving personal stories with practical tips and points of view to get to the heart of what makes our best, most dirty, the most beautiful of relationships — that we are in the “long-term”.
They have given friendship a complicated, wonderful love story that will sit with you.
Great Friendship it is written, surprisingly, in a single voice, a conversational one, and each time diverge into their own points of view, the point of view changes to “Aminatou” or “Ann.” That makes the experience of reading itself a brand new and powerful; as I turned the pages, or underline a highlighted phrase, I kept picturing the two next to each other, or FaceTime, talking through the exchange of ideas. Adds another layer of intimacy to the narrative.
A section of the book is titled “Friendweb,” a term that used to define his “ever-changing, interconnected network of friends” that best expresses the complex ways in which people that we want to connect and interact with each other.” In it, the Sow and Friedman to share the simple details of planning a group trip to the desert, which begins with a fun e-mail (not all) and ends up with an awkward group dynamic that captures how frustrating it can be when the small moments of the spark of the beginnings of the great tensions.
And how the best friendships require and deserve our effort.
Moving through a period of 10 years, which implies significant changes in the workplace and new relationships and health scares and multiple cities, Great Friendship the projectors of the Sow and Friedman “the spark” and their days of mutual obsession without shying away from the many factors that can challenge a relationship. They highlight the joys and complications of loving someone, the nuances within a friendship, and how all that time in place of the shape and affect our closest connections. Moving between the research and their shared histories, and the result is a one-of-a-kind of reading that would be compelling in any time, but in the midst of a pandemic that extended Great Friendships of many kinds? As well, the context makes it particularly powerful and poignant and, occasionally, a sweet-sour taste.
At the beginning of the book, Planting and Friedman to talk about the strange feeling of not having the right language in which to talk about the dynamic of their friendship, but that is what you have given us. More than anything, however, it has given a complicated friendship, a story of love wonderful to sit with you.
Source of the image: Author photo by Milan Zrnic
