Making friends is a lost art, author says

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JOSEPH Epstein's new book, "Friendship: An Expose," arrives just as a study by sociologists at Duke and the University of Arizona reports that Americans have fewer friends than they did 20 years ago - with 25 percent admitting they have no confidantes at all.

Epstein's thesis is in line with the disturbing results of this latest study: He observed, anecdotally, that the prominence and importance of friendship in American lives has been on a steady decline over the last 40 years. Using his own experiences and that of, well, his friends, the author (known for the best seller "Snobbery") seeks to explain why this is so, the damage it wreaks, and whether the trend is reversible.

Among the writers and philosophers Epstein cites are Aristole, Epicurus, and C.S. Lewis, who wrote that friendship is "the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary." In fact, its very nature - voluntary, intuitive, deceptively superfluous - is the conundrum at the core of Epstein's work.

Q: In the book, you talk about your astonishment at the lack of art and literature on the subject of friendship.

A: Isn't that amazing? You'd think the classical writers would've done it up every which way. It's so subtle and infinite that you can't nail it down. We experience it in so many ways and with so many gradations. The reason why there are so many novels and movies about love and not friendship - friendship is subtler. Not necessarily grander.

Q: You also posit that one of the biggest factors in the decline of friendships - in addition to technology, and more time spent at work - is the increased importance on children.

A: I do. The world is so child-centric, it's crazy. It's all about children. No one's really written about this. I have a granddaughter who's living with this now. It's exhausting. It makes you into a full-time babysitter - and it's hard on the kids, with all this attention paid to them. I feel so fortunate that my parents left me alone. In my book, I mention this friend who said, 'My friends are everything to me.' And now he has a son, and it's all different. All he talks about is his son. It's bad. I don't know how we get out of it.

Q: The study on declining friendships in America cited, in part, the relatively new notion that your spouse should also be your best friend. But your anecdotal evidence suggests that men rely on their wives for this far more than women rely on their husbands.

A: I think it may be that women's nets of interests are wider in some ways. And men don't find confidantes that easily. I think men feel that women are going to judge them less in some way. The only person I find myself revealing much of my inner life to is my wife. It's not in my nature to talk about one's defeats, disappointments, sadness. And I think women can do this more easily than men. The heart of this in some ways - the difference between friendship and love is affection and passion. Affection is subtler. It's easier to say, "I love you; you mean everything to me." You don't often say that to friends.

Q: And this folds into your theory about the difference between friendship and marriage.

A: Sex can only f--- up a friendship. On the other hand, marriage is often about sex. But I think if you have a great, passionate relationship - it's wonderful, but it's not quite a friendship. Sex is passion, and friendship's affection. They only emerge and merge over time. You know, a lot of this book is based on my experience, and the fear is solipsism! But I hope not. I think not.

Q: Though you argue that friendships are an ineffably necessary part of life, you yourself don't rely on your friends for emotional support.

A: I think that I am just on the other side of that therapeutic divide. I have friends who marvel at it. I've been lucky. I hope to get to the grave without it.

So the confessional has not been a big part of my friendships. I don't feel I need to know that a friend of mine is suffering impotence. If he feels the need to tell me, I would certainly listen. And then try to block it out.

Q: How do you ditch a friend?

A: Breaking up friendships, I find, is very hard to do. I only do it when given a strong motive. I have a friend who's become extremely boring. The problem is, he has a good heart. There should be a Hallmark card.

Q: Interestingly, you say your father had no friends.

A: He didn't seem to require any. But it wasn't a source of unhappiness in him. My parents were a pre-psychiatry generation. They weren't tuned into ideas of unhappiness and self-worth. I never felt my father feeling the want of it. He worked hard every day, came home, read newspapers - really, his only friend was my mother. But also, he had no gift for leisure.

Q: How would you grade yourself as a friend?

A: I'd say I'm a B. I think I give off that aura - amusing to be with, nice guy, but we mustn't ask too much of him [laughs]. Proust said that the difference between a book and a friend is that you can close a book. It chills! And I think what's so cold about it is that it's true.