Is friendship really all it’s cracked up to be, asks the US novelist
And if they ever put a bullet through your brain, I’ll complain. It’s friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship … Cole Porter
The jury’s out on friendship. It’s not the cynical and acrimonious age of Trump that brings friendship to my mind (though can you imagine our president ever, really having a friend?). It’s me. I’ve been brooding about friendship. Now and then, don’t we need to think hard about our presumed institutions? “A friend is the hope of the heart,” Emerson wrote. “A masterpiece of nature.” I’m not sure. “I sometimes wonder,” Philip Larkin wrote to his girlfriend, “if anyone can do anything for anyone.” You know something sceptical’s afoot when you find Larkin on your bedside table instead of Montaigne and La Rochefoucauld.
Related: Richard Ford: Blame me. I voted for Hillary, and I got America all wrong
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