Tag: friendship

Two friends, Hurricane Katrina, a suicide, and the pain and beauty that holds us all together.

Against the commodification of community.

“How other people live is pretty much all I think about. Curiosity is the rock upon which fiction is built.”

Coronavirus inspires Sari Botton to reach out to family and friends she’s fallen out with.

An entanglement with her shrink-stalking protege teaches Susan Shapiro something about forgiveness.

Once upon a time, nightlife journalist Michael Musto didn’t set the strongest boundaries with the boldfaced names he covered.

Friends don’t let friends lie about having cancer.

As a teen, Laura Bond went all out to meet Depeche Mode — and to hang onto her best friend.

Laura Lippman, admittedly a rotten friend, is bummed by the ways in which friendships end as one gets older.

After 35 years, a visit to a grave, and to a different country.

The death of his life-long skateboarding friend prompts Aaron Gilbreath to get back on his board — at 44, with his toddler daughter in tow.

Eryn Loeb looks back on a summer spent taking pictures, and a friend she lost touch with.

Katy Hershberger recalls the way her decade at Christian summer camp both shaped and condemned her views of faith and girlhood.

Joy Notoma grapples with saying goodbye to friends before a move, the complicated grief of shunning, and the way one parting can be a painful reminder of so many others.

Colin Dickey remembers a departed friend and a tree that won’t die.

Michael Gonzales remembers a real friendship and the makings of a brutal crime novel.

What can you do for a loved one with depression? Sometimes presence can make all the difference in the world.

My friend Sam went back to Brooklyn and his gang of peculiar white buddies watching their endless Stanley Kubrick film festival. I shall not see him again.

Beverly Donofrio looks back on a friendship she hadn’t expected to make — or to lose.

How a septuagenarian friend taught critic Daniel Mendelsohn to see the world as a writer.

While teaching English to communist party officials in post-war Laos, Kathryn Kefauver Goldberg reflects on silence and the legacy of trauma.

Ringo first met [Harry] Nilsson after the singer did a gonzo version of Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep-Mountain High.” “It was bordering on madness, and so we thought, ‘We gotta meet this guy,’ ” says Ringo. While Nilsson’s destructive friendship with Lennon got the ink — they drunkenly heckled the Smothers Brothers at L.A.’s Troubadour, and […]

The fan relationship is often built on expectations and hope, however unfair they might be. My expectation going to Dominique [Moceanu]’s hotel that night in 1998 was that she’d come down from her room even after a long day of training and competing, and grant me an autograph or, if I was really lucky, a […]

Rebecca Solnit | Orion | Summer 2014 | 20 minutes (4,780 words) OrionOur latest Longreads Exclusive comes from Rebecca Solnit and Orion magazine—subscribe to the magazine or donate for more great stories like this. Get a free trial issue Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks) [ 1. ] The word “journey” used to mean a […]

Support, salvation, transformation, life: this is what women give to one another when they are true friends, soul friends, what the Irish call anam cara. It’s what the Wrinklies did for one another, what the French resistance fighters in Auschwitz did for one another, what women do for one another in real relationships with real […]

Emily Gould | Friendship | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | July 2014 | 8 minutes (1,893 words)   Below is the opening chapter of Friendship, the new novel by Emily Gould, who we’ve featured often on Longreads in the past. Thanks to Gould and FSG for sharing it with the Longreads community. You can purchase the full book […]

“Our friendship was a life­long game of ‘Who Am I?’ It was frustrating, exasperating, and sometimes downright silly, but it was a good, rewarding game.”

Reflecting on the bonds between women, often overlooked or underappreciated, and how these bonds will help the writer in her time of need: I made friends with a group of women. I was 22, and all three women — one American, one German, and one Argentinian – were 30 years older than I and had […]