We do not honor a remarkable friendship by proclaiming that it has "all the best qualities of the happiest and most resilient marriages." We honor it by recognizing that it is its own special thing.
Midway through her New York Times review of Gail Caldwell's Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship, Julie Myerson says this about Caldwell's friendship with Caroline Knapp: "All the best qualities of the happiest and most resilient marriages are here."
The review was a rave. Myerson declared herself "intensely moved" by the book. She admired the friendship at the heart of the memoir, calling it an example of "the very best that women can be together." She also wrote approvingly of the women's tenderness toward their beloved dogs.
To explain the power of the friendship and the book, Myerson returned again and again to the themes of marriage and romantic love. Here are some more examples:
- "Although there was nothing sexual about their friendship, it was in many crucial ways a love affair."
It is not just Myerson who is mired in mindless assumptions about relationships. Scholars, too, have been slow to recognize that friendship (including the closest of friendships) is not just marriage without the sex -- it is a unique, and uniquely important, relationship. Similarly, living single and living solo (not the same things -- many singles live with other people) are not just what people practice as their default positions when they are not married. Increasingly, living single and living solo are positive choices.
Heller McAlpin, in a review for the Washington Post, pointed out something important. Both Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp, McAlpin noted, "were single by choice and by temperament." They both "worked at home [and] lived alone."
The story about Knapp carrying Caldwell across the threshold of her new home begins as a wedding cliché, but ends very differently. When Gail Caldwell is in her house, it is her home, not anyone else's. She can be there, reveling in her writing and her solitude and her time with her dog, knowing that no one else will be there unless they are invited. Same for her friend Caroline.
Here's an excerpt from Let's Take the Long Way Home that captures how these women experience their lives:
"One night when Caroline was making tea in her kitchen alone, she was flooded with a sense of well-being. She reported this the next morning with a sort of confessional delight. 'Oh my God, I'm the merry recluse!' she told me she had said aloud."
Caroline and Gail's lives suited them, I believe, not because they were such close approximations to great marriages, but because they were something else entirely. Gail and Caroline are telling us that there is joy is small moments of solitude, and meaningfulness in recounting those moments to a friend.
Most reviewers and readers of Let's Take the Long Way Home saw the manifestations of the friendship in the time, the interests, and the experiences that the women shared. There were, for instance, the many long walks that they took, filled with intense conversations; the many passions that they pursued -- the love of their dogs, their water sports, their writing careers; and the alcoholic demons both had battled and slain. I agree. That's what friendship looks like. But that's not what makes it unique. What makes it different (continue reading here).