The Bookshelf: Gifts of Friendship

My oldest friend and I met in school when we were ten years old, over half a century ago. Although it was just seven years later that we moved to different parts of the country thanks to college, grad school, and jobs, we have stayed in touch and seen each other now and then—much too infrequently for the majority of those years. Decades ago, we began our habitual exchange of birthday gifts each spring. Although each of us has occasionally gone for the “gag gift” (in remembrance of our young fanaticism for Monty Python, I once gave him a “Tim the Enchanter” helmet), this usually means the gift of a book.

But it is not always easy to buy books for friends—or even for family. The nature of the relationship one has with another, and the knowledge of the other’s interests and capacities, will affect one’s choices. With my old friend, both distance and the rarity of our being together have frayed but not destroyed the fabric of affection we wove so tightly when we were boys. I know his high intellectual capacities, and the general drift of his interests, well enough to make my annual educated guess at a good book for him. Though our politics, religions, and careers are quite different, I hope I have not disappointed him. His choices for me are consistently good.

Aristotle, in Book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics, says we love things because they are either “good, pleasant, or useful,” and that these characteristics apply to friendships as well. We are on friendly terms with some people we know—in strictly business transactions, for instance—for the sake of their utility to us. Other people, whom we encounter socially, we may value for their wit, their charm, their beauty, their ready contribution to a pleasant experience each time we meet. In each of these kinds of relationship, the mutual benefit of friend to friend can be very real, yet the friendship remains ultimately disposable if utility and pleasure fade from the experience. “But,” says the philosopher, “those who wish for the good things for their friends, for their friends’ sake, are friends most of all, since they are disposed in this way in themselves and not incidentally. Their friendship continues, then, while they are good, and virtue is a stable thing.”

Recall that Aristotle’s tripartite schema applies not just to the persons we call friends but to any of our objects of affection or value—whatever we have reason to “love.” So it is striking but perhaps not surprising that Francis Bacon states essentially parallel criteria for books in his essay “Of Studies”: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” In the first group we might place manuals and references—eminently useful, but valued only in their parts and not for any integral wholeness. The books we “swallow,” gulping them down, are ephemeral delights—say, popular fiction and true tales of adventure—often pleasantly absorbing while they last, but leaving little mark on our thought and character. In the last group are books demanding “diligence and attention,” worthy of being “read wholly,” for their lasting contribution to our minds and hearts.

It does not follow, of course, that the three kinds of books correspond exactly to the three kinds of friends we have—so that we give useful books to our useful friends, pleasant books to our pleasant friends, and so on. In the case of these less than complete friendships, we may normally give no gifts of any kind, without failing in our mutual esteem or obligations. And with our “true” or “complete” friendships, especially those that persist through thick and thin in a mutual devotion of each to the other’s good, it is good to recall that the other grounds of affection are caught up in the relationship as well. For our true friend is probably also useful to us (for his advice or knowledge) and pleasant to us (for his company and conversation). Hence it is that, in thinking about books to give our friends, we can range across all three grounds of choice: giving useful books, pleasant books, and the best books worth “diligence and attention.”

Books we give (or are given) for their utility would include, for instance, my copy of the third edition (please ignore all those that came later) of William Strunk and E. B. White’s The Elements of Style, which my mother gave me for Christmas in my senior year of college. I think I must have let her read some terrible dashed-off term paper of mine, and the book was her big hint to clean up my act. No, it’s not a perfect book—critics like to carp that its comments on the passive voice are (ahem) a bit wide of the mark—but it is terse, direct, and very useful to young writers in particular.

Cookbooks, about which I’ve written here before, are definitely in the useful category, and for someone learning to cook, or an experienced cook interested in branching out into new cuisines, they make fine gifts. Beware of overwhelming, though. An aunt of mine, a great cook herself, long ago gave me Irma Rombauer’s massive The Joy of Cooking, when I was far from ready for such an enormous compendium of recipes. It was just too encyclopedic, and it has turned out to be the cookbook I use the least of all the ones on my kitchen shelves.

You will notice that these examples in the “utility” class came from members of my family, and my own giving in my family has often fit this category. The affection of our close family members is presumed, and needn’t be proved with books for improving our minds and hearts; what interests them is what they think we need, in practical terms: a dictionary when we go off to college, a home-repair guide when we buy a house, and so on. With students, too, when I have given them books, it is likely to be a writer’s guide like Jacques Barzun’s Simple & Direct, or some essential text in their field of study if they’re off to graduate or law school.

Of books in the pleasure reading category, we have as many choices as our knowledge of our friends’ and loved ones’ tastes and reading history allows. Where those tastes evidently coincide with our own, the gift of a book we ourselves have loved is a fitting sign of our belief that we vibrate on the same frequency as the recipient. “I really enjoyed this and think you will too” is a tribute to a kindred soul who (we believe) shares our favorite pleasures.

Sometimes we may find that the expectation of shared enjoyment is frustrated. (“Why did Matt think I’d like that?”) Like people themselves—like, well, their authors—books are distinctive individuals. Our friends are not universally one another’s friends, and the same goes for the books that take our fancy. But if one’s friend likes science fiction, try giving him a classic in the genre that is new to him. She enjoys mysteries? Introduce her to a new (or old but undiscovered) detective. And so on. My old friend has twice given me books by Bill Bryson, a writer who reliably gives pleasure and who is instructive without pretensions to profundity. Such a gift says “here is a good time, and a bit of learning too,” which is thoughtful.

It is in the third category of books, the ones Bacon said must be “chewed and digested . . . with diligence and attention,” that a real challenge arises. It represents the highest expression of Aristotle’s complete friendship—“here is a book I chose for the sake of your virtues”—but for that reason the choice of such a book can be difficult. What am I saying to my friend with this book? That it supplies a deficiency in his intellect or character? One hopes not to give that impression. With fellow members of one’s religion, a devotional book or spiritual classic is a very fitting gift (among Catholics, Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ is a good choice). But with some friends this is not an option.

Academic friends are the worst to buy books for, since they already acquire so many books in their central field of interest, and since their interests are so peculiar to themselves. I don’t think I have ever given a truly serious book (as a gift, that is) to a friend who was a professional scholar and peer. If I thought I’d found a first-rate choice that suited his interests, he would either have it if it was old, be planning to get it if it was new, or know of a reason why it was all wrong or useless to him! Besides, the books that scholars like most to give their friends are the ones they’ve written or edited themselves—in which case the special occasion is not on the recipient’s side, as for instance on her birthday, but on the giver’s side, namely the occasion of the book’s publication—which indicates who is really doing the celebrating.

So I am particularly thankful for my old friend’s distant but unsevered presence in my life. Though he is not in the academy, he has a first-rate mind, and interests both deep and wide. I let him take care of the deep ones himself, and try to contribute to his ever-expanding breadth with interesting works of history and philosophy (including two mentioned in this previous column), as well as some books that will simply give him pleasure. A few years ago, to mark fifty years of our friendship, he sent me a copy of Oliver Sacks’s final book, a slender volume of posthumously published essays titled Gratitude. When I opened the package and saw that title, I immediately thought “yes, me too.” Here’s to many more years of mutual enrichment, my friend.