Today, I’m having breakfast with one of my best friends in publishing. I had just started at a new publishing house and from the moment I walked in, I felt I had made a mistake. I had come from a very literary house and this place was all about the foil embossed jackets. As I walked up and down the halls, editors were busy on the phones, etc. I felt like the girl with the tray at the fifth grade cafeteria. Then, tucked around a corner beyond editorial row, I saw a door covered in jacket proofs — each one more alluring than the next, for their wit, for their elegance, for their snap, crackle and pop. I was determined to befriend the editor within. He was determined to keep away. I have that effect on people. Eventually, I wore him down, and for a time I believed we were evil twins.
Then I left my career as an editor and as all partings go, it was unclear who I would remain friends with, who would drift away. Was the bond dependent on working for the same oppressors? Was it geographically determined? Would there be a perfunctory post-departure lunch and then…nothing? Today is my friend’s birthday. We’ve known each other for fifteen years. He still kills me. Happy Birthday, dude.
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Betsy Lerner 
Ummmmmm…wouldn’t a great book be:
How To Keep and Nourish Friends In an Age of
Disjunction. No, just How to Keep and Nourish Friends……Betsy! your blog is full of great ideas for writers. I’m on it. It cannot be too long, not too short…
oh, maybe 150 pages….ummmm…..gone to walk my dof and think about this. Oh, wait, it could be a collection of famous and not-so-famous people’s suggestions. Okay, I’m going to make my list… Dali Lama ….
You’re on to something here. Alain Botton is on record saying that when he added the “How” to his original title, “Reading Proust Can Change Your Life”, he added 100,000 to his book sales. But you should think more along the lines of 160 pages. (Don’t books have to be written in page mulitiples of 16? Or did I learn NOTHING from becoming a first time author??).
List: any of the real housewives of Atlanta or Orange County, because of their expertise on the fluidity of friendship.
And any pre-teen girl riding herd at the top of the middle school heap, for the same reason.
O.J. Simpson, verbatim. Because he’s usually very funny that way.
“M.B.”, who I was friends with for ten years and who started making excuses for not coming to my annual Richard Nixon Memorial Madonna Dance Marathon Party a few years ago, the bitch.
Maybe I’ll just do research on friendship by writers/thinkers whose works are in the public domain, so wouldn’t have to worry about rights.
Thanks!
And Betsy, you take of your friends and fans and authors with pizazz…