As a Friend

by Forrest Gander

Overview

An unforgettable, sensual novel by "one of the most gifted and accomplished poets of his generation" (Mark Rudman).

"Heroism is a secondary virtue," Albert Camus noted, "but friendship is primary." In his gem-like first novel, Forrest Gander writes of friendship, envy, and eros as a harmonic of charged overtones. Set in a rural southern landscape as vivid as its indelible characters, As a Friend tells the story of Les, a gifted man and land surveyor, whose impact on those around him (his friend Clay, his girlfriend Sarah) provokes intense self-examination and an atmosphere of dangerous eroticism. With poetic insight, Gander explores the nature of attraction, betrayal, and loyalty. What he achieves is brilliant in style and powerfully unsettling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811223188
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	11/15/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	585 KB

About the Author

Forrest Gander was born in the Mojave Desert and lives in California. He taught at Harvard University and Brown University. Gander is a translator and the author of many books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. He has received a Pulitzer Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, and fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, Whiting, and United States Artists Foundations.

Editorial Reviews

An adoring friendship turns deadly in poet and translator Gander's visceral if too brief first novel. Les is the magnetic, godlike protagonist of this reflective four-part narrative: introduced at the time of his difficult birth to a teenage mother, he is put up for adoption. Years later, he is observed by Clay, a colleague on his land-surveying team in a small town in Arkansas, who finds his friend's mannerisms and dissembling so compelling that he apes Les and eventually betrays him. Les, a part-time poet and practical joker, is beloved for his eccentricities, especially by his second wife, Cora, and mistress, Sarah, whose poetic remembrances of Les after his suicide make up the novel's third section and reveal hopelessly guilt-ridden Sarah to be angry, grieving for her tender, quirky lover. Gander's passionate construction of Les reveals a character deeply conflicted, comprising enormous virtue and many flaws, though in the end the work remains piecemeal and incomplete, though nicely done. (Oct.)

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Publishers Weekly

Gander has established a well-deserved reputation as one of America's finest poets and translators, comparable to the superb W.S. Merwin. While his poetry certainly has an intellectual aspect, it is deeply rooted in nature and in the human body, as is his first work of fiction. Les is a complex character: a surveyor and artist of some sort, a frustrating friend who challenges the limits of friendship, and a seemingly amoral womanizer whose "charismatic loathsomeness" and deceptions lead inexorably to tragedy. Beware, gentle reader, the opening account of a particularly painful birth and the despair of the young mother who wonders where her lover might be is graphic enough to be considered a form of contraception, and the lamentations of Les's girlfriend Laura are utterly heartbreaking. The only quibble is that this very short work isn't really a novel but a set of four related stories from different perspectives. Call it what you will, but be sure to order it for all public and academic libraries.
—Jim Dwyer

Library Journal

"Its length is an asset...lending the book the same mercurial qualities as its ostensible subject, the doomed, magnetic Les."

Joyelle McSweeneyn Book Review

"The clarity of artistic vision, formal innovation, and emotional honesty of As a Friend are enviable."

Harvard Review - J. T. Townley

"In this strange and beautiful novel as in life, love is part of what is sacred. "

The New York Times Book Review - Jeanette Winterson

"Its length is an asset...lending the book the same mercurial qualities as its ostensible subject, the doomed, magnetic Les."

American Book Review - Joyelle McSweeney