Last week I was talking to a co-worker about Made for People who then recommended to me Hua Hsu’s Stay True.  Stay True is a biographical account of college life for Hsu, who attended Berkley back in the 90s.  And while there are a lot of things going on in the narrative, the main thread is about Hsu’s friendship with a fellow student named Ken, who at some point in the narrative dies tragically.

Every now and then, Hsu writes about friendship in general, which dovetails nicely with Made for People (and why my co-worker suggested the book).  From early in the book:

There are many currencies to friendship.  We may be drawn to someone who makes us feel bright and hopeful, someone who can always make us laugh.  Perhaps there are friendships that are instrumental, where the lure is concrete and the appeal is what they can do for us.  There are friends we talk to only about serious things, others who only make sense in the blitzed merriment of deep night.  Some friends complete us, while others complicate us.  Maybe you feel as if there were nothing better in the world than driving in a car, listening to music with friends, looking for an all-night donut shop.

He then goes on to quote Aristotle, which matches allusions to his three kinds of friendship (or at least two of them).  He goes on to say:

We learn as children that friendship is casual and transient.  As a structure, it’s rife with imbalance, invisible tiers, pettiness, and insecurity, stretches when we simply disappear.  For some, friendship needs to be steady and rhythmic.  For others, it’s the sporadic intimacy of effortlessly resuming conversations or inside jokes left formant for years.

But before all that: a moment that brings you together.

I’m just short of halfway through the Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography.  There are a few more riffs on friendship, particularly in relation to Derrida.  It’s a real slice-of-life memoir that captures something about pre-smart phone living that feels like a lifetime ago.  It’s not quite the same as Earley’s “covenant friendship,” but it definitely points to something good about life together.